The Guardian

Why is Trump still so popular? He gives his base what they want | Cas Mudde

A recent Gallup poll showed that, at the 500 days mark, Trump was the second most popular US president among his own constituency. How is that possible?
‘The 2020 presidential elections are still more than two years away. That is a long time in politics and an eternity in the Trump era.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

In the past two months I have been traveling through Europe, talking to academic and non-academic audiences all across the continent about populism. And from Norway to Italy and Hungary to Ireland, people have been asking me the same question: how is it possible that Americans still support President Donald Trump?

After explaining that the vast majority of Americans do not support Trump, and that he was elected with almost 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton – because the United States is the only “democratic” country in the world where a person

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