Over the past nine years, Donald Trump has been variously described as narcissistic, mendacious, authoritarian, unbalanced, ignorant, incompetent, egotistic and racist — as someone who demonizes minorities and fans ethnic hostility. These assessments are a major reason roughly half of American voters, according to polls, say they will not vote for him.
But even as Trump has steadily escalated his defiance of behavioral norms, a substantial share of the American electorate remains willing to cast a ballot for him. Approximately half of the electorate views Trump as a legitimate 2024 presidential contender, repeatedly demonstrating in surveys that they plan to vote for him in a matchup with President Biden.
In other words, these voters have normalized perhaps the least normal president in American history.
Followers granting political legitimacy to Trump go well beyond his hard-core MAGA supporters. His adherents at present include half of all whites, 18 percent of Black voters, 31 percent of Hispanics and pluralities of independent (40 percent) and suburban (44 percent) voters, according to an Economist/YouGov survey of 1,660 U.S. adults conducted Jan. 14-16.