HOW TRUMP DID IT???

Donald Trump campaigned as neither a staunch evangelical conservative, nor an establishment-friendly pragmatist.  Instead he ran as a furiously populist, anti-establishment nationalist. Trump’s supporters saw him as a strong, independent-minded leader, capable of bringing needed change to Washington. For these particular voters, Trump’s brash, combative style, his war on “political correctness,” his outsider status, and his scathing attacks on the elites of both parties were all assets, not liabilities.

Trump’s persona and issue positioning turned out to be appealing to one major, numerous constituency: working-class Republicans, and those without a college education.  Among this core constituency, Trump did very well throughout the Republican primary season, across regional and ideological lines.  He also polled particularly well with older white men. In the end, Trump won on average about 40% of the popular vote until his last opponent dropped out. 

The New York businessman’s unusual stance on numerous international and transnational issues was extremely divisive, even inside the GOP, but at the same time important to his nomination.  Several of his most attention-getting proposals, considered unworkable and outlandish by policy experts from both major parties, were in fact overwhelmingly popular with Republican primary voters. These included, for example, his notion of a temporary ban on all Muslim immigrants into the United States, as well as a full-blown security wall on America’s southern border, paid for by Mexico.  While establishment internationalists tended to favor immigration reform, by 2015-16 over 60% of Republican voters had come to view mass immigration into the US as a “critical threat.” Trump tapped into this sentiment and encouraged it by proposing to identify and deport some eleven million illegal immigrants living in the United States. Trump’s protectionist stance on numerous international trade agreements, past and present, was also highly unusual for a winning GOP candidate. But since roughly half of Republican voters shared vaguely protectionist views on international trade, as of 2015, Trump’s position held considerable populist appeal. Trump won over many of the GOP’s non-interventionist voters with full-throated critiques of the 2003 Iraq invasion, denunciations of “nation-building,” and repeated declarations that multiple US interventions within the Muslim world had produced nothing of benefit to the United States. Yet he did not really run as any sort of foreign policy dove. On the contrary, he called for the most brutal measures against jihadist terrorists—up to and including torture—and a more aggressive campaign against ISIS along with increases in US defense spending.  Trump’s hawkish language against jihadist terrorism was crucial to his nomination. He won precisely by not being a thoroughgoing anti-interventionist on national security issues. The majority of Republican voters, including conservative nationalists, do not hold non-interventionist views with regard to ISIS and Al Qaeda.   

Altogether, the image offered by Trump was of a sort of Fortress America, or perhaps a gigantic gated community, separated from transnational dangers of all kinds by a series of walls—tariff walls against foreign exports, security walls against Muslim terrorists, literal walls against Hispanic immigrants, and with the sense that somehow all these dangers might be inter-related under the rubric of the “the false song of globalism. For many GOP voters feeling displaced by long-term trends toward cultural and economic globalization, the promise of the country’s security, separation, and reassertion of control sounded both plausible and compelling. In the end, Trump carved out unique niche appeal in the 2016 Republican primaries by :

1. Combining a colorful celebrity personality with working-class appeal,
2. A fiercely anti-establishment persona,
3. Unapologetic American nationalism,
4. Hardline stands against both terrorism and illegal immigration,
5. Protectionism on trade,
6. Media manipulation, and
7. A withering critique of past military interventions by presidents from both parties. 

The combination was highly unorthodox, controversial, and divisive, but it was enough to win the nomination.