Why did a plurality of voters choose Trump?

The question is a Rorschach. The most complete answer is that voters chose him for all the reasons. Seventy-seven million people voted for the guy. No matter what basket of reasons you want to come up with, there is a bucket of voters who chose Trump based on them.

So I want to preface today’s conversation by emphasizing that the answer isn’t either/or. It’s and/both.

That said: One of my theories about the last eight years is that a growing number of Americans have become not just tolerant of, but affirmatively for, authoritarianism.

The corollary being: In 2024, some significant portion of voters chose Trump not in spite of his explicitly authoritarian program but because of it.

Today we have some hard data to support this theory. Republican voters have—objectively—become more fascist and authoritarian in their values and political preferences.