So the bigger question is not about Mr. Trump, but why the last six presidential campaigns became so stable.
The answer is polarization. The same forces that propel a radical candidate to a party’s nomination also provide a floor through which he is unlikely to fall. Mr. Trump’s ascent is the culmination of trends that began in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich introduced the Contract With America, and adopted tactics like government shutdowns and impeachment. More than any national figure since Sarah Palin, Mr. Trump embodies these attitudes.
.. In The Federalist No. 10, James Madison suggestedthat the slowness of communication between distant states would prevent the formation of organized factions inflamed “with mutual animosity.” But modern communication has rendered Madison’s point of view obsolete.
.. Madison thought that even if a faction shared common motives, physical distance would make it difficult “to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” Partisan media is not new, of course — in the 1800s, the chief funding for newspapers came from political parties — but talk radio, Fox News and Breitbart can reach like-minded voters with tremendous speed. Social media intensifies the segregation of voters by providing channels of communication tailored to specific preferences. When cable news organizations often seem unwilling to call out falsehoods, wrong information can cause tremendous damage.
.. In a Florida survey, 84 percent of Trump voters said that Mrs. Clintonshould be in prison, and 40 percent said she was a demon.
.. It has been suggested that the Republican Party is motivated today not by political conservatism, but a reaction against contemporary life. Trump voters resemble Romney and McCain voters. They are whites who are more likely to be evangelicals who did not graduate from college. Tensions between these groups and elites and minorities limits the range of support that either side’s candidate will receive.
.. Mr. Trump’s candidacy has revolved almost entirely around emotionally powerful issues like race, immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment. The more you feel a decision in your gut, the less likely it is that you will change your mind.
.. In any district dominated by one party, representatives are determined mainly in primary elections, when turnout is low and the most likely voters are motivated partisans, fulfilling Madison’s fear that “a common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority.” By numerical measures of ideological intensity, from the 1970s to the 1990s, centrism steadily disappeared from the House Republican caucus. Single-party domination has expanded since 2012 because of increased partisan gerrymandering, which eliminated dozens of competitive districts.
.. Facebook has automated story selection for its custom news feed; for political news this tends to foster an echo-chamber effect. However, Facebook data scientists have found a better source of diversity: almost 30 percent of hard-news reports originating from friends reflect opposing views. Even better, individuals are likelier to engage with information like this when it is presented in a social context.
.. Strong emotional experience reduces mental flexibility, suggesting that when tempers run high, as they have for many voters this season, entrenched support for a party or candidate is more likely. So if you wonder whether there is anyone left to persuade, the answer is probably no. We’re too freaked out.
How redistricting turned America from blue to red.
Several other states had chosen to elect their representatives on a statewide basis
.. Henry’s maneuver represents the first instance of congressional gerrymandering, which is impressive considering that Congress did not yet exist.
.. is a system so rigged that it hardly matters anymore who’s running for office
.. “People call us a vast right-wing conspiracy,” Karl Rove told potential donors to the project at an early fund-raiser in Dallas. “But we’re really a half-assed right-wing conspiracy. Now it’s time to get serious.”
.. Levdansky tried to explain that the information in the flyers was false. The appropriation he’d voted for was to help finance a new library at Philadelphia University, and it amounted to just two million dollars. But the truth was no match for redmap.
.. All told, in 2010 Republicans gained nearly seven hundred state legislative seats, which, as a report from redmap crowed, was a larger increase “than either party has seen in modern history.”
.. he party in charge of redistricting tries to “pack” voters from the rival party into as few districts as possible, to minimize the number of seats the opposition is likely to win.
.. So skillfully were the lines drawn that in 2012—when President Obama carried Pennsylvania by three hundred thousand votes and the state’s Democratic congressional candidates collectively outpolled their G.O.P. rivals by nearly a hundred thousand votes—Republicans still won thirteen of Pennsylvania’s eighteen seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
.. “The 2012 election was a huge success for Democrats at the statewide level in Michigan,” they wrote. “Voters elected a Democratic U.S. Senator by more than 20 points and reelected President Obama by almost 10 points.” Still, Republicans ended up with the lion’s share of the state’s congressional seats—nine, to the Democrats’ five.
.. The science of gerrymandering is now so precise that most incumbents’ main fear is a primary challenge, and here the best defense is to play to the lunatic fringe. The net result, as many analysts have noted, is increasing polarization.
.. Daley takes this analysis a half step further, arguing that the control Republicans exercised over the latest round of redistricting is the very reason the Party has lost control over its members. The representatives who make up the House Freedom Caucus—the group that last year forced House Speaker John Boehner to resign—hail from districts so red that the biggest danger they face is being branded insufficiently immoderate.
Trump will find that fierce nationalism goes only so far
This Trumpian view of the world, and of how his country fits into it, is something we have seen before in many places and at many points in history: the blaming of others for misfortunes. Sometimes the enemies are within (Communists, racial and religious minorities); sometimes they lurk abroad.
A strong and confident United States would never succumb to this appeal, and perhaps, in November, most of the country will have seen the appeal for what it is: a dangerous diversion.
.. These anxieties relate in part to Americans’ own choices: an unwillingness to tax themselves sufficiently to pay for programs; income inequalities that have been allowed to grow; a political system that is dysfunctional, grossly distorted by money, gerrymandering and inflamed partisanship; a financial system so loosely regulated and consumed by greed that its collapse in 2008 is still being felt; misguided foreign military adventures. But these observations are too toxic for domestic consumption.
.. So we have the plutocrat as the worker’s friend. The deal maker whose foreign policy will be a unilateral set of demands. The free-trade critic who has made lots of money outside the United States. The neophyte who almost revels in his ignorance, because knowledge breeds an understanding of complexity, and who proposes his daughter as an adviser in the White House.