‘I like that he’s dirty’

"Obviously, that's not the way you want to close [a campaign]," Donald Trump's election advisers said about the former president shortly before the polls opened in the United States. They were pulling their hair out listening to the Republican candidate say he "shouldn't have left" the White House in 2020, despite losing the election to Joe Biden, and that he wouldn't "mind… so much" if reporters got shot.

But it was they who proved to be naive. The more he provoked, the more he rallied support. "I like the fact that he's not perfect. I like that he's dirty," a Trump voter told a TV camera. In the previous elections, non-college-educated Americans made up 65% of registered voters. They represented the majority of the electorate, a group that - based on the outcome - felt marginalized by the Democrats' time in office.

Ahead of the election, two indicators competed to...