Some people it is a sunk cost fallacy. They went all in on Trump in '16 as the outside, antiestablishment candidate. They alienated friends and family either emulating him or just repeating his insults. Then once alienated from friends family they found solace in other people who experienced similar outcomes. This only reinforced their ideas that they were right all along. Trump not only winning but being right about everything is the only way they think they will be vindicated. If Trump is right then sooner or later those that cut ties with them will come back. If Trump is/was wrong, then they are wrong and if they are wrong they have lost years with loved ones, maybe the rest of their lives with those people due to their actions. Trump is all they have now and they need him to win/be right.

yeah this seems like one of the more probable options for a percentage of them.

Others I think are just good old conspiracy weirdos. They may or may not have voted for Trump in '16, but Q Anon or Covid conspiracies or Pizzagate got them wrapped up and Trump is their winning hand. He is their way to unraveling some deep seeded conspiracy where all the bad things in the world are the fault of a few people like Bill Gates or George Soros. Trump is also their retribution for all the bad things that have happened and Trump plays into this saying they are after you but he is in the way.

i suspect this one has to be less than like 5% but it’s definitely there.

Still others I think are people who are in the right wing news bubble. Decades of Fox news or Newsmaxx/OANN, combined with right wong talk radio of hearing how all Dems are evil or working with the literal Christian devil and Trump is the only person you can vote for. Third party candidates you probably never hear of and if all you see/hear is how good Trump is and any bad things happening to him is the fault of Dems then you have no choice but to vote for Trump. I mean would you vote for someone you thought was an avatar of evil?

i think this is probably the majority of it, but my fundamental problem here is that this has gone so far that these people MUST have a fundamental disconnection with reality. I.E. be delusional, because it literally takes 5 seconds of googling, catching a random clip of kamalas campaign, seeing some of the legislation that biden passed, seeing how trump just grenades everything at every chance he gets, jan 6th literally being an attempted coup? Like there are SO many possibilities for people to realize “hey something isn’t right here” and they’ve either ignored ALL of them, or they simply don’t believe any of them, making them delusional. So either these people literally don’t interact with politics AT ALL outside of like three minutes a day. Or they’re the type of person to go bomb a government building because someone on twitter said they rape babies in the basement. There’s a fine line between “they just exist in the right wing sphere” and “the entire right wing sphere is a delusional cult” here. Fox news was also sued and lost the dominion voting machine case also, they SHOULD have heard about that, even as a fox news viewer. So either fox is twisting the truth and lying more (or the other outlets) or they literally do not see anything outside of these outlets.

Finally are probably the ones who I think literally want to be part of a dictator state. Trump is a means to an end. Project 2025 lays out their plans to usurp the entire government with sycophants. They would weild the levers of power to ensure they never have a serious opposition candidate again. The chants of “lock her up” will be replaced with actions. Anyone even remotely left of them would be in danger of being labeled a radical and in need of being arrested and likely never see the inside of a court room.

i think this is probably a subset of the first two. More than anything else.

Most probably hit a few of these but I think these are the major reasons people are for Trump despite his negatives. I think if you ask people though one of these will likely be the main reason.

yeah i would generally agree, but i’m concerned that this is still apparently at least 40% of our voter base? Like to me, it has to be SO far out there that 40% of the population genuinely cannot in good faith believe this. So either the vast majority of our population has the political acuity of a rock in front of a television, or they’re all bad faith. And if it’s the former… we’re fucked. Politics was never meant to be this surface level. It’s a functional mechanism for governing one of the largest countries by most metrics in the world. There is no “yeah it’s probably fine” here for me. Another problem that i have is that this is all behind the functioning of fascism, which means a significant portion of our population is directly susceptible to literal fascism. That as far as i am concerned, is a failure of the american project.