Surprised About Donald Trump's Popularity? You Shouldn't Be - Danielle Kurtzleben

There are a lot of surprising things about Donald Trump's campaign. He has been atop polls almost constantly for nearly five months. Contrast that to GOP primaries of recent past, in which a series of "front-runners" have come and gone before a nominee was chosen.

Wednesday provided the latest Trump news that shocked (shocked!) many: Nearly two-thirds of likely GOP primary voters said in a Bloomberg poll that they supported his proposal to block all Muslims from entering the U.S. — a proposal that many legal scholars say would be unconstitutional and that many of Trump's GOP opponents blast as "un-American."

But when you look at Americans' attitudes, not only on that specific question of Islam but toward politics in general, a lot of things that have surprised the political establishment about Trump aren't surprising at all.

It's true that Americans view Muslims more negatively than they do any other major religious group, as Pew found in a 2014 study. On a "feelings thermometer" of 0 (most "cold" or negative) to 100, Muslims scored a 40, on par with atheists' 41. At the other end were Jews, Catholics and evangelical Christians, at 63, 62, and 61, respectively.

In addition, a majority of Americans — 56 percent — believe Islam is "at odds with" American values, up from 47 percent in 2011, according to a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute. The results are even more extreme on a partisan level, with 76 percent of Republicans agreeing with that idea.

In another new PRRI survey, 67 percent of Republicans said that "U.S. Muslims have not done enough to confront extremism," along with 45 percent of Democrats.

Trump may be appealing to people who already have misgivings about Islam (or, prior to that, immigrants), but of course, it's not those attitudes that are driving his campaign. After all, his popularity has held, regardless of which topic he has chosen to focus on.

Rather, a bigger phenomenon may be at work in why Trump and his ideas are so popular: polarization. It's not clear whether Americans are growing more polarized ideologically (that is, whether their ideas are growing further apart politically). What is clearer is that Americans are experiencing more affective polarization — that is, regardless of where their views are moving, liberals increasingly dislike conservatives, and conservatives increasingly dislike liberals.

For a real-world spin on this, consider that 30 percent of consistent conservatives and 23 percent of consistent liberals say they'd be unhappy if their children married someone of the opposite party, according to a 2014 Pew poll.

Notably, trust is lower among Republicans during a Democratic administration (just as trust is low among Democrats during GOP administrations) — and trust is exceedingly low among Republicans right now.

All of that creates a perfect environment for a Trump to arise right now in the Republican Party. Lack of trust in government means Americans — particularly non-Democrats — may be particularly willing to vote for an "outsider."

To be clear, the willingness to believe in unsupported ideas is bipartisan. To take an extreme example, according to research from Dartmouth College political science professor Brendan Nyhan, Democrats were, as of 2006 (that is, during the Bush administration), roughly as likely to believe that the Sept. 11 attacks were an inside job as Republicans were, as of 2010, to believe that Obama wasn't born in the U.S.

The point is that in this low-trust, highly polarized environment, when one party is always suspicious of the other, things that might have surprised Americans just a few decades ago are commonplace now. - Read More at NPR

Surprised About Donald Trump's Popularity? You Shouldn't Be

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