20/05/2016, by CLAS

Donald Trump and American Democracy

American politics is very much in the global spotlight as candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties vie to become nominees in the presidential election in November. With the polarizing and extremist Donald Trump now the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, many commentators, are asking what this means for American democracy.

Christopher Phelps, Associate Professor in the Department of American and Canadian Studies, analyses Trump’s candidacy in an article for Jacobin, a significant new American political magazine, and in a podcast for Bloomberg. Against recent interpretations which see Donald Trump’s campaign as based on the support of poor, less well-educated, and working class constituencies, Phelps notes that in most of the recent primary elections, “Trump swept to victory in every single income tranche, from lesser-paid to wealthy.”

Read the full article to see what the implications of Trump’s broad range of political support might mean for American society and politics.

Image: Gade Skidmore. Donald Trump and supporters at a Las Vegas rally, 2016.

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