Yes, I made a thread about Austria, but I hope you remember that I painted an over the top scenario with Austria and Germany becoming a single country again. On a sidenote, the election results got dismissed due to an improper procedure with the mail votes, then the redo that was planned for September got postponed because of yet another problem (something about bad glue for the mail), and the new date in December might get postponed again because now a fault has been found within the registration process for the mail votes.

As for the USA, I don't think it's as clear here. Trump is the candidate of the Republicans, unlike the situation in Austria where there is a party with a longrunning history behind it. Also, Trump has said many things that he didn't mean seriously in an attempt to get lots of media attention, so his personal political ideologies aren't as clear either.

Trump vs. Clinton can be viewed in different ways. Nationalist vs. globalist or calling out a rigged system vs. embodiment of the rigged system. Regardless of how you view it, Trump is the bad guy, and that's because he wanted to be the bad guy from the beginning. Over here he is portrayed as the devil, but I don't agree with this point of view when his opponent is Clinton who isn't a good person either. The difference is that Trump wants to have the image of a scumbag while Clinton is in fierce denial of being a scumbag. I wouldn't vote anyone if I was eligible to vote (I never go to elections), but if a gun was put to my head and I had to decide between Trump and Clinton, I'd go with Trump as a vote against the American system.

Michigan for sure. Then Illinois because spurgeonryan is representative of that state. And then... hm... Washington.

What has that to do with anything? I guess you and many others don't realize that much of what Trump said was for marketing purposes, marketing himself. It certainly worked, because he was constantly in the news without having to make much of an effort to get so much coverage. It should be clear that he wasn't really serious about everything he's said, so if somebody would rather vote Trump than Hillary, it doesn't mean that it is because of his comments about women or people who are not white.

The bigger question to ask is how Trump could garner and maintain such a high positive mindshare despite all the things he said. I've only looked briefly into political threads on here, but the most common explanation that is being brought up is that Trump supporters are plain stupid. But isn't it much more likely that the USA aren't that great of a country and many people don't have a great life, and thus a vote against Hillary (who embodies the usual politics) has a higher chance for improvements? And even people who have a good life don't have to be in support of upholding a system that has its fair share of problems. But honestly, I don't know. What the actions of Americans are telling me though, is that things aren't right in the country. So regardless of all the stupid things Trump said, many still prefer him over Clinton. Trump wasn't supposed to become a presidential candidate according to most, if not all, experts on politics; yet here he is and he isn't looking like a pushover who will enable Clinton to win by a landslide.

The situation in the USA isn't comparable to what happened in Europe lately with the rise of the political right where it's easy to identify the cause as well as the solution to put them back in their place. It's a lot more complex, so I wouldn't expect any succinct explanations. But the closest you'd get to that is the following:

"At least a politician you can trust..."
- But what if the people don't trust politicians anymore? Then everything starts to crumble.

So how do you interpret this picture?

Just got back from voting. Get the strong feeling Trump will take my city, in line there only 3 other people who looked to be under 35, almost every person voting was an older white person. Not really surprising to me, as far as signs in people's yards go, my city has been almost all Trump signs for months. For what it's worth, Obama took my city in 2012.