Popular by total votes tallied, not popular by total eligible voters. Only about 50-70% of all eligible voters vote - call it 2/3. Campaigning is less about swinging voters between parties and more about convincing them to show up for the ballot. This is Trump's specialty. He is so inflammatory that he has driven more people to the polls, both for and against him. But if you look at the actual stats, 2016 was won with just 27% of the eligible voter population's vote and 2024 with 32%. The runner up tallied 29% and 31%, respectively. 3rd party votes don't exceed 2% which means both the winner and the 2nd place candidates collected a total vote count about equal to the number of people who didn't show up at all.

More towards what people actually see in him, they think he's their friend. His vitriol makes them beleive he's really just in this for an altruistic motive about returning the USA to a place of freedom (for the white Christian patriarchal population). They don't think he is in it for financial gain. They think they're poor because democrats gave money to brown people. They think being a dick to other countries will bring the USA back to a self-sustaining country. They beleive corporations will do the right thing in response and choose to no longer exploit poor countries. They think the decline of US citizens' private wealth is from welfare policies, not from corporate greed. They don't recognize that the USA's 1950s-60s economic boom was rooted in being the only major industrial nation that was NOT bombed to kingdom come in the 40s.

And above all, I beleive conservatives generally lack empathy. They beleive this dichotomy that everyone has equal opportunity but also that behavior is racial. They can't bring themselves to beleive minorities have it rougher due to systemic issues. They can't understand how poverty, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, lacking Healthcare, inability to afford higher education, or predisposition to violence is more easily predicted by birth location than anything else. Until it happens to one of their own, one who looks like them, looks like a daughter, looks like a brother. This frees them to vote for Trump and beleive in a year, they'll be wealthy, screaming "fuck you, got mine" to the lesser demographics that just won't play nice. That gives way to the most upsetting irony. They're voting for a "businessman" who will "run the country like a business" yet somehow cannot understand, at all, Trump is a grifter that is excellent at branding himself as successful on the backs of bankrupted companies that gave him golden parachutes. Why would anyone want trump to run the country like a Trump business? Bankruptcies, layoffs, shutdowns, downsizes, and a fat check for Trump? Because it's about race, religion, and societal norms. It's believing that being white, Christian, and patriarchal should automatically come with success in America. All of the hypocrisy and side effects is just the cost of gaining personal wealth.