The Internet (and Jesus) Won it for Trump

Cast your mind back a year, to the first week of November, 2016. Be honest: Who did you think would win the presidency of the United States?

Twelve months ago, I was in a tiny minority among commentators in thinking Donald Trump would win. On the widely read Daily Kos website, for example, Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the presidency stood at 92 per cent. According to The Upshot in The New York Times, the number was 85 per cent. Betfair said 83 per cent. Best of all was the Princeton Election Consortium, which wrote two days before the election: "Whether [Ms. Clinton's] presidential win probability is 91 per cent or 99 per cent, it is basically settled."

Why were the professionals so wrong about last year's election? After 12 months of thinking about this, my conclusion is that it was because they had not read Jurgen Habermas's seminal book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). Mr. Habermas was writing mainly about the 18th and 19th centuries, but his insight was a universally applicable one. Often, historical changes in attitudes, behaviour and politics are rooted in changes to the structure of the public sphere itself.