When the former US president Donald Trump was found liable of the sexual abuse of journalist E Jean Carroll last month, some observers might have hoped this would make him less appealing to American voters. Not so. If you look at a Quinnipiac poll released in late May, Trump now has the backing of 56 per cent of Republicans for the 2024 race, over twice that of his nearest rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. 

Admittedly, some 56 per cent of the voters surveyed say they disapprove of Trump, but a similar proportion also disapprove of President Joe Biden. A Pew survey also suggests that 56 per cent of Americans currently think that the US cannot solve its own problems, up from 41 per cent last June. To top it off, the survey finds that “roughly three-quarters of the public say they have little or no confidence in the wisdom of the American people in making political decisions, up from 62 per cent in 2021”.

What explains this level of dysfunction? We’re often told that US politics is in the grip of dark forces fed by political manipulation and Big Tech as misinformation undermines democracy. That may be partly true. However, for another view it is worth pondering some of the ideas advanced by Peter Turchin, a biologist and complexity scientist who employs Big Data to study ecosystems. Applying those methods to analyse the rise and fall of complex societies is an approach he’s dubbed “cliodynamics”. Clio was the Greek muse of history.