I’ve read too many pieces seeking the reason why Trump managed to become US President. There is no single reason. There are many overlapping and even sometimes contradictory reasons. Here are 25 I’ve come across, vaguely organised so they build upon each other.

1. Decline of the mainstream media (Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab)
2. Social media filter bubbles (Vyacheslav Polonski / World Economic Forum)
3. Facebook, as gamed by Macedonian teenagers (Craig Silverman / Buzzfeed)
4. Wikileaks / Russia (Jason Murdock / IB Times)
5. The FBI (Larry Chin / Global Research)
6. Clinton was the wrong candidate, Bernie would have been better (Ben Norton / Salon)
7. Clinton was too neoliberal (Naomi Klein / The Guardian)
8. Trump was the ‘change’ candidate (Chris Cillizza / Washington Post (point 8))
9. This election was about emotion not policy (Election Data / Ian Warren)
10. Democrats’ winning margin among poor was reduced at this election as party had abandoned working classes (Robert Reich / The Guardian)
11. Many people who backed the Democrats in 2008 and 2012 stayed at home (Kieran Pedley / Political Betting (upper part of text))
12. People in disadvantaged areas, even if they themselves weren’t disadvantaged, voted Trump (Jed Kolko / FiveThirtyEight)
13. The Rust Belt especially won it for Trump (Kieran Pedley / Political Betting (lower part of text))
14. Authoritarians backed Trump (LSE Politics & Policy / Eric Kaufmann (upper graphs))
15. People fearing immigration backed Trump (LSE Politics & Policy / Eric Kaufmann (lower graphs))
16. Education level mattered a lot (Chris Cillizza / Washington Post (point 4))
17. This is a big cities versus the rest issue (Catherine Hanrahan / ABC)
18. Liberal America didn’t understand ‘real’ America (Sara Smarsh / The Guardian)
19. The middle of America didn’t understand the coastal America (Roll Call / Patrick Thornton)
20. Mainstream pollsters got it wrong, and this made Clinton’s supporters complacent (James Barrett / Daily Wire)
21. Only Trump’s pollster got it right and focused his camp (Trump’s Pollster Adam Geller, Facebook comment posted onto Twitter)
22. Numerous problems with election registration and suppression, especially among the poor (Sabrina Siddiqui and Richard Luscombe / The Guardian)
23. Clinton actually won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college (Sara D. Wire / LA Times)
24. Trump activated racists (Jenée Desmond-Harris / Vox)
25. Clinton was a woman, and America was too misogynist for a woman president, and many had no problem with Trump being a groping misogynist (Angelina Chapin / The Guardian)

So I suppose of there is any silver lining here it’s that there a whole bunch of things that could be done better and differently in 2020. If Trump hasn’t completely screwed up the USA by then…