I’m just trying to understand. Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary etc… Why do these leaders still get so much support after all they’ve done? What do they exactly like about them?
Aren’t these people seeing a massive drop in their quality of life?
Or, distilled into a modern cliché: “What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular.” Elections are contests of popularity, not contests of thoughtfulness or morality.
More precisely, they’re popularity contests where the prize is a powerful position of authority. Of course power-hungry authoritarians are going to compete in that contest.