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Though Donald Trump lost the popular vote, his populism won the electoral college where Hillary Clinton never saw it coming: the so-called rust belt states.

But despite similar economic conditions in some Canadian regions, we haven’t elected a Trump. Not yet, anyway. Because there’s a competing option that speaks to working class frustration, the social democratic NDP.

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In 2016, Trump won in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those previously Democratic states gave 54 electoral college votes to Trump’s conservative populism. If they’d gone the other way, Trump would not be president today.

In the rust belt, Trump was the only one talking to working class frustrations. People may argue his populist prescription made no sense — and it’s true that, in office, his tax cuts and trade wars have not helped working people. But it’s also true that, decades before, Democrats had ceased to be a party for small business and working people. Trump saw a wide-open field and ran down it.