More than half of Donald Trump’s supporters struggle to find the United States of America on a map, a survey has revealed.
The latest Gallup poll, asking American citizens to identify their own country on a map, also checked their political affiliations, and discovered that less than half of his supporters actually knew where their own country was.
Only 48% of Trump supporters correctly identified the USA on a map.
28% pointed to the biggest country in the world – ironically Russia – and said it must be that.
12% knew it was in the west and went for the biggest country in the west, namely Canada,
6% pointed to Mexico, again somewhat ironically.
3% pointed to Australia based on their own isolationist beliefs.
2% pointed Greenland for the same reasons.
The remaining 1% picked Germany.
When it was pointed out to them exactly where America lay on the map, many of them seemed disappointed that it wasn’t the whole of North America from Mexico upwards.
As an additional exercise, those who got it wrong were asked to point to Mexico on the map, where Trump wants to build his border wall. The results were about the same.
Only 39% of people correctly identified Mexico, and a lot of them were torn between it and Canada as the right answer.
32% did point to Canada, supposing that the threat concerned the larger country.
The remaining 29% still insisted that America was everything north of the Panama Canal, and that everything south of it was Mexico.
Well, the famous quote does say “war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography”. And, aptly enough, its origins are disputed. Some things never change . . .
