One of the most rewarding parts of covering politics at The Conversation is that we can cover stories in unusual ways. We’ve had poets write about politics, historians write about politics, psychologists write about politics, and this week an anthropologist wrote about politics. Editor Amy Lieberman, who commissioned the anthropologist’s story, “Why do people still back Trump, after everything? 5 things to understand about MAGA supporters’ thinking,” describes how it came about.

“The race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is extremely close, just five or so weeks out from the election. I live in a liberal area of New York City, and it can sometimes feel like an echo chamber. I wanted to try to better understand Trump voters’ perspective and why he has so much support, after all of his legal cases and other controversies,” Lieberman explained. “Alex Hinton, an anthropologist who studies conservative politics and often immerses himself in far-right gatherings, was the person I thought of first for this assignment.”

Hinton has distinguished himself on our pages as a profound observer of Trump’s followers. In both 2023 and 2024, he attended the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, observing and listening to the MAGA faithful. As a scholar of toxic political polarization, his two stories on those events are, along with this week’s piece, models of the approach he values: “Many efforts to reduce people’s polarized views begin with an injunction: Listen and understand.”

To listen and understand – is there any better advice to a journalist who wants to report on politics? That’s why we work with scholars to cover the important issues of the day. First, they listen and understand, and then you can do the same.

Also in this week’s politics news:

• Harris and Trump on immigration
• The power of presidents explained
• Violence of January 6 could have been just a prelude