Anger management

AS A rule, supporters of the Republican Party tend to dislike losing elections to Democrats. Bear this in mind as opinion polls emerge, suggesting that Donald Trump may have peaked as a front-runner among Republican presidential hopefuls.

The Trump surge was always likely to slow at some point because most Republican activists—for all their bluster about the two parties’ ruling elites being as bad as each other—would rather win the 2016 election than see President Hillary Clinton sitting in the Oval Office. Though Mr Trump for a while seemed to defy the laws of political gravity, surviving gaffes and rows that would have brought other candidates to earth, most conservatives already knew that the splenetic property tycoon is unelectable (thanks to the size of the field, he has routinely led with the backing of just one in four Republicans).