When Donald Trump arrived in Scotland as a Republican presidential candidate in 2016, the welcome he got was less than friendly.
A grass-roots group of left-wing activists staged a demonstration on the boundary of his Trump Turnberry gold course in Ayrshire.
The comedian Janey Godley, now receiving end-of-life-care after a terminal cancer diagnosis, was pictured holding up a sign which simply said ‘Trump is a XXXX’.
The last word’s been blanked out for sensitive readers, but it had the same number of letters. It was a sentiment shared by many.
Already proving to be a hugely divisive figure with his campaign rhetoric, Trump’s call for Muslims to be banned from entering the United States meant had already been stripped of his honorary degree by Robert Gordon University, in Aberdeen, and dropped by the Scottish government as a business ambassador for Scotland.
When he returned in 2018 for a state visit as President, the reaction was even more severe – with demonstrations in Glasgow and Edinburgh and outside Turnberry once again.
Thousands took to the streets to protest the presence of a man picked to lead Britain’s great ally on the international stage. A sign calling him a ‘Tizer-faced fascist’ was as polite as it got.
And despite the former President’s links to Scotland – his mother hailed from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides – it seemed that few Scots would be telling Trump to ‘haste ye back’.
So it comes as a surprise that the number of people in Scotland who would vote for Trump, given the chance, is on the rise.
A survey which posed the question ‘If you have a vote in the US election, who would you vote for?’ found that more than one-in-ten Scots would vote for Trump over Democrat candidate Kamala Harris.
In total, the Betfair poll found that 13% back Trump – up from just 8 % four years ago.
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This is despite Trump not exactly covering himself in glory during his four years in the White House. Every day seemed to bring a new scandal, and there’s still the lingering memory of him telling people to inject bleach to protect against Covid.
The concerns rise above the academic as well, are strong detriments to him becoming President again on this side of the Atlantic.
Last time round, Trump’s administration slapped a 25% tariff on Single Malt Scotch Whisky between October 2019 and March 2021, which cost one of Scotland’s major industries millions.
Over this 18-month period, the Scotch Whisky industry says it lost more than £600m in exports to the United States – equivalent to over £1m a day.
The tariffs were related to an ongoing aerospace dispute over subsidies between Airbus and Boeing, and were finally suspended for five years in June 2021. It’s doubtful anyone in the industry would like to see Trump in power again.
Over on the other side of the Pond, Trump still enjoys huge support, of course. According to national polls, he is backed by a walloping 46% of US voters.
His only problem as polling day approaches next month is the Kamala Harris is backed by 49%. And her lead has been steadily growing.
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