Why some voters embrace Hanson and Trump

Increasingly, the affected or concerned led, believe their leaders are unaffected and unconcerned and have lost empathy and connection. As classes within Western society slowly decouple, cries for help find form in Donald Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, record-low primary votes for mainstream parties, Senate fragmentation, Pauline Hanson and others of her ilk.

Disillusionment with the major political parties has resulted in them recording their lowest ever primary votes, with the spill going to parties that offer a degree of empathy, a vehicle for protest or even the prospect of change.

A call for transformation represents opportunity, and Donald Trump is one of many candidates who has seized on it, albeit through the vehicle of the Republican Party.

Parties still operate in much the same way they did in the middle of last century, but if they continue to fail to change, they'll go the way of fixed-line phones and department stores.

Clinton seems highly likely to win the presidency of the United States, or, more accurately, Trump appears destined to lose it. Ironically, however, many of Trump's supporters may get exactly what they voted for: not a Trump victory, but a destabilisation and longer term reinvention of the Republicans, thus the broader political class.

And if so, what that really means is that, despite short-term apprehensions, our democracy may very well be in better shape than we imagine.