I’VE spent the last two weeks in the USA visiting my significant other, but naturally, being a politics geek, I couldn’t help but ask people what they thought about this year’s presidential election race and the chances of the Comb-Overed One getting into power.

“People in Europe think the prospect of a Trump presidency pretty scary,” I remarked to a friend. “How do you think we feel?” was the reply. But the reassuring answer from most was that they are confident that Trump has as much chance of winning the presidency as he does of getting through the next few months without angering any more women, black people, Muslims, or Hispanics.

Although you might think from the news coverage that the USA is engrossed in the election, most people aren’t that interested. The primaries, which are going on at the moment, are open to those who are registered supporters of the Democrats or the Republicans. Most people are neither. According to the respected US political analysis group the Pew Research Center, 39 per cent of Americans who are registered to vote are independents who don’t participate in primaries. Only 32 per cent are registered as Democrats, and 23 per cent as Republicans.

Most people who are registered supporters of a party don’t bother to turn out to vote in the primaries. Although Trump is always boasting about the size of his victories, the size of his hands, and the size of his organ, the truth is that only 14.6 per cent of people who are registered as Republican supporters have bothered to turn out and vote in the Republican primaries, and rather less than half of those vote for Trump.

Trump appeals to a similar demographic in the USA as Ukip does in the UK, and there are just not enough angry, working-class white people to take him to the White House. The USA is a far more racially and ethnically diverse country than the UK, non-Hispanic whites make up just 63 per cent of the country’s population. Minorities make up 37 per cent of Americans, but the only minority that Trump represents is people who are fake-tan orange.

Since one of Trump’s key policies is to build a wall along the border with Mexico and to deport undocumented migrants, most of whom are Latin American, he’s about as popular among Hispanic voters as a comb-over at a hair clinic.

America’s Muslim population is equally unlikely to vote for a man who wants them to wear identifying badges in a horrifying echo of 1930s Germany. There are just under three million Muslims in the USA, a small and vulnerable minority making up less than one per cent of the country’s population. You might think that Trump’s Republican opponents would try to distance themselves from his divisive rhetoric, but sadly Ted Cruz is trying to out-Trump the Donald by calling for greater police control over Muslim neighbourhoods.

It’s all a part of upping the ante on the war on terror. Republicans need an enemy. Donald Trump wants everyone to believe that he’s going to be tough on Daesh just as soon as he gets over being terrified by a short female journalist wielding a pen. It’s a deliberate attempt to stoke up public fear for short-term political gain. The stark truth is that since 2004, 36 Americans have been killed by terrorist action in the USA. You’re more likely to be shot by a toddler in the USA than you are to be killed by a terrorist. Oddly, neither Trump nor Cruz is proposing a greater police presence in kindergartens.

Then there’s the female vote. Trump has already established himself as the misogynist’s candidate of choice, and this week’s debacle on the emotive abortion issue has done his campaign some damage. Previously he was leading in the polls for the Republican primary in Wisconsin, due this coming Tuesday, now he’s 10 per cent behind Ted Cruz.

It seems likely that Trump will go to the Republican convention with the largest number of delegates, but it’s also likely that he won’t have sufficient support to ensure he automatically gets the candidacy.

If that happens the Republican hierarchy will try to ensure that someone else gets their nomination, and Trump will most probably stand as an independent, splitting the right-wing vote. That’s only going to help the Democrats, and Trump will spend the rest of his life complaining about how he was robbed.

For the Democrats, the equivalent figure for voter turnout in the primaries is just 10.7 per cent. It seems that more Americans are enthused about the prospect of voting for Trump or Ted Cruz, aka the Human Adenoid, than they are for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Although he’s enthusing the young and social media users, most Americans just don’t see the Cialis that Bernie puts into socialism, while Hillary is the only politician who can give Donald Trump a run for his money in the most-hated stakes.

It’s likely that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, although Bernie is not out of the race yet, but whichever wins the good news is that US polling shows that either of them would comfortably beat Trump.

The rest of the world is looking on this presidential election as an IQ test for America, thankfully, it seems that America will pass.