Donald Trump's mysterious supporters turn out to be ... Republicans

Donald Trump is winning support from Republican voters with his blustery persona, endless bragging about his wealth, and positions that are basically stripped-down, tactless versions of standard Republican positions. This has the media confused. Who are these people backing Trump?

Trump voters skew older, whiter and more male, but no more so than the rest of the Republican primary electorate.

So they skew very much like the Republican primary electorate. Got it.

In a Monmouth poll released on Monday that put Trump in second place and a Suffolk University/USA Today poll released on Tuesday that put him in first, the real estate mogul fared better among somewhat conservative voters and very conservative secular voters than he did among moderates and religious conservatives.

At least in that way, said Murray, they really are like Richard Nixon’s silent majority of middle Americans. “They’re in the middle of the Republican Party. They’re not evangelicals. They’re not hardline social or fiscal conservatives. They’re also not on the liberal side of the party,” he said.

Remember this when the inevitable "Trump is just a crazy outlier, not representative of the Republican Party" line is being pushed. Trump supporters are hard to figure out precisely because they're just ... Republicans. A lot of Republicans at this point. And even if this support evaporates as people migrate to a more traditional candidate, don't discount that the appeal was there and is there.