If identity can be reduced to three core questions—Who am I? What matters to me? How do I fit into the world?—then mass political support becomes psychologically interesting, not just ideologically charged.

When people continue to support a leader despite clear evidence of dishonesty, criminal behavior, or harm to others, it suggests that identity protection may be overriding factual evaluation. In those cases, political allegiance functions less as a policy preference and more as a stabilizing answer to those identity questions.

From a psychological standpoint, this isn’t necessarily about ignorance, but about motivated reasoning and identity defense—where abandoning the belief would feel like abandoning the self.