(CNN)For four years, Donald Trump has been the world's standard-bearer for right-wing populism. The movement didn't begin with Trump, but the US President championed it in a way no other leader could, using the weight of the most powerful office on Earth to give it legitimacy.
His election loss naturally dealt a blow to populist leaders, particularly those who share Trump's autocratic streak. Many had used the President's anti-migration, xenophobic, sexist and anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric to justify their own. That cover has now gone.
But that doesn't necessarily mean the populist wave has crested -- not in the United States, nor the world at large.
President-elect Joe Biden won the Electoral College vote fair and square, but he did so on the thinnest of margins in a handful of key states.