The obvious possibility for demagoguery is China. With the mainland having the most Chinese, there is still an international romance of a greater chinese civilization. Even anti-communists and Taiwanese pro-independence types share a notion of a unified Chinese culture. Given the right circumstances in which some other threat could be seen as a challenge to Chinese-ness, a good demagogue could rally support for an imperializing China throughout Asia and receive some support from US and European Chinese.

Why isn't Mandarin a regional identity? For all practical purposes, Mandarin is just slightly universalized Beijing speak. I thought Cantonese nationalism was tied to resentment of the Beijing language becoming the basis of Putonghoua( or what we call Mandarin).

The flip side of the trust games are those modified collective action games where people can pay to punish defectors.  
 
An interesting question: Are the cognitive elites as likely to punish defectors and non-cooperators? Or is there a tendency to extend too much generalized trust even in the presence of sharks? 
 
This recalls those earlier math simulations where cooperators and defectors are mixed up to see the evolution of populations over time. And of course, there are the classic PD games where Tit-for-Tat or variants do better than either Grim or Nice Strategies that favor either defection or cooperation unconditionally. The lesson being, Trust but Verify (or more accurately, Retaliate when necessary).

I think you are exactly right and his arguments are wrong. Nonetheless there is the problem that empirically the polls seem to have overestimated Democrat support most of the time relative to the actual vote count in the last half dozen presidential elections or more. The last election seems to have been the most accurate but even then you had the problem with the early exit polls. Even in the Dole drubbing, Dole's actual vote count was higher than the poll averages a few days before. So I wonder if it's a problem in the sampling methodology?