Abbott is the leader the Liberals installed to reinvigorate their core support base, a mixture of right-wing social conservatives and IPA-style market fundamentalists.
Putin has accused the U.S. State Department of instigating protests in Moscow against his re-election for a third term in March and has taken an anti-American posture that plays well with his core support base of industrial workers and state employees.
Few cracks have appeared among Assad's core support base, with the upper ranks of the military remaining supportive of the crackdown, which is being portrayed by Damascus as a battle against foreign-backed Sunni jihadists who are trying to overthrow the regime.
In the past five months, however, loyalist forces have been on the front foot in contested parts of the capital and in the west of the country, along the so-called Alawite spine, where Assad's core support base is located.
The reasons are numerous: the heavy burden of incumbency over the past 18 years; the emergence of a paranoid, securocratic cadre of leaders under Zuma; continued failure to deliver the jobs it promised its core support base; and the spectre of loss of power.
He comes from Mr Kagame's core support base: The previously exiled Tutsis who are now highly influential in Rwandan society.
"(But) the death of a child on his way to buy bread for his family is something that cuts across political divides and will have particular resonance amongst the urban and rural poor who form Erdogan's core support base".
He had a core support in Zimbabwe's cities.
Recent local poll results have indicated diminishing support in his core Sinhalese rural support base, a consequence of stubborn unemployment levels and inflation as well as allegations of corruption and nepotism.
This would give Herzog a core base of support of 42 seats – pretty much a dead heat with Netanyahu.
Sure, he ended up in second place in the delegate count despite being fairly unpopular the year before, but his strategy was like Trump's: leverage a core base of support to ride out a crowded field of candidates.
