Anyone can be manipulated

Listen to Green day American Idiot 

The following events took place a while ago in a small nation quite a distance away from the USA. 

An acquaintance of mine from work (used to call him a friend, but he proved that assumption wrong a few times) is by all measures an intelligent and connected man. He watches the news, reads history books, is aware of current political issues both domestic as well as global, is a self confessed progresist and atheists. 

     During the first turn of presidential elections he supported the right wing proeuropean candidate as much as all of us in that circle did He was as amazed as we all were when the left wing sovereign current candidate came from nowhere to take second place and a place in the second turn. He didn't seem at all concerned about the candidate in question claiming he spent 0 money on the campaign, despite thousands of tik tok videos (and 0 TV or newspaper adds). As suspicion began to rise the acquaintance in question started to worry about the election results being rendered null of this candidate turns out to have broken electoral law. 

Lo and behold, some secret documents are released and the constitutional court decides the guy broke the law and he is out tof the running with first turn of elections needing to be redone. 

My buddy is fuming, claiming he will go protest the flagrant breach of democracy and people's right to vote . He even claims moral.high ground compared to me as he is willing to support a candidate's right to be elected even if he doesn't share his political agenda. 

  Fortunately for the country this guy is a major hypocrite and I already knew that. He doesn't go and protest, the candidate is arrested for using Russian funds for his campaign, China has influenced tik tok to show his campaign clips with priority and the show is complete. 

  I start to wonder, of an educated , intelligent and informed man can fall for this stype of manipulation (he didn't even have tik tok), what chance is there for a plumber or hairdresser (those were the candidates most likely voters)?