A populist wave that began with Brexit in June reached the United States in stunning fashion
on Tuesday night. In one of the biggest upsets in American political history,
Donald Trump won a truly historic victory in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump supporters celebrate on Nov. 8, 2016. John Locher/AP
Trump’s remarkably decisive win stunned
most political pundits, myself included. Throughout the
campaign, Trump seemed to have a polling ceiling of
about 44 percent and he consistently had the highest unfavorability
rating of any major party nominee in history.
Accordingly, months ago I predicted that
Clinton would easily beat Trump.
Then, at
the beginning of October, the uproar over Trump’s lewd and offensive remarks on
the “Access Hollywood”
videotape,
combined with the escalating number of women who accused Trump of sexual assault, seemed to finish off his campaign.
Right up until Tuesday afternoon, therefore, a comfortable victory for Clinton
seemed like a foregone conclusion.
But I was
dead wrong. Trump won a sweeping victory in the presidential race. His night
began with critical victories in Florida, North
Carolina and Ohio, three states essential to his path to 270 electoral votes. As the
night wore on, Clinton’s “blue wall” collapsed amid a red tide that swept
across the country from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains. The blue
states of Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa fell
to Trump like dominoes. The election returns made clear that Trump would carry
over 300 electoral votes, more than enough to win the presidency.
It’s extremely early to draw conclusions
about the 2016 election results, but here are five factors that at least
partially explain what happened.
1. Silent Trump vote
There
really was a silent Trump vote that the polls failed to pick up on. The
nationwide polling average gave Clinton about a 3-point lead overall, and the
state-by-state polls indicated that she would win at least 300 electoral votes.
But the
polls were as wrong as the pundits. Problems with the polls’ methodologies will
undoubtedly be identified in the days and weeks ahead.
It seems
equally reasonable to conclude that many Trump voters kept their intentions to
themselves and refused to cooperate with the pollsters.
The
extraordinary role of FBI Director
James Comey in the presidential campaign cannot be
underestimated either. Two weeks ago Clinton seemed on the verge of winning a
double-digit victory. But Comey’s Oct. 28 letter to Congress, which announced that the FBI was
reopening its investigation into Clinton’s State Department emails, changed the
momentum of the race. Clinton retook the polling lead at the end of last week,
but the final polls masked the lasting damage that the Comey letter had done to
her campaign.
Whatever
the ultimate explanation for the polls’ failure to predict the election’s
outcome, the future of the polling industry is in question after Tuesday.
Trump’s astounding victory demonstrated that the polls simply cannot be
trusted.
2. Celebrity beat organization
A
longstanding assumption of political campaigns is that a first-rate “Get out
the Vote” organization is indispensable. The conventional wisdom in 2016 thus
held that Trump’s lack of a grassroots organization was a huge liability for
his campaign.
But as it
turned out, he didn’t need an organization. Trump has been in the public eye
for over 30 years, which meant that he entered the race with nearly 100 percent
name recognition. Trump’s longstanding status as a celebrity enabled him to
garner relentless media attention from the moment he entered the race. One
study found that by May 2016 Trump had received the equivalent of US$3 billion in free
advertising from the media coverage his campaign
commanded. Trump seemed to intuitively understand that the controversial things
he said on the campaign trail captured the voters’ attention in a way that
serious policy speeches never could.
Most
important of all, he had highly motivated voters. Trump’s populist rhetoric and
open contempt for civility and basic standards of decency enabled him to
connect with the Republican base like no candidate since Ronald Reagan. Trump
didn’t play by the normal rules of politics, and his voters loved him for it.
Trump’s
victory would seem to herald a new era of celebrity politicians. He showed that
a charismatic media-savvy outsider has significant advantages over traditional
politicians and conventional political organizations in the internet age. In
the future, we may see many more unconventional politicians in the Trump mold.
3. Populist revolt against immigration
and trade
It will
take days to sort through the data to figure out what issues resonated mostly
deeply with Trump’s base.
But
immigration and trade seem virtually certain to be at the top of the list.
Trump bet his whole campaign on the idea that popular hostility to liberal
immigration and free trade policies would propel him to the White House.
From the
beginning to the end of his campaign, he returned time and again to those two
cornerstone issues. In his announcement
speech, he
promised to build a wall on the Mexican border and deport 11 million
unauthorized immigrants. He also pledged to tear up free trade agreements and
bring back manufacturing jobs. From day one, he made xenophobic and
nationalistic policies the centerpiece of his campaign.
Critics
rightfully condemned his vicious attacks on Mexicans and Muslims, but Trump
clearly understood that hostility toward immigration and globalization ran deep
among a critical mass of American voters.
His
decision to focus on immigration and trade paid off in spades on Election Day.
It’s no coincidence that Trump did exceptionally well in the traditionally blue
states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all of which have large populations of
white working-class voters. Previous Republican nominees such as
John McCain, who embraced generous immigration policies, and Mitt Romney, who
advocated free trade, never managed to connect with blue-collar voters in the
Great Lakes region.
But
Trump’s anti-immigration and protectionist trade policies gave him a unique
opening with white working-class voters, and he made the most of it.
4. Outsiders against insiders
Trump will
be the first president without elective office experience since Dwight
Eisenhower in the 1950s. Eisenhower, however, served as supreme allied
commander in Europe during World War II and had unrivaled expertise in foreign
affairs.
So how did
Trump make his lack of government experience an asset in the campaign?
The answer
lay in the intense and widespread public hostility to the political, media and
business establishments that lead the country. Trust in institutions is at an
all-time low and a majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.. The angry and volatile public mood
made 2016 the ultimate change election.
Amid such
a potent anti-establishment spirit, Trump’s vulgar, intemperate and unorthodox style
struck voters as far more genuine than
the highly cautious and controlled Hillary Clinton. As the brash and
unpredictable Trump positioned himself as an agent of change, Clinton seemed
like the establishment’s candidate, an impression that proved fatal to her
campaign. Indeed, Trump used Clinton’s deep experience in the White House,
Senate and State Department against her by citing it as evidence that she
represented the status quo.
Ironically,
Bill Clinton won the White House 24 years ago using a similar
anti-establishment strategy. In the 1992 election, he successfully depicted
incumbent President George H. W. Bush as an out-of-touch elitist.
Eight years later Bush’s son, George W. Bush, employed the same tactic to
defeat Vice President Al Gore. And in 2008 Barack Obama successfully ran as an
outsider against John McCain.
Trump is
thus the fourth consecutive president to win the White House by running as an
“outsider” candidate. That is a lesson that future presidential candidates
forget at their peril.
5. America, the divided
Above all,
the 2016 election made clear that America is a nation deeply divided along
racial, cultural, gender and class lines.
Under
normal circumstances, one would expect the new president to attempt to rally
the nation behind a message of unity.
But Trump
will not be a normal president. He won the White House by waging one of the
most divisive and polarizing campaigns in American political history. It is
entirely possible that he may choose to govern using the same strategy of
divide and conquer.
In any
case, Trump will soon be the most powerful person in the world. He will enter
office on Jan. 20 with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, which
means Republicans will dictate the nation’s policy agenda and control Supreme
Court appointments for the next four years. It seems highly likely therefore
that Nov. 8, 2016 will go down in the history books as a major turning point in
American history.
The 2016
election defied the conventional wisdom from start to finish. It is probably a
safe bet that the Trump presidency will be just as unpredictable.
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