[ad_1]
After Donald Trump’s shocking presidential victory in 2016, there was no shortage of autopsies that analyzed why his victory was a surprise.
One, written by New York Times public editor Liz Spayd, the day after the election, read: “As The Times enters a period of self-reflection, I hope your editors will also think carefully about half of America. rarely covers. “
That half of the US, the 63 million who voted for Trump in 2016, stunned the world again in 2020, after months of polls and analysis that suggested not only a resounding defeat for Trump, but also for Republicans in the Senate and House of the United States
We don’t know yet if Trump will get a second term in the White House, but we do know that he broke his 2016 vote total, receiving at least seven million more votes. Regardless of whether Trump wins or loses, these questions arise: Did those who help shape the political narrative in the United States “think hard” about that seldom covered half of the United States?
Lost predictions
This year was dominated by a pandemic only in a century, Trump’s response to it, and vocal debate about how to deal with the pandemic, combined with a summer marked by incidents of police brutality that sparked violent protests in American cities.
In the midst of this narrative emerged the feeling that Trump was divisive and was missing the moment. Political polls regularly showed that a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s overall job performance and his handling of the year’s crises. And, in turn, those polls showed him significantly behind Joe Biden in the presidential race and showed incumbent Senate Republicans battling their Democratic opponents.
Yet American voters did not stick to the script that Election Day would be a Republican failure. Republican political consultant Frank Luntz says that’s because pollsters simply didn’t learn the lessons of 2016.
“They should have known better because they were wrong four years ago,” Luntz told Fox News on Thursday.
Who are Trump’s voters?
Who are the people who voted for Trump this year, facing those pre-election narratives about the American electorate? Compared to 2016, for the most part, the representative sample of Americans who voted for him was quite similar and there are more of them.
This year, nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of American voters were white, and 55 percent of them backed Trump, according to the Associated Press VoteCast post-election poll. About half of the men (52 percent) voted for him. Trump won 60 percent of voters living in small towns and rural areas.
Biden’s coalition consisted of college graduates (57 percent of them won), women (Biden won 55 percent). And 55 percent of voters under 45, 65 percent of urban voters and 54 percent of suburban voters won.
As for the 206 so-called “pivot counties” that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but supported Trump in 2016, Trump won 174 of them this year. Biden won just 20, while the rest are still counting votes, according to Ballotpedia.
The division
Much has been written about the political and cultural divisions in the United States: elite versus working class, religious versus non-worshipers, urban versus suburban. But Trump and his supporters raise serious questions about whether powerful people in Washington, New York, and Hollywood pay too much attention to the concerns and interests of one party, accusing them of creating narratives that, while sounding wise among the so-called “elite.” They are seen as absurd among a large swath of Americans.
It is Trump’s voters, those on the right, but also those in the center of the United States, many of whom voted for Barack Obama but have since become disillusioned with the Democratic Party, who continue to say that they feel neglected and ignored economically and culturally. , something happened. in sight after Trump’s 2016 election. But that was another lesson that was seemingly forgotten in the run-up to Election Day this year.
“[T]They seem to forget that the rest of the world is here, the rest of the country, ”said Deana Wagner of Valley County, Idaho, about the United States government in Washington, DC and why she planned to vote for Donald Trump.
It is voters like Wagner that the Democrats, and those who suggested that Trump and the Republican Party were completely out of touch with the Americans, were misunderstood yet again, leading to a much closer presidential election than originally anticipated. and the unforeseen success of Republicans running for the House and Senate.
Whether Trump wins or loses, the 70 million voters, and counting, who supported him again are sending a clear and strong signal that they will not leave.
[ad_2]
