2016 general american election

Document Type:Essay

Subject Area:Politics

Document 1

The country marked a change in so many things, and the factors that were initially considered giants turned out differently then. For example, an outsider being elected to be the nation’s president, an individual who had no political experience, was a representation of a main repudiation to normal business (Cancela et al 266). Some of the factors that were of critical value in this election include shifts in the meaning of American liberalism, the long history of American populism, the role played by the new technological advancements, disintegration of some crucial social issues among other factors. In this paper, I will discuss the above factors in relation to the America’s 2016 election and how they were of influence to the overall results.

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In the course of the presidential campaigns of the year 2016, the word ‘populism’ was very commonly used. When the citizens and the voters felt the depth of what was being propagated against the normal and long definition of populism in America, they made up their mind to vote against the current government and install a new leadership that will have the issues of the ordinary people at heart and in their execution plan. The shift in the long history of American populism indeed transformed the country’s politics and influenced the 2016 elections. There are many older Americans who really desire to see the older days in America where fear for the Islamic terrorists was very strange to them. They lived a life that was fear-free and terrorism was not part of their vocabulary.

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To them, it was a true definition of populism. The other factor that was very crucial in the 2016 elections is the new technologies. It is very essential to realize that technology use is just a small part of the entire story of how elections are lost or won. Technology is a tool which offers automation, leverage and distribution scale to processes and people. Secondly, most of the time citizens consider technology advancement as all or nothing phenomenon. They think that a certain candidate had technology while the other one had not. The campaigns by Sanders utilized GOTV software to send SMS and this helped them in the execution of exceptionally young demographics that were unreachable through social media like Facebook but they were live on iMessage (Leege 77).

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Finally, the campaign by Donald Trump under the help of digital agencies that are market-standard such as Parscale Digital were extremely geared towards reaching out to the Facebook users. It is worth noting that about 70 percent of the Americans are Facebook users. Unlike TV adverts, the messages on Facebook can be micro-sliced through location, demographic factors like wealth, age and race among many others. The implication of this is that a campaign has the potential to narrowcast millions of messages unto the potential voters for purposes of driving donations, volunteer works and to an extent of having such voters vote for a particular candidate when the other people don’t know of that message. Prior to Trump’s declaration to run for the presidential seat, the right were familiar with being looked down on by the liberals.

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Clinton at some point termed about half of the proponents to Donald Trump as ‘deplorable’ (Buckley Jr 111). Overall attitude of the members of left was that those who disagreed with them were probably sexists, racists, bigoted, xenophobic or even all these. However, when the meaning of liberalism changed its meaning, it left the liberal media as well as the establishment at Washington in amusement. As a matter of fact, to the majority of the liberals in America, such prejudices have later been viewed as inseparable with the personality of the Republican Party. Upon dismissing the Right-corner Americans as hazardous to the country’s ethical integrity, the left-wing members of the country continuously showed that they barely had a room for the Republicans in America in this 21st century completely (Enli 58).

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Trump’s campaign, which had a ragtag nature, placed him at the forefront of the Republican Party, but also at the same time dismantled it, hence validating the righteousness of the liberals. In fact, all through until the election time, the meme that filled the media and atmosphere was that conservative movement was about to collapse and that liberals dominated everything. The even bigger problem that was witnessed in the 2016 elections is that there exists a sort of chronic complacency which has been eating up the American liberalism over a long period of time. It is a hubris which seems to invite the Democrats to do nothing different. Immigration and trade are very key pillars in the general success of a country.

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In the life of America as a country, these are very common critical factors that the citizens wished could be addressed (Eiermann 28). It so happened that the entire campaign by Trump was bet on the fact that the famous hostility on the policies of free trade and liberal immigration would see him rise to the presidency seat. From time to time through his campaigns, he kept on revisiting these two cornerstones. The announcement by Trump was that when he gets into leadership, he would ensure that there is a wall between America and Mexico. Previously, the Republican candidates who really embraced the immigration policies and supported free trade were never able to win this population of voters. Therefore, it can be seen that identifying the issues that are the main concerns for the people really affect the election outcomes (Depoe 37).

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A candidate who seems to address the things that people have been crying to be delivered out of will experience some favor with the affected group. It is this strategy that saw the elections of 2016 have the results that were registered. Division of a country along various lines is another critical factor that affects outcomes of an election. He knew that most of the citizens in America, or majority of the voters are inclined to Christian faith. Therefore, any move that would seem appealing to the majority would place him at the top of the list. He disintegrated some of the wrong social issues which gave him popularity. When a particular social structure that has been a concern for many people over a long time is challenged the one leading the challenged gains popularity and is likely to be the favorite candidate for the majority (Depoe 43).

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An assumption that has been for a long time in the political arena is that the one that goes out to seek the votes will be indispensable. Most of these factors seem to point back to the influence it has on the voters. Knowing that the voters have the final say, then everything done in the process of trying to be popular or loved in the country has to go back to the voters. For example, use of technology is geared towards reaching out to the voters at their convenience, and giving them every reason to vote for that particular candidate. If the voters are not sufficiently convinced of their voting decision, they may never give that candidate their vote. Other factors work with people’s minds.

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