Trump's Role In The 2000 Presidential Election

Every presidential election year tensions and tempers flare between opposing party supporters. This year’s election season was no different, perhaps even more volatile than years past. The popular phrase “lesser of two evils” was heard countless times throughout the election, denoting the nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to be the only available options, regardless of how ill received they were. The media played a monumental role in this election, basically framing out the nominees personalities which heavily influenced how voters perceieved them. The bias in the media was grossly transparent throughout the entire election, uplifting Clinton while dragging Trump’s name through the mud. The media’s perpetuation of false narratives
and biased reporting gave undue confidence to the left and their supporters, ultimately crushing them after the loss in the election. America’s source of media, whether it be television, newspapers, radio broadcasts, or social media, was more involved during this election than ever before. Almost everywhere one turned there was another mention of the presidential nominees, Clinton and Trump. The latter was cast mainly in a monstrous light, with incredibly little support from news outlets. In fact, the disparity of newspaper support between the two candidates was enormous, 500 to 26 in favor of Clinton . With this many media outlets backing her, it is no surprise that Hillary Clinton was shown as a wholesome woman hoping to be the savior American needs. In a presidential election this is often how opposing candidates are presented. Democrats are the nominees running for the good of the people while Republicans play the role of the villain and are inherently evil. Only when one ventures to a newsgroup that is unaffiliated with any party can the full story be seen. Only then can the voter see the more personable side of Trump and the vilified version of Clinton. Unfortunately, so many of the popular media outlets have become ingrained with party affiliations. The majority of newspapers and broadcast channels align themselves closely with the Democratic Party and this is abundantly evident this election. Many voters sat awake late into the night on the 8th awaiting the election results as more and more districts reported. To the dismay of millions of voters Donald Trump clinched the coveted 270 Electoral College votes and became the president elect. The resulting shock that many voters felt was primarily due to the misrepresentation of who was leading in the presidential race. Almost every reputable pollster had predicted a Clinton victory by several points. Some had even gone so far as to say that she would win in a landslide come November, but were clearly wrong. A variety of confounding variables played a role in the inaccuracy of the media’s prediction, but one rises above all. Political pundits credit the silent majority for Donald Trump’s victory and they are not wrong. Millions of Americans are politically active and participate in polls, but even more do not care to do such things. These citizens, the ones that thought America was headed in the wrong direction, came out in droves to vote on November 8th for Donald Trump. This is likely the reason that Trump won, but the surprise that many Clinton supporters felt can be attributed to the media. In the months preceding the election, many outlets clung to the narrative that Clinton was largely leading Trump. Clearly she had no such lead, else there would be a different president elect. Rather than look into the election from a variety of angles and a purely journalistic stance, the media, with the data from innumerable polls, continued to elevate Clinton and demonize Trump. Never before have the polls been so wrong. Almost every prediction placed Clinton as the next president. With this inefficiency in the polling process, it will be interesting to see how future campaigns are run given this new unreliability in election prediction. Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of this election, besides the Trump upset, was that Clinton won the popular vote.
Many are familiar with the 2000 election where Al Gore won the popular vote but still lost the election, yet no one thought it would happen again so soon. There will always be a variety of opinions on a matter such as this, but in this case, Trump’s Electoral College win was more representative of America than the popular vote. If one looks at an electoral map of America by voting district, it is quite clear why Trump should have won. The map is a sea of red with Trump winning major swing states by a close margin . Clinton was able to win the popular vote by way of her large victories in states such as California where she won by several million votes
. This leads into another discussion that ties the media and voters together.
Pre-election, Trump was heavily criticized by Democrats for not explicitly saying that he would accept the election if he lost. Now that he has won, the narrative has quite ironically flipped. Democrats, especially those active on social media, hounded Trump and his supporters throughout the election, fearing that if he won democracy would take a step backwards. With Clinton’s loss, thousands of liberals have hypocritically taken to the streets and internet to protest Trump’s victory. They have been chanting “we reject the president elect” and have gotten #NotMyPresidentTrump trending on twitter. Not even a day after the election and millions of young Americans have gone against their own words and rejected our rightfully elected 45th president. From a third person point of view, it would seem that these people are only reacting in such a way because their hopes have been crushed. One cannot help but wonder if the media had not falsely led so many astray if these peoples’ reactions would be similar to what they are
now.