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5: The presidential election campaign

However, Trump surprised everyone by doing reasonably well in the polls, even though he never (except once) apologized for his many controversial and discriminatory comments. Even though he had ups and downs, the support in the opinion polls indicates that most Republican voters saw him as an ordinary Republican candidate rather than an unacceptably prejudiced candidate.

Nevertheless, Clinton mostly had a relatively comfortable lead in the national opinion polls over time (although this also went up and down). It therefore seemed likely that she would eventually win the election. Even though the election is decided in the various states, her advantage in the national opinion polls was so large and stable that it was assumed that this was also the case at the state level . Here, many commentators were thoroughly mistaken. But – it is important to know exactly what was wrong: the national polls were actually correct! Nationally, Clinton won the most votes, and then by a historically large margin for one who still loses the vote in the Electoral College on December 19: Approx. 48 percent of the votes went to Clinton, against approx. 46 percent to Trump.

What turned out to be fundamental errors were the measurements in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – all in the Rust Belt. These were believed to be safe states for the Democrats. Still, Trump won there – albeit by a small margin, but enough to tip the Electoral College in his favor. The narrow margin has led the Greens to ask for recounting in these three states.

So – what made the voters in these states in the Midwest vote for Trump? Here it is important not to place too much emphasis on one factor – Trump’s margin of victory was so small in these states that a different set of events leading up to election day could have changed the outcome. The Clinton camp believes, for example, that FBI Director James Comey’s historic entry into the election campaign less than two weeks before election day turned voter opinion in Trump’s favor. Quickly summed up, Comey sent a letter to Congress stating that FBI investigators had found several emails that needed to be examined for classified material in connection with an earlier investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State.

This created a media storm like no other, since the FBI has a rule not to publish information that could affect a choice when this choice is imminent. The media then paid a lot of attention to this former email scandal that had ridden the Clinton campaign like a mare for months. Although Comey again sent a letter to Congress ten days before the election in which he said that the FBI had still not found anything interesting, the Clinton election campaign believes that the damage had already been done.

Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania because there he managed to get more white voters – especially people without higher education and who live in rural areas – to show up at the ballot box than Clinton managed to mobilize the more urban Obama coalition. Clinton did not visit Wisconsin or Michigan in the presidential election campaign; Her campaign leaders said those states were safe. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, visited her several times, but she also lost there.

6: What now?

The election in 2016 will be studied for many years to come. Experts, journalists and politicians sit idly by and scratch their heads over what happened. Perhaps most surprisingly, such a typical right- wing populist as Trump , as one usually only sees in Europe , reached out in an American political context. This trend has also emerged in previous nomination elections in the United States, a country located in North America according to Searchforpublicschools, (for example, Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum in 2012). But then the Republican Party has been able to steer the nomination against the candidate the party prefers, as Romney in 2012.

In 2016, the party itself did not want Trump, but he still got it. In other words, it is not only in the Democratic Party that there will be a lot of debate in the future. We must assume that Trump will face some opposition in his own party as well, something that could mean a possible challenger within the party for the presidential candidacy in 2020.