How would you assess the coverage of
the election results? What forms of campaign communication do you think were
most effective for the winning candidate? What hurt/was the least effective for
the loser? Refer to at least two previous class readings to support your
response.
The coverage of the election results left even news reporters and pundits stunned. I must say this is not an outcome that pollsters considered. Just Monday morning, Nate Silver’s forecast had Hillary Clinton projected to win with a 71.4% chance (Silver). In just 12 hours, the chances of winning had flipped. Around 11:30 p.m., Trump was announced the projected winner of Florida. Fivethirtyeight.com gave Trump a 77% chance of winning the election at this point and the entire country was left asking: what is happening?
ReplyDeleteWith Clinton going into Election Day as the clear favorite for pollsters; however, what seems to have happened was that there was a silent majority that was not incorporated in the polls. Clare Malone, a contributor to the fivethirtyeight.com blog writes, “One trend I’ve been tracking throughout the night is the increased turnout of rural voters — they tend to be white and overwhelmingly for Trump and feel significantly more pessimistic about the direction of the country,” (Silver). I think that Donald Trump was able to effectively use political communication to his advantage in this race. Political Campaign Communication asserts, “it is vital that candidates and their staffs do an effective job of analyzing voter audiences to best utilize the candidate’s time. Essentially candidates face two tasks: first, to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address,” (Trent 140). Trump did an impressive job communicating with his audience, which Malone accurately nailed as, white, blue collar, working-class voters. Trump was able to communicate messages of disdain, resentment and most importantly change which worked well in his favor. Clinton’s messages on the other hand, were not as strong and this hurt her. Her main selling point was herself; that she was the most qualified candidate for the job and with her as president the country could be ‘stronger together’. I think this message was useful for Democrats, but not uniting the country and attracting those undecided, unenthused and fed-up American voters.
Another powerful campaign communication tactic is the use of the media. In Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, the power of mass media is discussed stating, “Television contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor in U.S. elections” (Semiatin 130). I think it’s safe to say this campaign has been largely personality focused and less issues based. While each candidate’s personality was constantly being attacked, it seems as though voters were able to deal with Trump’s poor temperament and bigotest views as opposed to Clinton’s untrustworthiness. The timing of the news story about the re-investigation on her e-mails alone was clearly damaging to the election results. I think one major take-away from this election is that our polling system is broken. The results can definitely present a learning opportunity for the pollsters, but also will demonstrate how our democracy is evolving significantly.
Works Cited
ReplyDeleteSemiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Silver, Nate. 2016 Election Night. Five Thirty Eight. 8 November 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
I spent all night following the election and waiting for results to trickle in. I believe the news networks did as good of a job as they could have with the way the election was swinging. The news networks had to project who would win what state when many of the swing states were too close to make a call on. The networks didn’t have much to go on when they began to project winners for swing states. Florida being one of the most controversial swing states was too close for them to call until about one in the morning. The networks did the best they could with the information they were given. As much as it pains me to say this, Donald Trump won the election after he triumphed in Florida. The Trump campaign was definitely effective according to the results of the election. What I believe was most effective for Trumps campaign was the fact that he was always so blunt and brutally honest which in turn gave him more supporters. “For example, as Pence tried to explain why he was at first opposed to Trump's ban on foreign Muslims, he began by pointing out that Trump ‘clearly ... is not a politician’ and ‘doesn't speak like a politician’” (Johnson). I think what helped Trump win the election is that he is not a politician. America wanted a president for once that wasn’t a lying corrupt politician and someone who would be honest with us no matter what. For Hillary Clinton and her campaign what was ineffective for her was that she could never connect with the millennials. In an effort to connect with the youngest generation able to vote, “Hundreds of people watched Hillary Clinton learn how to do the Nae Nae in New York's Rockefeller Center on Tuesday” (Lewis). Clinton attempted to connect with youngest generation in an effort to gain their support but most millennials ended up not voting at all or voting for third and fourth party candidates. If Clinton made more of an effort to connect with millennials, then the election may have turned out differently. We are a large group of voters that didn’t know who to turn to as we felt neither candidate was right for the future of this country. Trumps campaign was effective because of his brutal honesty and ignorant comments but not because anyone felt he would help the future of America. Hillary Clinton’s ineffectiveness connecting with groups she needed to in order to win showed that maybe she didn’t deserve to win after all. You need to connect with the country and if you can’t do that then the country needs someone who can. It was a long battle but the better campaign won in the end, unfortunately it was Donald J. Trump.
ReplyDeleteWorks Cited
Johnson, Jenna. "Four times Donald Trump Answered Mike Pence’s Questions on ’60
Minutes’." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 18 July 2016. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
Lewis, Hilary. "Hillary Clinton Dances With Ellen DeGeneres, Amy Schumer." The Hollywood Reporter.
Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
I was up all night watching the election on CNN. First off I am shocked with the results as I’m sure millions of American’s are, but I think the networks did a pretty good job covering everything. You have to give these networks a lot of credit because the election results came in extremely slowly since many of the swing states were way too close to call in favor of Trump or Clinton. For example, it wasn’t until around 1 AM when CNN called the results for Florida. In my opinion, CNN could have called Florida much earlier because when I went online, other news outlets had announced Florida earlier in the night. Now the reason CNN waited so long was probably because they didn’t want viewers freaking out since Florida was one of the main factors in Trump’s victory last night.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the most effective forms of communication for the candidates, I think that Donald Trump’s strategy of being brutally honest with his supporters on TV definitely helped. Additionally, I think that Trump’s campaign team did a great job learning about their audience and seeing what topics they like to hear spoken about and according to Political Campaign Communication, ““it is vital that candidates and their staffs do an effective job of analyzing voter audiences to best utilize the candidate’s time. Essentially candidates face two tasks: first, to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address,” (Trent et al 140). Trump effectively reached out to the white population of America, especially to white people in the South, and rich white businessmen in the Northeast. I think Trump and his team realized early on how important this demographic is and overall I think it helped him win the election. I also think he used a lot of buzz words like ban, wall, etc. and all of the negative things he’s said over the last year to gain the support of the part of America (uneducated white people) agree with just to gain their vote. Hopefully he won’t actually build a wall or ban Muslims (I don’t think he will, this was all part of his strategy).
For Hillary Clinton, she definitely utilized the power of TV which, “contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor in U.S. elections” (Semiatin 130). Early on this helped put Hillary ahead (before the results), but ultimately the event that I think hurt her the most was the release of her emails and the investigation brought upon her by the FBI. This event definitely pushed a large amount of Hillary supporters to Trump’s or Gary Johnson’s side in the final hours of the election. In conclusion, I’m just glad that the election is over, but our job isn’t done yet. It’s up to us now to come together as a people and strengthen our union. All we can do now is hope that, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, President Donald Trump does his job and successfully strengthens our nation.
ReplyDeleteSemiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
First and foremost, I would be an absolute liar if I said here this was the outcome I was expecting. I don’t think many people beside staunch Trump supporters expected this. Nate Silver didn’t expect this and he knows what he’s talking about. In Nate Silver’s article State of The Polls 2016, Silver talks about the Republican primaries polls in regards to their bias and misleading, specifically he says, “Still, the primary results ought to raise doubts about the theory that a ‘silent majority’ of Trump supporters is being overlooked by the polls. In the primaries, Trump was somewhat overrated by the polls” (Silver). This was in regards to their being a Pro-Trump/Anti-Cruz bias. If this is the case however, certainly the exact opposite can be said of the general election. There must have been an extreme Pro-Clinton/Anti-Trump biases in the general election polls for Hillary to be winning in nearly all of them, especially Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog and aggregate poll. This then in my mind is absolute proof of a ‘silent Trump majority’, which to me is more baffling still as usually polls have (if any) a bias towards the right as phone pulling specifically is usually only answered by old people (who then would be predominately conservative). However, I digress.
ReplyDeleteFor my election results I watched three places predominately, CNN, Al Jazeera, and the Google Election Results. For the most part Al Jazeera was neutral, and I would also say Google was neutral as all it had was data. CNN, although attempting to be unbiased by having pundits from each side of the spectrum, had a hard time covering there depressed faces when things started looking ominous. What I noticed at one point that I found interesting was that Google would sometimes announce a candidate winning a state before CNN. I think this is because Google announce a winner of a state once a candidate had an obvious majority whereas CNN waited until at least 85% of the voting in a state was in (or more) before announcing it. I don’t know if I think this is good or bad but I thought it was an interesting comparison between the two outlets.
As far as what form of campaign communication was most effective, in my mind it must have been good old fashion speeches and rallies. While both candidates were particularly apt with social media (which is important in this day and age) I feel like they were both so good at it that it became a moot point. It’s like, we get it, they’re both good with Twitter; so what else can they do? In prior elections, particularly the Obama v Romney election, Obama clearly outshone Romney on Twitter and all social media sites so that was to his benefit, but when both candidates are particular good at social media its then not to eithers benefit.
That being said then, for Trump to win I think he really must have been able to milk targeted speeches at his demographics in swing states for all their worth. In the article Swing States are Turning Towards Hillary, by Tracie Mauriello, she mentioned how Pennsylvania was losing its status as a swing state as was Ohio potentially. Pennsylvania was even changed to the category of ‘likely Democratic’ (and I must say that whomever decided these things must be shocked today). The article mentions also how, “Ohio, which has picked the national winner in 17 of the past 18 presidential contests, is less of a bellwether than it has been in the past. That’s because it has a greater percentage of non-college-educated whites (41 percent) than the country as a whole 933 percent), and that demographic tents to favor Mr. Trump” (Mauriello). Now we see that Ohio has kept its bellwether status whether that be due to the high population of non-college-educated whites or not. But what we are importantly seeing here is then how well Trump must have mobilized this demographic in Ohio to actually go vote for him and the same goes for Pennsylvania which hasn’t been red since before I was born. This whole situation can then be compared to the 2010 resurgence of traditional GOTV strategies that are mentioned in the Campaigns on the Cutting Edge book. Semiatin says, “Tea Partiers were more ‘Republican, white, male, married and older than 45’” (Semiatin 81). In this scenario the Tea Partiers were going back-to-basics with their GOTV strategy which worked well for them in Kentucky because this demographic is not particularly fond of social media or ‘new’ GOTV strategies. The same then worked for Trump as he targeted a similar demographic.
DeleteMauriello, Tracie. "Swing States Turning Towards Hillary Clinton." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11 Oct. 2016. Web. 9 Nov. 2016.
Silver, Nate. "The State of The Polls, 2016." FiveThirtyEight.com. FiveThirtyEight, 2 June 2016. Web. 9 Nov. 2016.
Semiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
I would consider the coverage of the election results to have been very in depth and fair. I split my time of watching election coverage between ABC, The New York Times, Five-thirty-eight, and The Young Turks live-stream. ABC and The Young Turks watched the votes come in and gave analysis while during their broadcasts. I will concede that The Young Turks openly admitted to being pro-Clinton, and were greatly opposed to Trump. Five-Thirty-Eight and The New York Times both had coverage maps, and predicted the likelihood of the outcomes (New York Times was often quicker, but provided less depth). I believe that the most effective forms of campaign communication for Trump would have to be his live appearances giving either speeches or at debates alongside his own twitter. Both mediums allowed for Trump’s bigger-than-life personality to show, and as a result it would lead to more and more media coverage. Michael Turk said this of Trump’s early strategy in the election, “Donald Trump, in the early days of the 2016 GOP (Grand Old Party) primary, used caustic and baiting comments to goad his rivals” (Turk, 46). I would argue that Trump’s ability to constantly make headlines and be ever-present in the public conscious paired with Clinton’s inability to become appealing in a get-out-the-vote sense won Trump the election. This goes hand-in-hand with what campaign communication was a weakness for Clinton, as negatively spun anti-trump ads, in my opinion, were the reason Clinton was not able to pull away with more of the electorate. Though Trump often gave Clinton seemingly great content for negative ads it seemed to have backfired on Clinton. The reason people were not voting for Clinton was not because they didn’t dislike Trump enough. It was because those who were apathetic or undecided had no reason to go out and vote for Clinton. As the election continued and more and more bad news about Clinton came out she never attempted sway the public opinion of herself in ads rather she focused on how bad Trump was. Clinton would have been far better off spending some of her campaign money an ad extolling her virtues, and as stated by Trent et. Al.: “The videostyle factors available to be used in ads whose overall purpose is to praise the candidate are virtually unlimited” (Trent et. Al. 119). That being said, Clinton did try to play up her likeability with Hollywood endorsements and social media, but it was not enough. These posts are not widely seen the same way television ads are, and they do not show that Clinton would make a good leader. Had she spent more efforts explaining to the people of the United States why her policies were better for Americans than Trumps rather than explaining why Trump is a worse person than herself then perhaps she would have been the first woman president this nation had ever seen.
ReplyDeleteTrent, Judith S. et al. Political Campaign Communication: Principles & Practices. 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Turk, Michael. “Social and New Media—The Digital Present and Future.” In Campaigns on the Cutting Edge. 3d. ed., Richard J. Semiatin, ed.Los Angeles: Sage. 2017. VitalSource Bookshelf Online.
This election was easily one of the most shocking in terms of media coverage, as it left viewers stunned and journalists grappling for answers as to how Donald J. Trump became the 45th president-elect of the United States. So, as the nation searches for answers, so too does the media.
ReplyDeleteAs we entered Election Day, Clinton was a strong favorite; she was polling at around 72% chance of winning, per FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver. However, according to “Hillary Clinton and the US election: What went wrong for her?” by Nick Bryant of BBC, the experience that the Clinton campaign paraded around voters was actually her downfall, not her key to the US presidency. Bryant states that, “in this mad-as-hell election, where there was so much rage and discontent, Donald Trump's supporters saw experience and qualifications as huge negatives.” Trump’s voters were looking for someone who was anti-establishment, someone who wouldn’t come in with government allies and a track sheet of political mishaps. Trump, fortunately for them, delivered. He met the goal of getting these voters to hook onto his message largely through his tweets and social media. This is, as Judith Trent, author of Political Campaign Communication identifies, what was essential to Trump’s victory, as “it is vital that candidates and their staffs do an effective job of analyzing voter audiences to best utilize the candidate’s time. Essentially candidates face two tasks: first, to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address,” (Trent 140).
Clinton lost her campaign, according to Bryant, because of her personality, or lack thereof, as many have pointed out. Clinton “is not a natural campaigner. Her speeches are often flat and somewhat robotic. Her sound-bites sound like sound-bites - prefabricated and, to some ears, insincere. The re-emergence of the email scandal was a huge distraction, and meant that she ended her campaign on a negative message.” (Bryant, Hillary Clinton and the US election: What went wrong for her? Therefore, it was how she appeared on television during her speeches that destroyed her, according to Campaigns on the Cutting Edge by Richard Semiation, as “television may be more powerful in its campaign coverage than print media ever was because it can have a dramatic effect on voter choice in presidential primaries. This is not only through directly making a candidate look competent or incompetent, corrupt or honest, charismatic or dull…the focus becomes less on reporting the news than on personality.” (Semiatin, 131) With the reintroduction of the scandal to the televisions of millions of Americans, it was important that she appear less robotic and secretive, and more candid and relatable; she wasn’t able to achieve that, and it led to her campaigns demise.
Ultimately, I think the coverage of the results completely varied. Some journalists expressed complete fear for the future, while others reported the results with the same, informative expressions they carry day to day. Some news sources even felt a need to write articles informing viewers about how our futures are at stake and how we can save the future of our very divided nation, such as in the article “Where do we go from here?” by Hamil R. Harris of the Washington Post. No matter who you voted for or who you support, this is an extremely scary and sad time to be an American; we are more divided than ever, and some no longer have faith in our nation.
Harris, Hamil R. "Where Do We Go from Here?" Washington Post. The Washington Post, 9 Nov. 2016. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
DeleteSemiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Silver, Nate. 2016 Election Night. Five Thirty Eight. 8 November 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Bryant, Nick. "Hillary Clinton and the US Election: What Went Wrong for Her?" BBC News. BBC, 9 Nov. 2016. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
It was difficult to escape the coverage of the election last night. As expected it was all over social media and every major news station. I think that the networks did a good job covering the election. The news stations were pretty accurate in predicting what states Trump would take such as Ohio and Michigan before the full results came in. I felt that TV new stations gave better coverage than online sources such as Buzzfeed. At one point on Buzzfeed they had Hillary at 204 electoral votes and Trump at 163 but CNN had a completely different map. Buzzfeed factored in their predictions into their electoral map, which made it confusing to get an accurate reading on where each candidate stood.
ReplyDeleteIt was amazing to watch the states (that I would have bet money on being blue) turn into red. I was confused as to why Trump kept going to Michigan when it was polling in favor of Hillary (fivethirtyeight.com was at 78% Hilary on election day). The polls underestimated Trumps support. I an exit poll conducted by USC/ LA Time, it was found that “Trump voters were notably less comfortable about telling a telephone pollsters about their vote” (Lauter). A lot of people, including myself, underestimated just how much support Trump had going into Election Day.
I think where both candidates were effective was in “motivating voters to vote against the opponent” (Trent et al, 121). Both campaigns spent a lot of time and effort attacking the other and less time talking about the real issues. Trumps brutal honestly helped his campaign in a good and bad way. Trump was able to reach a specific demographic using this tactic. “Essentially candidates face two task: first to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address” (Trent et al, 140). For the most part, Trump used this strategy effectively. He knew who his audience was and knew how to address them, by being brutal and honest.
David Lauter. "The USC/L.A. Times Poll Saw What Other Surveys Missed: A Wave of Trump Support." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 8 Nov. 2016. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
Trent, Judith S. et al. Political Campaign Communication: Principles & Practices. 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Trump is now the presidential elect of The United States of America. He defied all the odds and almost every poll out there. The question remains how did this happened, how did Trump win and how did Hillary lose? In watching the coverage of the race it became clear that the narrative of the night took an unexpected turn as soon as the Rust Belt States started to lean Trump. Hillary’s blue wall was disintegrating and the final blow was about to come. Once Hillary lost Pennsylvania it was clear that Trump would win he simply had too many electoral votes.
ReplyDeleteIn the media fallout that followed analysts and journalist scrambled to find an answer. The narrative that I seem to subscribe to, was that Hillary lost because rural America decided they were done with Washington D.C. One aspect about this election was the amount of undecided voters, many people felt disenfranchised by past leadership in Washington. To find the source of this sentiment we have to look at the history of the previous two decades of leadership. Over this time a sentiment was brewing in the public, the government was too bipartisan to get anything done. People were frustrated and then after the struggles of the Obama administration, the anger caused for another natural swing in politics. It is believed that “the purist ideologies of a party are the strongest after their party loses power, and the opposite party begins to pass policy” (Renner 95). Hence the Trump campaign was born from the very right wing ideologies that fuel a disgruntled losing party. However the narrative was changed forever here due to Trump as a candidate. He was an outsider to the political realm. Few ties to Washington and less baggage compared to Hillary in those terms. I believe people wanted an outsider, someone who was self funded, self confident and distant from the inefficiency of the political realm. Trump was an outsider, maybe not the first choice for people, but he was an outsider non-the less.
Electoral wise this election was a head scratcher. Hillary was expected to wipe the floor with Trump, so what went wrong. I believe it was, because Trump spent more time in the Midwest and was able to crack this barrier Hillary was trying to create. Trump won in the rural counties outside population centers in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. A reason why could be that “voters tend to discuss among themselves, and form a larger relationship amongst the voting group” (Trent 254). Maybe the word of those voting for Trump or vice versa those not voting to Hillary spread like wildfire in rural America. It was also said that there were a lot of closet Trump supporters, not willing to disclose their choice to the polls. On Election Day a “silent majority” emerged and won Trump critical states.
The United States must now begin a time of reflection and healing. Clearly this nation is still polarized and worn out from the most negative election in the history of American politics. Will Trump be presidential, will he actually follow all of his policies stated, and how will the nation view him as a president? These are some of the many questions to come as the United States enters uncharted waters. Trump won defying many of the conventional standards for a candidate; so one thing I am sure of is that our textbooks used for this course will look very different in their next edition.
Work Cited
Renner Tari., Semiatin,R. J., Graf, J. “Campaign Press Coverage-Changed Forever.” In Campaigns on the Cutting Edge. 3d. ed., Richard J. Semiatin, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Like Americans across the nation I am truly stunned by the outcome of this election. With that being said, I personally watched Fox News on my TV and viewed the Google electoral updates because they were usually the quickest and most accurate maps. Fox in my opinion did an excellent job; it is not an easy task to call states in advance especially swing states that were extremely tight until the end. Fox continuously had special guests and multiple people at the desks predicting what would happen and discussing which side each state will go to. Another interesting thing they did was how they utilized the touch screen to refer back and forth to the 2012 and 2016 elections. Overall the media coverage was rather fair and not so pro-Clinton or pro-Trump.
ReplyDeleteDonald J. Trump is now our current president elect, and half of America is wondering how? My theory as to how gained the right supporters starts with his ability to manipulate media from the start. He simply utilized all the airtime he can get, talk shows, news conferences, call-ins and even negative media. No matter how it happened he wanted his name out there on headlines everyday. “ One of the reasons candidates use news conferences is to foster the illusion that the candidate is in control”(Trent 182). Another reason I think Trump won the election was because of something I predicted would happen well before the election; his silent voters. Leading up to Election Day polls had Hillary winning by a landslide and to me, it just didn’t add up. I believed that Trump had silent voters out there that truly did not show up to surveys or certain polls and waited until Election Day. These silent voters weren’t just blue collared men but indeed, as we saw, the Latino community in Florida. Trump surpassed the expectations with the women, African American and Latino vote. For Hillary I feel her weakest point was the reliance on polling and surveys. Every poll and survey had her winning the election by a landslide. Her confidence was up and she didn’t attack Trump like she needed to. The problem with that was, polling is not accurate all the time especially when there are silent voters out there. “ Despite the prevalence of Internet access for most Americans, there are still concerns that some populations, particularly those who are poorer or older, are still not online in large enough proportions to be represented accurately in a survey” (Semiatin 65). I am truly not a fan of polling and surveys because it doesn’t cover a wide enough demographic of voters and I feel like Clinton had too much confidence in those pollsters to win the election.
Semiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
I overall felt as though the coverage of the election results was very thorough in this very controversial, very close and very long election process. I can’t understand the stress of these networks having to keep viewers invested every other network is showing the same news and while results very slowly roll in. I myself changed between Fox and ABC News while also checking the online results from The New York Times website. The main reason for checking the variety of sites was because I noticed that many of these outlets were reporting different numbers at different times which did make things somewhat confusing to follow but they eventually seemed to catch up to each other at one point or another. But again, with how slowly results were coming in, I gave them the benefit of the doubt in having innaccurate numbers at first. With a presidential race this important and with the overall tightness of the race, it was easy to tell the news stations want results just as much as we did. Fox, known for their Republican bias, always seemed to have Trump ahead and so I primarily kept to ABC News which gave a much more neutral approach while still portraying more accurate coverage. Of course following the results, some news stations showed definite bias but again understandable with the shocking results. What really hurt media coverage were the polls coming into election day which showed almost a definite victory for Clinton. I believe once results finally started coming in, news stations were just as taken back as viewers due to the what the polls had predicted versus what we actually saw happening.
ReplyDeleteIn looking at Trump’s overall campaign, I feel as though his heavy social media presence and simply his rallies were the most effective means of communication for him. It wasn’t necessarily how he used something like Twitter or the rallies themselves, it’s the brutal honesty and sometimes controversial things he said through these means of communication because they gave him all of the free media attention in the world. In looking at Trump’s Twitter account versus Clinton’s, Natalie Andrews states, “Mr. Trump’s account shows his personality more so than more so than Mrs. Clinton’s shows hers, as he tweets, or dictates to someone else, a majority of the tweets.” Clearly, his honesty in words was extremely controversial but it was more honest from the candidate himself and in turn in gained him plenty of free media attention.
As for Clinton, what seemed to hurt was simply her public speaking and how she handled some of her press conferences. There had always been controversy surrounding Clinton’s almost stale and boring appearance and tone of voice at times in her campaign. As David Folkenlik noted, “Clinton appeared 22 times on the five major Sunday public affairs shows so far this year, a review of transcripts shows. Trump appeared nearly twice as frequently.” Many believe her early lack of press conferences and appearances may have hurt her campaign. This, on top of the definite negative media controversy surrounding her e-mail scandal so close to the election, definitely hurt Clinton.
Works Cited
DeleteAndrews, Natalie. “On Social Media, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Have Different Styles” The Wall Street Journal. 07.28.16. Web.
Folkenflik, David. “Has Hillary Clinton Actually Been Dodging The Press?” National Public Radio. 08.26.16. Web.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to see too much election coverage on television because I was working for Associated Press in New Haven. I was only able to keep tabs on everything by checking Twitter. When I eventually did get home I watched some coverage on MSNBC for about an hour. The coverage by people on Twitter made me feel scared for our nation. Some of my favorite pundits, Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett of the “Keepin’ It 1600” podcast were two that I looked to for the night. I also kept checking the Associated Press Twitter account to watch the results come in live.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest takeaways from the election coverage is how poor the polling was. The coverage by the media mostly talked about how wrong they were. Some pundits talked about how the main reason these polls were so wrong was because they aren’t reaching the voters where they are. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge talks about the juxtaposition of using cell phones in campaign polls, “Campaign pollsters need to include cell-only or cell-mostly users in surveys to get a complete picture of the electorate, but the question pollsters face is what percentage of the survey should be cell phone users,” (Nelson 62). Reaching people where they are has been what the pundits said was the problem with the polling results.
The most effective part of campaign communication for Trump’s campaign was his ability to get in the news. Throughout the primaries and general election Trump was the only thing that was talked about. This press was negative, positive, and in between and in the end it all helped Trump. He was able to call into morning shows and talk about whatever he wanted to. If he made a gaff during the interview, every other media network would pick it up. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge talks about the impact television can have by, “Television contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor in U.S. elections,” (Mayer 130). Trump ran on so few issues (other than repealing Obamacare, building a wall, and banning Muslims) and it didn’t matter in the end. He was a personality that people enjoyed and his issues he cared about were thrown out the window.
With television having a decline in issues hurt Hillary Clinton in the end. One of the biggest critiques of the election as that neither candidate had issues they wanted to talk about. That is absolutely not true. Clinton had issues upon issues and detail plans on how she would fix the problems. She would give policy speeches that the media would not cover because they figured their audiences had no interest. The only way she could get in the news is if she attacked Trump, but she wanted to stay towards the “they go low, we go high” message. At the end of the day, we are now stuck with a racist, misogynist that can undo years of progress in his four years in office.
Mayer, Jeremy D., Semiatin, Richard J., Graf, Joseph. "Campaign Press Coverage- Changed Forever." In Campaigns on the Cutting Edge. 3d. ed., Richard J. Semiatin, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 2016.
DeleteNelson, Candice J. "Survey Research and Campaigns- Getting to the Future" In Campaigns on the Cutting Edge. 3d. ed., Richard J. Semiatin, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 2016
This year’s coverage of the election spread across a wide variety of media outlets. Every major news station had live coverage as the states’ polls were closing hour by hour. Live streams and statistics were available on multiple websites including top sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and countless more. If your television wasn’t on and you were scrolling on your smartphone or tablet, you were bound to see posts from online friends and followers relating to the current state of the Electoral College. Basically, the only way to escape any coverage of the 2016 elections was if you were reading a book or sleeping.
ReplyDeleteLet’s backtrack to before election night, and analyze the candidates’ campaign communication strategies. Clinton used 30-second ads that went viral online that preached a consistent, clear message targeting families and women. These ads were not often attack ads, but more hit home on a more personal level with voters. “… I think there’s a good chance that ‘Mirrors,’ an ad released this week by the Hillary Clinton campaign… is another one that people will look back on” (Fallows). The “Mirrors” ad is the perfect example of what Hillary Clinton was going for. It had a specific target audience, while also attacking her opponent, using his words against him.
In opposition, Donald Trump’s use of ads were not as heavily shared or memorable, for that matter. His were basic attack ads towards his competitor. Trump’s main source of communication throughout this campaign, some could argue, was his presence on Twitter. People felt a more personal connection based on the regularity of his tweets. He tweeted out individual comments as well as responses to articles, videos, and other stories about the election in the media, which was always.
I think what was least effective for the loser, Clinton, was not being able to gain the Bernie Sanders supporters. She attempted to make peace with Sanders, adding him as a surrogate to her campaign, however I feel like they weren’t buying it. She also did her best to appeal to the undecided voters, which I’m sure she did gain a good majority of votes from that group, but if I had to guess, there were probably extreme undecided voters who couldn’t stand either candidate, and opted to secede from voting this election year.
For both candidates, they both used television guest spots as an advantage. Whether it was on daytime talk shows such as Clinton on the Ellen Degeneres show, or Donald Trump on Dr. Oz, or if it was late night comedy shows like Clinton on Kimmel or Trump on Fallon. People definitely reacted to these kinds of appearances in getting to know the candidates as people. The candidates especially used these media outlets when there was a sudden outbreak in the news about their opponent. An example of this would be when news got out that Clinton had contracted pneumonia, Donald Trump was a guest on the Dr. Oz show, which is known for being a health-based television show. He also used this time to prove to voters that he was in better shape than his opponent. “Trump made several comments that appeared to be subtle digs at the Democratic presidential candidate's health, in the wake of her coming down with pneumonia” (The Hollywood Reporter). This was a very wise strategic move on the Trump campaign’s part by acting so quickly to the latest news.
The 2016 campaign and election has been a long, stressful, and rigid one, but it has finally come to a close with the winner being Donald Trump. Many Americans fear for the future of the country, while others can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next four years and if Trump will honor his promises. Only time will tell which direction this country is taking.
Works Cited
Delete"Donald Trump Seems to Take Subtle Digs at Hillary Clinton's Health on 'Dr. Oz'." The Hollywood Reporter 15 Sept. 2016. Web.
Fallows, James. "Trump Time Capsule #111: Ads." The Atlantic 24 Sept. 2016. Web.
I think the coverage of the election results varied. Since the announcement of the first polls closing, I channel surfed all the major news stations, Fox, MSNBC, and ABC. At different points of election night I noticed that Fox would call a state really early. I would then proceed to another station and noticed that they weren’t too quick to call a state like Fox was. All the channels provided key analysis and comments of what’s to come and what to expect as the night goes on and more votes are counted. Along with the commentary the channels showed maps that would light up in either red or blue as the states were called. Analysts from different channels also kept the public informed about what states they predicted will go to Trump or Clinton, but after yesterday, we now know that they were way off, with states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, which many thought would go to Clinton but instead went to Trump. The coverage also extended to split screens of Trump and Clinton’s headquarters. As time went and the electoral count started to cause stress among the public, you could see Trump supporters in their red hats cheering and holding up with their “Make America Great Again” signs with pride, and Clinton’s supporters crying, holding and shaking their heads in disgust and confusion.
ReplyDeleteHillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigned extremely different and have taken opposite routes to the white house, “It is vital that candidates and their states do an effective job of analyzing voter audiences to best utilize the candidate’s time. Essentially candidates face two tasks; First to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address”(Trent 140). For Trump, I think the campaign communication that most effectively helped him become the president elect was how he took advantage of the media. Although he bashed it majority of the time and claimed it was rigging the election, he loved calling in to TV and radio shows, all free advertising and publicity for him. He could easily call in and say what’s on his mind and voice his loud opinions. Trump’s comments after calling in would be the main topic for the rest of the broadcast. I would also consider his use of twitter to be a factor with him clinching the election. He would say dumb stuff and tweet mean things at 3 am but it obviously did something right for his campaign. It became extremely popular and people would check his twitter daily rather than looking to the news to become informed.
Hillary Clinton put millions of dollars into her campaign and on advertisements, more than Trump did. This being said I think that the least effective campaign communication strategy Clinton used was her lack of personality through different channels of social media, the press and TV which “contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual characters as a decisive factor in U.S. elections”(Semiatin 130). All of her instagram and Facebook posts were looked at by the public as a force and disingenuous, which many argue was in her downfall in this election. Her TV appearances looked staged, rehearsed and uptight, she never really met with the media or did press, something that Trump took full advantage of. Her image appeared to be more of an out of touch elite rather than a regular, relatable person that the American public desired. I will say during Clinton’s concession speech this morning she seemed real, a person who has emotions and feelings san someone who was genuinely hurt. I honestly think that if Clinton acted this was…”real” throughout the whole election, she might’ve won the presidency because people yearned for her to shed the façade of a political robot and instead shed light on how she is just like one of us.
Semiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Like many other Americans, I am still in shock that a xenophobic, sexist, Islamophobic, misogynistic man is going to be the next president of the United States of America. I stayed up late and watched CNN’s coverage of the election results and I think they did a fair job overall. CNN had a lot of creative graphics that made it easier to visualize the results. I liked how the touch screen broke down each state by district and allowed viewers to see which candidates had won those areas in previous elections. I think CNN was also careful by not projecting the results of swing states too early. Wolf Blitzer continuously went through the states and would say which states were “too close to call.” The coverage was slow and dragged out, but that’s because polls on the west coast close later.
ReplyDeleteAs they waited for the results to come in, CNN’s commentator’s discussed demographics, income, class, regions, etc. But what they didn’t discuss was race. And this is what Van Jones eloquently brought up as he discussed how some people view Trump winning as a miracle, while he sees it as a nightmare (Andrews). He discussed the fears minorities are currently living through and talked about how this is a “white lash against a changing country” (Andrews). Of all the election night coverage I consumed, what Jones had to say resonated with me the most.
For Trump, I think the most effective campaign communication for him was his stump speech. Like the textbook says, the key issues and selling points largely remain the same (Trent et al. 146). Trump continuously talked about building the wall, making Mexico pay for it, “crooked” Hillary, keeping refugees out of the country and of course, making America “great” again. Trump didn’t have to use fancy words or sophisticated language to appeal to his base. He knew very well the issues white, middle class voters are concerned about and played on people’s fears in his speeches. He knew what to say to grab people’s attention and the media attention. This not only gave him free airtime, but also helped him gain massive amounts of support.
I think Hillary Clinton did a great job with television advertisements that appealed to people on an emotional level. She was doing extremely well in the polls, but things took a downward spiral for her campaign once James Comey announced he would reopen Clinton’s email investigation. What also harmed Clinton was how inaccurate the polls were. The polls showed that she was leading in Philadlephia and that it was a light blue state. Pundits were saying they couldn’t see how “Trump can make a comeback” (Mauriello). I think what also hurt Clinton was the people who voted for Trump but would not admit their support for him during polls.
Works Cited:
DeleteAndrews, Travis M. "‘How Do I Explain This to My Children?': Van Jones Gives Voice to the ‘nightmare’ Some Are Feeling." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 09 Nov. 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016. .
Mauriello, Tracie. "Swing States Turning Toward Hillary Clinton." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. N.p., 11 Oct. 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016. .
Trent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, and Robert E. Denton. Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Print.
Let me just start off by saying, I am way less than thrilled by the results of this election. I don't think anyone was really expecting this at all. My roommates and I were watching and were hopeful at first. As the night went on our moods slowly shifted to fear and concern.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the reason Trump won this race was because of his final 48 hours. From what I heard he was in Florida and Iowa, two states that are important to win. It pains me to say but, it seems like his teams strategy was really well thought out. He hit the swing states like we thought Hillary would. Meanwhile, she was in Nevada and New York.
To go back to New York, while they both went back for their final campaign rally's, was a silly move for Hillary to go before the final event. It was a waste of time because New York typically swings democrat anyway. This is something my group thought about during our election eve project. We were going to have a small rally there but deemed it would be a waste of time (clearly her campaign team should've hired my group).
I think Hillary's mistake was not targeting enough swing states. We saw in my groups presentation that she had enough surrogates to be in almost every swing state. I'm not saying that would be effective but I think it would've help secure the votes in the those states, "“It is vital that candidates and their states do an effective job of analyzing voter audiences to best utilize the candidate’s time" (Trent 140). I don't think Hillary utilized her time well at all in the last 48 hours of this campaign and that really hurt her.
Michigan was a huge state for Hillary to win and when we realized she wasn't going to, my heart sank, "it would be the tipping-point state if the recent polls are right — that is, the state that would get Clinton to 270 electoral votes if she wins it along with all the states above it" (Silver). Michigan had 16 electoral votes. Not as much as California or Florida but Michigan paired with winning Pennsylvania, would've secured the election for Hillary.
I think Hillary's campaign, while she reached certain groups of people, didn't make use of analyzing voter numbers and demographics, "Essentially candidates face two tasks; First to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address”(Trent 140). I think Hillary got a little cocky toward the end. She addressed her faithful supporters, which is great because that's still important. I think something that might've been effective would have to been to address Trump's supporters. Not necessarily having a rally or anything with Trump supporters because that might not go well, but address that at a regular rally and reassure them that with her as president, everything will be just fine, if not better.
At the end of the day, we can't change the results of this election. What's done is done. All we can do now is to continue to fight for what we believe in. There's no sense in being rude or hateful toward those who support Trump and vise versa.
Works Cited:
Trent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, and Robert E. Denton. Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Print.
Silver, Nate. "The Swing States Are Tightening, Too." FiveThirtyEight.com. 8 Sept. 2016. Web.
This election will go down in history for being one of the most bizarre and unpredictable elections yet. The American people are in a state of shock and a great amount of tension is in the air. With that being said, watching the coverage of the election results was stressful. I switched back and forth from Fox, NBC, and the map on New York Times. The coverage was hard to escape and was almost addicting to follow. I received news updates from the CNN and Fox apps as well. Each network and source had different updates; Fox had higher electoral votes for Trump faster than NBC and CNN. I also noticed that the news anchors had a difficult time hiding their emotions. For instance, when Megyn Kelly announced that Trump won North Carolina and was winning key states, she looked stunned. Closer to the end of the results, it was evident that everyone was surprised at the results.
ReplyDeleteBoth of the candidates utilized campaign communication tools to their advantage. Twitter and other forms of social media were the most effective forms of campaign communication for Trump. He utilized Twitter more than any other in the past, which gained an enormous amount of attention. With Trump’s lack of a filter, he has scared the American people and has not appeared to be presidential, which is a major downside in campaign communication. In his last 48 hours, his campaign buckled down and tried their hardest to target as many last minute voters as possible, which is why he won.
On the other hand, Hillary did an excellent job at relating to the American people by her television appearances and her commercials. She has set the stage for the next woman president and has tried to motivate the younger individuals, especially in her concession speech. Overall, she did a great job at speaking to women voters. She used iconic female celebrities and figures in Hollywood, which “is one of the most effective ways to reach female Millennials” (MacManus 186). I believe that Hillary’s attack advertisements, although impacted a myriad of people, hurt her in the long run, especially due to the latest email investigation. She has had issues surfacing and many people disliking her for years. This election was a difficult one because many people were voting for who they believed the lesser of the two evils was. With the results, it is clear that people wanted a change.
As a whole, public speaking has played a crucial role in the election, especially toward the end. It is evident that public speaking is the most fundamental communication tool in campaigns (Trent et al 139). Speeches must be polished, especially when it is a speech as important as an acceptance and concession speech. Acceptance speeches are intended to evoke a positive reaction from the American people, as well as give them a preview of what they will anticipate. In this election, Trump’s win was unexpected, which increased the stakes for his acceptance speech. His speech made him appear more presidential and he had an overall softer tone.
Hillary’s concession address was exactly what she needed to conclude. She encouraged Americans to have hope and faith in this country, along with an open mind for Trump. She handled it well and said all of the right things, while providing Americans with hope and a sense of closure for her supporters. This election season was exhausting and emotionally draining. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for our next president.
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DeleteWorks Cited
DeleteMacManus, Susan. “Women and Campaigns- Generation-Based Microtargeting and Tackling Stereotypes.” Campaigns on the Cutting Edge. 3rd ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ, 2016 Print.
Trent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, and Robert E. Denton, Jr. Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices. 8th edition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Print.
The results of this election were astoundingly unexpected. Our new president is Donald J. Trump. He broke down the democratic firewall and took Wisconsin and possibly Michigan. He also grabbed Pennsylvania, all states that were polling towards Hillary. I think Trump was successful because he didn’t go by the polls. We can see clearly now that the polls are not accurate. Trump new who his target audience was and he went for them. He went to many different places to grab the republican vote. He was in four states on election eve while Hillary was barely in any of them. She thought she was going to win she gave up trying to get out the vote. Going to Ohio was a mistake. She waited till the last possible minute to try and get the blue collar vote and it really hurt her. While her campaign was geared toward minorities and women she had a difficult time not alienating the white working class male. The polls were wrong. This is scary for someone who wants to work in politics because they learn, “a public relations counselor who was far ahead of his time in advising candidates to make better use of the media and polling […] foreshadowed much of what political campaigning has become at the outset of the twenty-first century” (Trent 355).
ReplyDeleteWhere do we go from here if the polls and the media didn’t help Hillary win? She was at one point expected to win most of the swing states however she lost almost all of them. She did everything right according to political books and Trump did everything wrong. I think everyone underestimated how angry people were with the government. There were even polls showing it. Maybe Hillary was looking at the wrong polls. Trump was the outsider and that played to his advantage. Everything bad about him was overlooked because the people just wanted the government to change. They were fed up and he was their perfect candidate. Basically the strategy that worked was the opposite of whatever anyone has learned in politics. The divide in the country was clear last night and the country needs healing no matter who won. Hillary lost by very small amounts in each state and this may be due to her lack of effort to get out the vote. Trump traveled to many more places like Michigan because he knew he could get the working men to go out and vote. He outsmarted everyone. He knew he could break down the firewall so he went after it with full force. Hillary left those states up there because they are typically blue states and they ended up leaving her. All in all, this was an unorthodox election and the outcome was as equally unexpected.
Trent, Judith S.; Friedenberg, Robert V.; Denton, Robert E., Jr. (2011-08-16). Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices (Communication, Media, and Politics) (p. 355). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.
DeleteMauriello, Tracie. "Swing States Turning Toward Hillary Clinton." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. N.p., 11 Oct. 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016. .
This is now the fourth election night in my lifetime that I have memory participating in. As far back as 2004, I remember being able to accurately call the election, at the very least, before the start of the programming that evening. This time was different.
ReplyDeleteMy network of choice this go around was CNN, as I find them less biased in general. As the results started to roll in, nothing was out of the ordinary. He was up, she was up, a simple horse race of sorts. There was a ten-minute span where I was more than certain my prediction was going to come true. I contemplated muting the coverage and getting back to my homework. Then the swing state polls started to report, and that’s when things got shaky. States like Michigan and Wisconsin were showing no clear lead for Clinton, and Florida was tight all night long. The meter on The New York Times’ website that was forecasting the final outcome started to lean further and further to the right. It was happening. The polls were wrong. The pundits were wrong. The Vegas odds were wrong. It was shocking.
There is a famous moment in journalism where Walter Cronkite broke his composure when announcing the death of president Kennedy. I can say that I personally witnessed Jon King of CNN lose his composure at “the magic wall,” if only for a moment. There was definitely a realization that surged through Mr. King that confirmed, if only to himself at that point in time, that the Trump presidency was happening. Mr. King did a fine job of providing interesting local insight on a state-by-state basis. He was able to accurately predict, sooner than most that evening, that Trump was going to bring it home.
There was a mass delusion within the media and pollsters about Clinton. Close to nobody predicted a Trump victory. The pollster that was closest was Nate Silver who had Hillary Clinton projected to win with a 71.4% (Silver). With some other predictions pegging her as high as 98%. The media, the Clinton campaign, and coastal liberals severely miscalculated what truly ended up being a silent majority. The Midwest, which in hindsight was foolishly ignored by the democrats in many regards, voted almost in unison to reject Clinton in favor of Washington outsider Donald Trump. They came out to the polls in near record turnout to reject globalization, lax immigration, and loss of blue-collar jobs. The popular vote was a virtual tie, but the strong showing throughout the rust belt guaranteed a clean and comfortable sweep for Trump in the electoral college. The media has to reassess political coverage from this point on, and pollsters need to restructure and attempt to perfect their science (although Quinnipiac Poll had Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina as toss-ups in the days leading up to election day).
The media coverage the day after was very introspective. Questions were raised all day about the “liberal bubble” journalists and political analysists report from. Perhaps “coastal elitists” really don’t understand America’s interior enough.
In the end, Clinton’s campaign was cocky in many regards. It took past data for granted (she didn’t campaign in Wisconsin in the general election). “It is vital that candidates and their states do an effective job of analyzing voter audiences to best utilize the candidate’s time" (Trent 140). It’s obvious and crucial for the democrats to do just that next time around.
Silver, Nate. 2016 Election Night. Five Thirty Eight. 8 November 2016.
DeleteTrent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, and Robert E. Denton. Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Print.
ReplyDeleteI think many people were surprised about the win that Donald Trump managed to pull off last night. Whether they were supporters of either candidate, pollsters, pundits or media elites. The idea that Trump wasn’t a serious contender was developed in the primaries, proven to be wrong and then once again last night that theory was far from true.
I think that the media did manage to pull off successful coverage of election results. I don’t think they were fully prepared for what happened, passed on the pundits that some networks like CNN had lined up but I think the coverage was a success. Something I noticed was that CNN during the early parts of the night would switch between John King at the magic wall and then roundtable discussions. As it became clear that race to 270 was getting tighter and tighter suddenly John King was talking for a straight hour with no commentary from anyone other than Wolf Blitzer, who seemed to be panicked.
A form of campaign communication that Trump seemed to excel in was public speaking when catering to his audience and voter base. He knew a good part his audience would respond to fear and aggression. He didn’t rely upon national polls to inform him about his audience. Political Campaign Communication, speaks on the traditional use of polls when developing a message to put out to audiences. “Polls also provide candidates with indirect feedback on messages. Candidates often reposition their stands on issues as a consequence of that feedback (Trent et al 143).” Polls throughout this election year encouraged him to change his rhetoric, but if he had that could have actually hurt his chances of winning. The polls were notoriously wrong this year; Trump would often tweet about their unreliability.
I think that Clinton’s reliance and over confidence in demographics was what hurt the most. Clinton was relying on minorities and groups that Trump has verbally shamed to turn out in droves. Back in October a Reuters article titled, “Surge in U.S. Latino Vote Could be Elusive in Presidential Election,” discussed how Latino turnout could be less than expected. “Turnout among Latinos tends to run well below that of whites and African Americans, blunting their impact in political races (Lopez 2016).” At the time of the article, only 89% percent of registered Latinos said they planned on voting. This was a key demographic that Clinton was after, and after last night it was clear that she had needed this group.
Trump was the nontraditional candidate and Clinton was the traditional candidate, in this very nontraditional election year I truly believe that ability to “throw out the rule books,” so to speak aided in his success. Moving forward I think the last question that will be explored before the end of the year is how did the polls, media and others end up being so wrong?
Works Cited
Trent, Judith S. et al. Political Campaign Communication: Principles & Practices. 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Lopez, Luciana. "Surge in U.S. Latino Vote Could be Elusive in Presidential Election." Reuters 11 Oct. 2016. Web.
It was definitely interesting to follow the coverage of the election results throughout the night. I mainly switched from CNN, Al Jazeera, Five thirty eight, and various other online news outlets. All in all I believe that the pundits and coverage was fairly good given the polarity and divisiveness of this election cycle. While I did start to see some bias as the night went on, especially from the pundits, it is understandable given how the projections began and drastically changed throughout the day and night.
ReplyDeleteAs for Trump’s most effective forms of campaign communication, I believe that it goes back to old-fashioned speeches and visiting various parts of the country. Trump’s last two days were packed as he and his surrogates visited swing states where they tried to hit specific demographics. In the end, it would seem that the country has become immensely divided and less outspoken about their candidate of choice. The “secret” Trump voter appears to have come out to the polls after finally deciding at the tail end of a contentious election. This seems to only voice the mistrust and uncertainty that many people have experienced when deciding between Trump and Clinton. No matter the outcome I still believe that people are disenfranchised with the current political system and the government in general.
Trump’s campaign communication efforts have also further exposed the role of celebrity within the political arena. Trump’s persona seems to continually throw a wrench in the political system given his interesting debate/ speaking styles. We now see “fluidity between the fields of politics and media” where the traditional approach to politics is antiquated, especially “as public frustration with government increased” (Jones 49). As for Clinton I think what hurt her campaign was the lack of last minute campaigning in more rural parts of America. While there are probably other things that factor into the outcome I also believe that the backlash on social media highlights the ever-growing surge that an online presence has in a current campaign, “the growth of civic participation and the opening of the media market to new voices leads to increased transparency…it means that individual citizens have greater autonomy as political actors” (Trent 294). Furthermore, the people benefit from this because it fosters participation and urges for transparency amongst the “political actors.” The Trent text argues this despite the current disenchanted sentiments throughout the country. In turn, social media has become a haven for all to flock to as they air their congratulations, condemnations, and everything in between. Perhaps this is how people feel their voices can be heard no matter the outcome.
Jones, Jeffrey. Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture., 2nd ed Lamham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
Trent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, and Robert E. Denton, Jr. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
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ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThese elections were undoubtedly very much out of the ordinary for America. The results did not project anything close to what we have been seeing with the polls that were being focused on so intensely by pundits, the media and even the campaigns itself – although Trump never stopped saying that the polls were wrong. The coverage by CNN was very extensive, it accurately represented all of the facts about the votes and was successful with its illustrative models. CNN also did a very good job expressing the shock that the whole country was experiencing throughout Tuesday night, which I think is a big component of Trump’s victory over Clinton.
Trump’s campaign largely depended on his Twitter presence. In analyzing his campaign, and estimating the election results, I think that we all underestimated the power of social media in organizing Trump supporters. Trump is the fourth addition to the list of US presidents who comprehended the value of political communication, with FDR understanding the power of radio, JFK recognizing television and Obama utilizing the Internet. Apart from his Twitter presence, I think that what made Trump’s campaign effectively communicative was simply his rhetoric. He was unorthodoxly blunt, loud and unapologetic that the media couldn’t go one hour without talking about his candidacy.
The Clinton campaign did a good job with overall communication, but with the election results, we were able to see its weak spots. There were states that voted Democratic in 2012 that turned completely red this year, like Wisconsin. The Clinton campaign was faulty in neglecting Wisconsin by never sending a surrogate or having Clinton visit since the DNC. FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton files days before the election also has undoubtedly effected the results, although I think that Clinton still would have lost either way.
Our reading about survey research and campaigns in the Trent et. al. book had emphasized the importance of polling in shaping campaign strategies and identifying target demographics. It also emphasized the importance of the sources of polling, claiming that online polls are inaccurate. In contrast, the Trump campaign denounced all polls throughout the election season, calling them “wrong” and “rigged.” America didn’t take him seriously, but his statements turned out to be true. A silent majority that political analysts ignored stepped out of their homes on Tuesday and voted for their new president.
On the other hand, our readings in Chapter 3 of the Campaigns book about the impact of special interest groups also emphasized the importance of the support that presidential candidates get from super-PACs in achieving the campaign’s goals in reaching out to target demographics. The Trump campaign received virtually no support from special interest groups, which actually contributed to portraying Donald Trump as an outsider of Washington – a factor that pulled in thousands of voters. For the most part, Trump funded his own campaign and wasn’t dependent on super-PACs. His campaign demonstrated that campaign financing stops being a factor to consider for a candidate that can easily use his/her own funds to become president.
Overall, I think that this was the strangest and most unexpected presidential election in the US history, and it will undoubtedly change the course of how campaign managers, strategists and candidates approach elections in America in the future.
Works Cited
DeleteSemiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
James Conway
ReplyDeletePoly Comm Blog
11/09/2016
While no one could have predicted what happened Tuesday night, I felt it was the perfect, crazy ending for this unique election. Like I’m sure many of the students in our class were, I was surfing nearly every channel of news coverage during election night just to make sure I wasn’t being misled by either side’s bias. As someone who mostly watches CNN in comparison to Fox and MSNBC, I have to say I was a bit disappointed in them. They had someone who was an expert in all the voting districts and how they had voted in prior elections and that was great, but that was nearly the only positive of CNN’s coverage. It felt like every “Major Election Update” or “State Projection” they were making, had already been confirmed by Google. Their entire coverage had a hint of reluctance, as it seemed to become clearer and clearer to Wolf Blitzer and the other hosts that by the end of the night, Hillary Clinton would not be the Presidential elect. On the contrary to CNN, I often times am one of the first to criticize Fox news and their viewers. But Tuesday night, Fox really did kill it. They took risks in their projections and while they probably had some liberals laughing when looking at the electoral vote projections, they ended up being right for the most part as Trump did win nearly every single swing state that was left up to debate. Maybe it was only fitting that during one of the craziest elections ever, Fox news was the most accurate of the TV news stations.
It still doesn’t have a ring to it, the whole President Trump thing. I’m honestly not sure if it ever will. But nonetheless, he is our rightful President and we owe him the peaceful transition to power Obama and Bush enjoyed earlier this decade. When it comes to campaign communication strategies, Trump really killed it in the final stretch of this election. First of all, he simply campaigned more than Clinton in the last few, crucial weeks. He was visiting at least two or three states a day and created a nice blend of major rallies and local stump speeches. This direct contact he made with his constituents in the last phase of the election was invaluable and it proved to be that for many different reasons. On page 140 in Political Campaign Communication, Trent states that direct voter contact is so important because “it makes the voter more committed to the candidate…engaged in the campaign…and it allows for interaction.” (Trent, 140) Trent notes that the ability to directly connect with their candidate makes a person feel more individually important to that candidate’s success. In an election where both candidates had scandals that caused many of their voters to abandon ship, this was even more crucial. In addition, Trump acted extremely ‘presidential’ in the last couple weeks. He noticeably tried to limit his insults, did not take bait from tweets or interview comments and stayed calm, cool and collected at a time when the nation’s population was doing the opposite. It impressed me that he bought into his campaign team’s strategy and avoided Twitter in the final days as well. It showed he cared and that he actually really did want to become the President of the United States as opposed to just winning it to make a statement.
I never expected to be using the words Hillary Clinton and loser in the same sentence this week. It didn’t seem possible. But here we are, two days after election night and yes, Trump is still the Presidential elect. I have mentioned the uniqueness of this election just in terms of the candidates, but it truly doesn’t stop there. On page 130 of Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, Semiatin discusses how “television contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor in U.S. elections” (Semiatin, 130) There seemingly wasn’t a day in the last few months that I did not see an ad either for or against either candidate. It was engraved into our brains and in an election based off of personality, was Clinton ever going to truly win? While it is undeniable Obama’s charismatic personality contributed to him being elected, he also had extremely sound plans for major issues during both 2008 and 2012. I truly believed Clinton relied too much on Trump destroying himself and did not take enough time to make herself seem like a charismatic leader. While Trump’s personality does in fact turn some people off, his supporters absolutely LOVED it and it only helped down the road. When the FBI re-opened the Clinton case, it made an already quiet and secretive woman look like a traitor without a personality. In any election, that type of personality is never going to earn a nomination. What was most unfortunate for her, was that her surrogates were more effective at getting her constituents out to vote than she was. I understand that that was a bit expected given the strength of her surrogates but this was quite literally the opposite of Trump. If anything, this election proves that the personality of the candidate TOTALLY outweighs the personality of surrogates. Let’s be completely honest: Trump’s surrogates were horrible. None of them had any real impact that I can measure with an eye test but that just goes to show the nation how important the actions and personality of the individual candidate are. Finally, Clinton was in a major hole to begin with as she campaigned so closely with Obama. Prior to the election, it seemed genius due to his increasing approval ratings and status as the incumbent. After the election, it was clear that was not helpful. On the news last night, I forget what station I was watching, but it had polled Americans and most had voted for “change”. They wanted the same thing Obama campaigned on which is beyond ironic. In the end, both candidates scared America, yet Trump’s calm, cool and collected final couple of weeks, even in the wake of Clinton’s FBI case re-opening, won him the race. He was crazy for 15 months and Presidential for 30 days but it WORKED and that’s what matters. As Barack Obama will do this week, we must do our part now to make sure this transition is as peaceful as possible because any American who wants to see the United States fail under any President, just to say ‘I told you so’, is doing the rest of the world a favor.
DeleteSemiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
DeleteTrent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
The 2016 election between Clinton and Trump was unbelievable. The country will now be equipped to retain its strength under a unified House, Senate, and President. The coverage this election was abysmal. This was tangible proof of a long regarded dishonest and left-leaning media; long touted as a crazy conspiracy theory by Democrats. SNL recently had Alec Baldwin poking fun at this professed phenomena and joke on Republicans (Stableford). Late-night talk shows and comedies, Hollywood almost as a whole, and many of the big corporate owned media companies have these far-reaching blue tints. I have always been suspicious with Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight – a quick search will show where he has recently predicted incorrectly. Nate wrote of how his polls somehow underestimated Trump in a May article and yet, no changes were made and his analysis continued using such data (Silver Pundit); (Silver Polls). Something’s off: maybe it’s the algorithms and math sequencing used to calculate data or, maybe the fact that Bob Iger owns FiveThirtyEight – whom Wikileaks showed evidence of his deep-rooted and secret relationship with Hillary Clinton through the Podesta emails. The corporate media outlets even made a habit of disavowing Wikileaks as a reliable source, following suit of many Democrats. This is the same Wikileaks, which: has never had a proven relationship with Russia or any other foreign entity and has boasted a 10+ year reputation as an untarnished and reliable whistleblower. Congress officially cited Facebook for limiting user content to predominantly alt-left articles/websites, in addition to improperly deleting and blocking many conservative and Trump supporting articles/sites. From my standpoint during this election, the media has: chastised Trump at every opportunity, praised Clinton’s experience and wisdom, and openly ignored her unbecomingness, failures, and deceptions. That is how I would assess their coverage. I have always wondered what life would be like in varying areas with a media that did not care about ratings nor was trying to push ulterior politics – but simply alerts you of news.
ReplyDeleteVarious forms of campaign communication played a larger role in this election than I believe many would’ve anticipated. Donald Trump’ expertise in the use of Facebook and attention-grabbing tweets helped to circulate his name and his message. It was through Twitter, Facebook, and other similar online technologies that allowed people around the country to unite under the mantra to: Make America Great Again! His constant stops at local spots and giving small speeches in order to really touch the locals, proved to be effective in the election. Many found him to discuss what he can do for them; meanwhile Clinton’s tone stuck to more: ‘me, me, me.’ His tweets, statuses, and responses he has given on stances in the past really helped skyrocket his popularity. Albeit extremely brass and at sometimes inappropriate, his uncommonness was met with almost 24/7 media coverage of him since before the primaries; back in May he already received an estimated $3 billion worth of free advertising (Schroeder).
DeleteOn the other hand, Hillary’s downfall was the amount of evidence of her failures and lies, in addition to her character. As the media continued to ignore many things Americans were concerned about, it became more prevalent that maybe the idea the media is rigged is not so crazy after all. I believe people got to know her too much; majority of republicans will be quick to admit that they hate Hillary more than they like Trump – that alone, is the reason she lost.
Works Cited
DeleteSchroeder, Robert. "Trump Has Gotten Nearly $3 Billion in 'free' Advertising." MarketWatch. N.p., 06 May 2016. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
Semiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Silver, Nate. "How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump." FiveThirtyEight. N.p., 18 May 2016. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
Silver, Nate. "The State Of The Polls 2016." FiveThirtyEight.com. 2 June 2016. Web.
Stableford, Dylan. "Trump Accuses ‘SNL’ of ‘Hit Job,’ Media of ‘Rigging Election.’" Yahoo News 18 Oct. 2016. Web.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
I stayed up until 2:30AM to watch the coverage. I love watching the states change color and the analysts explain districts, states, and outcomes. I was a little disappointed in the coverage of the results. I watched news anchors that night and the next morning speak with baffled faces of the results we didn’t really see coming. I think it was biased of the anchors to show their feelings of disbelief and almost disapproval of the results…. THAT’S NOT YOUR JOB. You’re a public servant, you’re supposed to inform the public objectively. Placing this seedling of disapproval or disbelief in our political system undermines our democracy.
ReplyDeleteDonald Trump came as a political outsider. His route to the presidency was non-traditional in every sense. I think that’s what made him most successful. Political outsiders have a reputation for success in our system. Trump’s campaign communication reflected this. He turned to Twitter to share his opinions and was outspoken, straightforward, and offense at times but it was congruent with his image. Natalie Andrews in a Wall Street Journal article said, “While Republican Donald Trump connects with his fans through insults and statements on Twitter that sound as if they are directly from him, his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton casts a wide net across the Internet, maintaining a presence on several different sites and platforms” (Andrews). I think that Trump’s outlandish comments and his policy-lacking stump speeches caught the eye of the American people and they thought – ‘he’s different’. His campaign communication exemplified that. Hillary on the other hand reflected what she was. A traditional well-versed politician, but she lost… how could this be? Part of me wants to be hopeful and say that she scared the American public with her dirty record as a politician and that’s why they voted for Trump. But it could also be because her traditional methods didn’t catch the public’s attention like Trump’s non-traditional. Hillary outspent Trump in TV ads 10:1 according to an NBC news article (Rafferty). Yet, in a Washington Post article it said, “history will be the ultimate judge, but Trump appears to be on his way to becoming the first major U.S. politician to use it [Twitter] in a way that truly shapes — not just amplifies — his message” (Phillips).
This election the non-traditional beat traditional. Both candidates clearly stayed true to their backgrounds but one was victorious. Their campaign communication methods were clear indicators of their differences and their backgrounds which is partly what made this election season a polarizing one. Ultimately, Clinton’s traditional approach hurt her. When you’ve been in the game too long, you don’t care to learn new tricks – you become a traditionalist. Trump is proof that you can come in and shake things up and still be a victor. I still can’t decide if the American people did this deliberately or whether it was a simple who got the most attention. I will remain hopeful. This is our country, let’s have faith in ourselves.
Andrews, Natalie. "On Social Media, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Have Different Styles." The Wall Street Journal 28 July 2016. Web.
DeletePhillips, Amber. "The surprising genius of Donald Trump’s Twitter account." Washington Post 10 Dec. 2015. Web.
Rafferty, Andrew. "Clinton and Trump Begin Last Leg in Race for the White House." NBC News 5 Sept. 2016. Web.
There are no words to express the shock that half the country is currently feeling right now. Last night was proof that the silent majority pushed the country into a new era of change. Some broadcasters on several news networks themselves were shocked as the election results came in. Donald Trump effectively tapped into a new voting block that not many had seen coming. Hillary Clinton had kept the same demographic with hopes that they can come out with record voting turnout. All in all, the news media, social media and election campaigns to come are going to change from now on.
ReplyDeleteThe news broadcasts had done fairly well with their analysis. Granted some of the polls may have been different from each other at times but it seemed that news broadcasts made sure not to make early projected winners in swing states until 100% or 99% of the vote was in (as was the case for Florida). The pundit tables in MSNBC, CNN and Fox News in particular had been quite emotion and personal at times, speaking about their accounts about this election year or the viral video of CNN political commentator Van Jones outwardly expressing this election as a “whitelash against a changing country” (Gershgorn). As the night wore on, some on the pundit table became more expressive in their faces due to the shock and disbelief of the results coming in.
For Donald Trump, there were many factors that led to his win. Mainly, his expressive use of social media, his outspoken thoughts as an outsider to politics and using fear to enable anger and motivation in voters. His unconventionalism had motivated voters to the polls. His campaign embraced a “challenger style” of campaigning, by attacking the opponent’s resume, calling for change, talking about an optimistic future and lastly “delegating personal or harsh attacks in an effort to control demogagic rhetoric” (Trent. et. al). Donald Trump and his campaign used this and took it one step further by using social media, motivating his base with his rhetoric and capitalizing on his ‘outsider’ status. With many controversies and still, Trump inspired a group of voters to turn out and be inspired in his message to “Make America Great Again.”
However for Hillary Clinton, herself and her campaign had done everything right to guarantee a win. The campaigns advertisements utilized attack ads using his words against him, rallied people who were verbally attacked by Trump and created motivating advertisements on the concept of a female president. Clinton’s campaign took multiple approaches, a symbolic style, challenger style, and somewhat incumbent style. The symbolic style was used mostly in campaign due to the symbolism of having a female president in the United States. The Challenger style of campaigning was used at the heat of the campaign when Hillary Clinton was losing popularity in the polls in the summer and, once again, in the last stretch of the campaign. Lastly, incumbent style campaigning was utilized by having Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Joe Biden join the campaign and deliver speeches at rallies. However, where she fell short is being unable to inspire voters to go to the polls. Additionally, her social media was very pragmatic and robotic when compared against Donald Trumps social media accounts, in particular his Twitter account.
After a hectic 18 months, the election is finally over. Future elections to come will change how campaigns will function, how media influences voters and how polls will be utilized as well.
Works cited:
Trent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, Robert E. Denton. Political Campaign
Communication: Principles and Practices. 8th ed. New York: Praeger, 2016. Print
Gershgorn, Dave. ""A Whitelash against a Changing Country": Van Jones Explains
Why Donald Trump Is Winning." Quartz. Quartz, 08 Nov. 2016. Web. 10 Nov.
2016.
As unique as this election cycle and outcome were, the coverage of the results really boiled down to typical score keeper journalism. When journalists are covering the results, there really isn’t that much that can be discussed other than the numbers as they come in. Especially when you consider the fact that the results of this election took something like eight hours to officially call for Trump. At the end of the day, I think that the coverage I saw on CNN and CBS was as good as it could have been. Most reporters were shocked by the results they were seeing in the russo belt and states like Pennsylvania, but it was good that they actually took the time to examine why Trump was winning those states. Putting the demographics as well as the candidates campaign efforts into mind.
ReplyDeleteI think that it is clear that interpersonal communication among voters played a massive roll in the results of this presidential election. I think most democrats did not see that coming but Donald Trump’s team certainly did when they kept talking about the silent majority. “We have seen in which campaigns such communication [interpersonal] is most important, what voters tend to discuss among themselves, and the relationship among voting behavior, media, and interpersonal communication” (Trent et al. 254). This kind of one on one, face to face communication is incredibly important in any election and it still gets overlooked often enough.
Of the dozens of problems and scandals that each candidate had during the election, I think what really secured Donald Trump’s presidential bid was his presence on live T.V. Television has given political candidates the chance to make anything, but actual policy matter to American voters watching. Particularly to female candidates like Hillary Clinton who are given much more scrutiny about their personality, the way they talk, the way they dress, and really everything about the way they look (Mayer 128-131). Donald Trump was able to take advantage of this because as much as Clinton may have wanted to talk about policy, just being on television was a disadvantage to her.
Work Cited:
Mayer, Jeremy D., Semiatin, Richard J., Graf, Joseph. "Campaign Press Coverage- Changed Forever." In Campaigns on the Cutting Edge. 3d. Ed.
Trent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, and Robert E. Denton, Jr. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
I watched NBC and CNN throughout election night, in addition to reading The Guardian’s live blog. While the results continued to become more and more surprising, the pundits did an excellent rob of remaining composed and accurately covering the results. Tensions were definitely high in many news rooms across the country, as Trump blew past the expectations set for him by much of the mainstream media. Many pundits recognized that as soon as Florida started going red, Clinton was in major trouble. When she lost Pennsylvania, the Clinton campaign was all but completely defeated. Even the most left leaning news sources admitted defeat at this point.
ReplyDeleteWhile Clinton’s campaign was composed of experts in campaign communication, they simply failed to hit the key demographics that Trump appealed to. Trump’s message that he was going to fix America resonated with those who have a pessimistic view of the country. Data overwhelmingly showed that he thrived in smaller, rural areas. FiveThirtyEight reported that, “Donald Trump performed best on Tuesday in places where the economy is in worse shape, and especially in places where jobs are most at risk in the future” (Kolko). Trump has a message that resonated with millions of Americans on a personal level, he inspired people that he was going to be an agent of change. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge wrote that “campaigns have to develop more personalized and stylized messages to interest voters who are barraged with visual cues at the click of a mouse” (Semiatin, 79). Clinton just could not get that message across the same way the Trump could. She was widely seen as an untrustworthy and non-genuine career politician. Her campaign also made the same mistake as the rest of the world when they relied on inaccurate polling data. Because the polling data did not accurately reflect voters, the campaign was focusing its resources in the wrong places. Polls are considered extremely important to, “tell a candidate whether her message is getting through or needs to be refined” (DeLaney). Clinton’s message was not getting through for millions of Americans, and her campaign was clueless. Clinton did not even campaign in Wisconsin, a state that ended up being one of the “blue wall” states that fell to Trump. Pennsylvania was thought to be a guaranteed win, but the rural voters proved otherwise. This election will definitely change the way that polling is conducted, especially in regards to the different demographics at play and the “silent majority” who can skew polls. Clinton’s failure to connect with younger voters is definitely also a factor, yet cannot be entirely blamed for her loss considering that millennials overwhelmingly voted for Clinton nearly nationwide (Hardy).
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 United States general election was a symptom of a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the current political class. While many will complain about this year’s disparity between the popular vote and Electoral College, it is clear that Mr. Trump won the presidency by running a genuinely more effective campaign than Hillary Clinton.
ReplyDeleteThe coverage of the election results varied from station to station, but was typical of the stations that covered it. Fox News seemed to imply that Trump had more supporters and a better chance at the Oval Office than polling data and the left-wing media gave him credit for, CNN and MSNBC pundits seemed to be awestruck by Trump’s late lead in the Electoral College and would not declare him the winner until they were sure beyond the shadow of a doubt.
There was an aura of despair on MSNBC and CNN once Trump’s victory was confirmed, while they did not disparage Trump’s supporters as they typically have in this election cycle, both stations portrayed his victory as extremely disappointing for every marginalized American.
Television advertising seems to have been the least effective form of campaign communication in the 2016 general election as ads typically reach non-voters (Sciullo). Hillary Clinton ads seemed far more prevalent on television than Trump’s, whose television ads were almost non-existent until the week before the election.
The most effective form of campaign communication was Donald Trump’s rallies in which he bypassed the middleman of the media and spoke directly to the disenfranchised people, most effectively in the rustbelt states. The passion with which he spoke touched a much larger group than reported by polling data, he gained an incalculable following and likely swayed a great deal of former Bernie Sanders supporters into his camp.
What hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign the most is debatable, but the most significant setbacks came from FBI director James Comey and the sharp contrast between left and right wing media outlets. Mrs. Clinton appeared to have a very large lead before the FBI sent a letter to congress stating that they were still conducting her email investigation, then again the polls that had her winning could have been misleading from the very beginning (Silver).
I believe the contrast between the left and right wing media outlets only strengthened the existent divide between American ideological counterparts. Fox News generally portrayed Clinton supporters as a bunch of easily offended hypocrites, while CNN and MSNBC tended to paint Trump supporters as a bunch of racist, xenophobic rednecks.
It is undeniable that the xenophobic tone of Trump’s campaign did gain him support from like-minded individuals, but Clinton could have taken at least some of those voters back (especially the ones who voted for Obama twice) in the rustbelt had she been more in touch with the plight of the former steal giants.
Hillary Clinton was perhaps the most experienced individual ever to run for President, and due to the fact that many Americans are fed up with the current administration, her vast experience worked to her ultimate detriment.
Works Cited
Sciullo, Maria. "Are presidential election TV ads effective anymore?" Pittsburgh Post Gazette 25 Sept. 2016. Web.
Silver, Nate. "The Swing States Are Tightening, Too." FiveThirtyEight.com. 8 Sept. 2016. Web.
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ReplyDeleteThe coverage of the election results was basically inescapable. I, as many Americans probably believed, thought that Clinton was going to win this election by a landslide. I felt as though the TV networks were struggling to keep people (at least my friends and I who were watching the election together) engaged as they waited for states to call in their votes. I will give them some credit, however, since a lot of the swing states took large amounts of time to call in their votes so it’s not entirely the networks’ fault. One thing I did notice was that a lot of networks had different amounts of votes called in at different times. I distinctly remember FOX News always recording more votes for Trump than Google did.
ReplyDeleteI think the key to Trump’s victory was his use of social media to prove himself as vastly different than a regular politician. According to a reporter from Al Jazeera, Trump “had the backing of large swaths of the country, for whom he was a political outsider. In contrast, Clinton, a former secretary of state, represented something supporters hated: The establishment” (Al Jazeera). Essentially, I believe that the American people simply wanted something other than the status quo; in this case it just unfortunately had to be Trump. Trump greatly appealed to this desire through the unique use of his social media, which most politicians haven’t use before in the past. In addition, Trump also used social media as an effective way to “motivate voters to vote against the opponent”, which is an effective tactic that is highlighted by Trent and her colleagues (Trent et al, 121).
One interesting theory on why Clinton lost suggests that the news media’s negative attitude towards Trump was actually the number one reason why he was elected. According to the theory, “Trump actually gave [the media] far too many things to attack him with, while the vast majority of Hillary’s negative coverage was on just one basic issue (the emails and WikiLeaks). The media never drilled long enough on one topic to struck real oil with Trump, when clearly the drilling of one subject forever on Hillary did significant damage to her” (Ziegler). Given all of the negative press that Trump was given, the press never gave a singular reason why he shouldn’t be president, which clearly turned out to be more important than we originally thought. This idea that the media plays a direct role in shaping candidates is supported by Political Campaign Communication, which proposes, “Television contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor is U.S. elections” (Semiatin 130). . In addition, the theory also suggests, “the wave of entertainers which universally pledged support for Hillary at the end, in a fairly unprecedentedly overt fashion, may have backfired in the sense that some people felt like they were being ‘sold’ too hard on a product they didn’t like” (Ziegler). This part of the opinion resonated with me the most. Both candidates were fairly disliked for the most part, so it seemed a little shady that someone as disliked as Clinton would have such a significant amount of huge celebrities endorsing her (such as Jay Z and Beyoncé).
Works Cited
Jazeera, Al. "How Did Hillary Clinton Lose to Donald Trump?" Al Jazeera. N.p., 10 Nov. 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
Ziegler, John. "So, How the Hell Did Trump Get Elected?" Mediaite So How the Hell Did Trump Get Elected Comments. Mediatie, 9 Nov. 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
Semiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Trent, J. S., Friedenberg, R. V., Denton Jr., R. E. Political Campaign Communication, 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Wow, what a rollercoaster ride this whole journey has been. Hopefully, President Donald Trump will do what he has been saying all along, that is to “Make America Great Again” (interpret as you will). The people and the media all thought that Hillary Clinton was going to come out with a bang and a huge victory, but the people spoke and this she was not part of their American dream. So as the night was moving forward and Donald Trump won crucial states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, people’s anxiety rose through the roof. He had to win those states to even be a contender against Clinton. And around 3:30 in the morning I found out that Donald Trump is our president.
ReplyDeleteAll along the media has been rigged and biased so to say I thought the coverage was fair on Tuesday night is huge. I watched Fox, NBC, and FiveThirtyEight.com. I think Fox said there The media was in shock as the numbers came trickling in and states that should have been blue turned red. When the saw that President Trump was in the lead their coverage wasn’t nasty towards him, I felt they were just stating facts objectively.
I think it’s clear that the candidate’s strategies differed because one candidate won and one lost. I got the chance to go a Donald Trump rally and he really knows how to pump up a crowd and make you feel excited about what is to come. “We have seen in which campaigns such communication [interpersonal] is most important, what voters tend to discuss among themselves, and the relationship among voting behavior, media, and interpersonal communication” (Trent et al. 254). At the rally Trump spoke from his heart and you felt it in your bones (I know it sounds weird, but it’s true) He repeated certain messages over and over again and this helped him. Also while his appearances on television weren’t always positive they did help him. In Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, “Television contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor in U.S. elections” (Semiatin 130). We see this on SNL. They took away the real issues and made Trump a laughing matter, while Clinton got to sit on the sidelines. But in the end all that making fun of him didn’t impact him in the end. He also had a huge social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and got billions of free advertising. Clinton lacked pizzazz on social media and her presence was there, but it was weak. Her traditional style to running her campaign along with her countless scandals was her downfall. It didn’t matter who endorsed her and who was campaigning along her side. In the end, The New York Times reported that, Trump had 279 electoral votes and Clinton had 228 (Presidential).
"Presidential Election Results: Donald J. Trump Wins." The New York Times. N.p., 10 Nov. 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
ReplyDeleteTrent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, Robert E. Denton. Political Campaign
Communication: Principles and Practices. 8th ed. New York: Praeger, 2016. Print
Semiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
As Election Day trudged on, reporters and analysts did their best trying to report the projected winner of the different states. I think that the networks did a good job of working with what they were given in terms of numbers and facts. Swing states are always hard to determine, but this year so many of them were too close to call for hours on end. One thing I did notice was a slight difference in networks based on their apparent political affiliation. As I watched, on NBC, I was chatting with my family via text about what was happening etc. Before Wisconsin was announced on NBC, I received a text from my dad saying Trump had taken Wisconsin and he was watching Fox. I went to bed around 12:30 and Wisconsin still hadn’t been announced on NBC. This could be attributed to difference in polls, yes, but also to the fact that Fox is a conservative network and NBC has been known to be more moderate-liberal network.
ReplyDeleteSince Donald J. Trump has won the election, it is evident he and his campaign were effective in their tactics. I think the media played the biggest part in helping Trump win the election. Even though the majority of media attention Trump received was negative, it still put his face in the majority of homes. “Television contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor in U.S. elections” (Semiatin 130). Trump’s large personality ultimately aided him in the election. Voters were more attracted to the cleansing in Washington and Trump harped that he could do that time and time again. Clinton’s impressive resume, which she spoke about time and time again when comparing herself to Trump, ultimately hurt her.
The Trump campaign also did a great job in targeting the right demographics. In Political Campaign Communication, Trent et al states, “it is vital that candidates and their staffs do an effective job of analyzing voter audiences to best utilize the candidate’s time. Essentially candidates face two tasks: first, to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address,” (140). Trump was able to accurately define and target his audience.
I don’t think that Hillary Clinton and her campaign necessarily did anything wrong. They targeted the right demographics and said the right things, but what hurt her most, I think, was the media. Not in the sense that they gave her bad press, but in the sense that Trump took most of the media space. I think Clinton’s least effective tactic, which is surprising, was having her continuously talk about her qualifications and years spent in Washington. The results are showing us that many American people cared more about taking the politicians out of Washington than all the success Hillary Clinton has had.
Semiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Trent, Judith S., Robert V. Friedenberg, and Robert E. Denton, Jr. Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices. 8th edition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Print.
This election was not what anyone had expected. The coverage of the election results was shown on multiple media platforms, including MSNBC, CNN and FOX cable networks. The results of the election were not what most political analysts expected. The popular website FiveThirtyEight showed, the morning of the election, that Clinton had a seventy one percent chance of winning this election. (FiveThirtyEight). The maps were incorrect. As we now know, somehow Donald Trump has won the presidency. I believe the campaign communication that was most successful for him was his ramped use of social media constantly. His opinionated tweets lit up fire storms, provoking his followers and eventually sending a message that resonated with a majority of the country. His televised stump speeches always were memorable, with his remarks and behavior. Semiatin explains, ““Television contributed directly to the decline of issues and the rise of personality and individual character as a decisive factor in U.S. elections” (Semiatin, 130). His message was based off of fear and ignorance, stressing our country was in shambles, and people believed that our country really was that bad. Donald Trump was successful in nailing his target audience; white males and females. His campaign strategy was to focus on the audiences he would more likely win over, which he did. His focus on the middle class, working blue collar audiences eventually won him the spot in the White House. Trent states, Essentially candidates face two tasks: first, to determine whom they should address and second, to determine what messages should be presented to those they address,” (Trent 140). He not only began his campaign by reiterating the fact that people need to trust somebody outside the establishment and the government, and he won over the target audiences that believe he could put a fresh face into Washington. I am shocked that Hillary Clinton lost, but we have to accept what happened. I believe she lost a lot of votes from millenials, who were essentially for Bernie Sanders. She lost a lot of votes from white women especially. I believe her demeanor and how she campaigned and appeared on social media and other media outlets highlighted a negative image of herself, as being stiff and strict. Donald Trump was strategic with the ability to address his target audience by promising them more job, more economic opportunities, and to immediately repeal Obama Care. His works and his fear laundering resonated with a majority of America, which is really sad. His social media was eventually taken away towards the last leg of the campaign, but overall this proves that social media and the media itself plays a huge role in the election every four years. His online presence and personality eventually won him the position. Hitting his target audiences and appealing to the voters Clinton was unable to achieve, the media assisted with his message, and his overall campaign.
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ReplyDeleteSemiatin, Richard J., ed. Campaigns on the Cutting Edge, 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
Trent, Judith S. et al. Political Campaign Communication: Principles & Practices. 8th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
FiveThirtyEight.com