What Factors Led To One Of The Biggest Upsets In Election History
Before November 8th almost every news outlet in America had Hilary Clinton winning the presidential election by a landslide. However come the evening of November 8th we watched Donal J. Trump stand on the podium and thank the people for choosing him to be the next president of the United States of America. So what happened on the day of the election that caused a result that shocked so many people?
It would appear that a multiple number of factors led to Donald Trump becoming our 45th president. The first of these factors appears to be the increasing popularity of third party candidate Gary Johnson, with most people seeing Clinton and Trump as some of the worst candidates we’ve had in recent years a lot of voters decided not to go with the lesser of two evils and vote for a third party candidate. This seems to have greatly affected the percentage of democratic voters with there being about a 5% decrease in democratic votes from millennials while the republican percentage stayed the same.
Another factor that helped lead to a Trump victory was the percentage of millennials that went out and voted. In a recent article by Fact Tank it was shown that in this years election Millennial’s and Baby Boomers both made up the largest portion of registered voters with both having around 70 million registered voters each. Millennial voting has seen a steady decrease over the past two elections. According to CNBC only 44% of registered Millennial’s voted in the 2008 presidential election and only 38% voted in 2012. Early reports are showing that the number of Millennial’s that voted this year is much higher than before. Clinton was not Millennial’s favorite choice but it was clear that most were with her over Donald Trump, a map published by Survey Monkey showed that if Millennial’s were the only people to vote during this election Clinton would have won by a complete landslide with Trump only receiving 21 Electoral College votes. This shows that the biggest problems Millennial’s have had continues to plague our generation, a lot of Millennials talk about the problems that they see with this country but very few actually take the time to go out and be the change that they want to see.
A big factor that led to Donald Trump winning the 2016 presidential election was the immense support that he received from the states in the midwest and the south. Trump was an appealing option to the voters in the south as well as those in the midwest because of his promise to protect second amendment rights as well as the rhetoric of protecting the country from terrorists along with removing illegal immigrants that Trump had preached since the beginning. While the southern and midwestern states were a big part of Trump winning the election the biggest factor that led to Trump’s victory was the Baby Boomer Generation. Donald Trump was popular with baby boomer once again because of his conservative rhetoric as well as the more traditional nature that the Baby Boomer’s have. This is also one of the biggest reasons so many polls had Clinton easily winning this election, while so many Millennials went out and showed their support for Hilary many of the Baby Boomer’s waited until election day to finally have the voices be heard. This was the Baby Boomer’s final hoorah, if Trump is elected for a second term then by the time we have another major presidential vote in 2024 a very large number of Baby Boomer’s will be gone by then.
There are a few things that we as Americans can take away from this election. First we have learned the importance of going out and voting, it means a lot to notice the issues we have as a country but if we don’t go out and try to make a change then our words mean nothing. I spent eight hours on election day driving home to go and vote in a state that was going to be a democratic state no matter what because my voice matters just like everyone else. The most important thing that I think all of us can take away from this election is that no matter the results, wether your candidate won or lost, if the proposition you wanted passed or not, we are all Americans and nothing should change that.
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