Political Influence in the U.S. Election: The Donald Trump Phenomenon

After discussing political influence in class these past few weeks, I would be remiss if I did not discuss one of the biggest political spectacles right now: the rise of Donald Trump. It seems like the world cannot go a single day without hearing about some outlandish statement that Trump has made.

One of the reasons why this topic interests me is because of a personal experience I have had with a Trump supporter. I have a Facebook friend who is a huge Trump fan, and thinks that all of his ideas are great. This “friend” is Canadian, University educated, non-white, somewhat progressive, and I, as well as others, cannot fathom why he supports Trump. He even went so far as to say that Trump’s idea for building a wall on the U.S-Mexican border was “genius”.

But the purpose of this blog post is not to criticize Trump for his opinions and policies, or criticize Trump supporters, as much as I would love to do that. The question that many people have been asking lately, myself included, is: why is Donald Trump so popular? How has he gained so much influence from republican Americans? How are people buying his bulls***? It can’t be because Trump has particularly good ideas or is very intelligent, because he doesn’t and isn’t — as much as he likes to brag about how smart he is.

And yet, despite his crazed antics in the media, somehow he has an enormous following:

So why is this? There are several potential reasons for why he is so popular: he’s charismatic, he knows how to put on a good show, he’s a businessman and, supposedly, knows how to successfully manage money on a large-scale. But I think the main reason why people like Trump is because his ideas are so extreme. He quite obviously believes in these radical ideas that he is spewing out, and people find his apparent honesty refreshing. He is a polarizing candidate, playing on the emotions of his voters and manipulating them into thinking that these extreme ideologies are going to be good for them and good for the country.

This goes along with Karpf’s discussion on polarizing electoral candidates: “the electoral candidates who attract the most YouTube views, Facebook likes and Twitter followers are the polarizing candidates” (Karpf, 2013, p. 417). Kind of resonates in this situation, huh?

And yet, there is a reason that polarizing electoral candidates like Donald Trump should not become President. Some may say that polarizing candidates are good for the public sphere because they get people involved who may not have been interested in politics before: “Alan Abramowitz argues that a healthy public sphere must embrace the benefits of polarization — ‘polarization has served to energize the public by clarifying the stakes in elections’” (Karpf, 2013, p. 417). Indeed, Trump has shone a rather large spotlight onto American politics, both within the country and internationally, and has created an enormous amount of hype surrounding the American election.

And yet others believe that these kinds of cynical politics can lead to no good: “Michael Schudson argues that the ideal of a mass, engaged, informed citizenry is a historical canard, an ideal that the American public has never lived up to” (Karpf, 2013, p. 417). This certainly has proven to be true in the past, with low voter turnout and lack of interest in or knowledge of politics among the general American population. Many Trump supporters, although now interested in politics because of his polarizing nature, still have no knowledge of what Donald Trump is actually saying or what his policies are. Here are just two examples of Trump supporters without a clue:

What may be the biggest problem with examples like these is that Trump is so polarizing, so extreme, that these outrageous made up quotes and quotes taken from Hitler are actually being mistaken for Trump’s sayings. Trump is so unpredictable with his views that no one can tell what is part of his real platform and what is not. John Oliver in this video does a great job of comparing Trump’s statements to find holes in them:

Another idea from Karpf that this video touches on is that of donations. As he has claimed many times, Donald Trump does not take donations from corporations, Superpacs, or any other large companies that could potentially sway his opinion on certain issues. Trump is candid, says what he wants, and doesn’t care about offending anyone because he has no one to answer to.

Karpf, however, says that “the internet has facilitated new small donor bundling strategies that bring thousands of new citizens into the electoral mobilization landscape” (416). These individual donations are becoming more and more prominent in political campaigns versus corporate donation. And while Donald Trump prides himself on not taking donations and having an entirely self-funded campaign, this is not actually true. Individual donors as described above by Karpf make up a large portion of his campaign funds.

So, although Trump may not be receiving donations from corporations with particular political interests, his campaign is an example of how a candidate can use the internet to increase micro-donations. And by renouncing donations of a corporate nature, he has been able to get more people involved in his campaign on an individual level. This, in combination with his radical views, has allowed him to gain a huge amount of influence and control over his supporters, despite the desperate pleas from thousands of anti-Trumpers to stop this madness before it’s too late.

Work cited: Karpf, D. (2013). The internet and American political campaigns. The Forum, 11 (3), 413–428.