Topic for Nov. 14. ( Thur )

[Alex !]

Why Did Trump Win?

Ahead of the US presidential election held on November 5 (local time), there were three main scenarios presented by the media. One, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris wins and Republican candidate Donald Trump concedes. Two, Trump wins and Harris concedes. Three, Harris won, but Trump objected for various reasons and dragged the election to court, and Trump supporters protested fiercely.

It was expected to be a closer match than ever before, and since there had already been an incident such as a riot at the National Assembly, many media outlets predicted a third scenario, but the result ended dully in the second. Harris, who had expected a “red mirage” (a phenomenon where the Republican candidate appears to be ahead but is overturned by early voting) had to declare defeat quite early.

It was the same in 2016, 2020, and this US presidential election. The hot topic of the election was “Trump or not Trump?” Many people headed to the polls to answer this question. The voter turnout for this presidential election is estimated to be close to 66%, which is comparable to the 2020 presidential election, which was the highest voter turnout in 120 years.

Trump was once treated as a heretic born of the times, but his traces were deeply imprinted under the name ‘Trumpism.’ Among the English idioms, there is a word called ‘800 pound gorilla’. It means an extremely dangerous being with absolute power. Senator Mitt Romney, who was the Republican presidential candidate, once called Trump a ‘900-pound gorilla.’ It meant that his influence was so great that he was given 100 pounds more.

Even after 2020, when he stepped down from the presidency, Trump's influence had a significant impact on American politics. First, the ‘Trump Kids’ shook up the Republican Party. The Biden administration only packaged things differently, but failed to break away from Trump’s ‘America First’ stance. The politician Trump and his ideology of Trumpism have transformed into a major trend that will influence the world for over a decade, including the upcoming era of ‘Trump 2.0.’

Even if he puts aside his immoral personal life, Trump is a politician who is on trial for various crimes, defines his critics as objects of hatred, and hurls personal attacks on his opponent. Why did the United States once again choose as its leader a candidate who even pledged revenge on those who defeated him? Republican voters themselves want an ‘America First’ candidate. They ultimately chose the most anti-social person as their candidate.

The Republican Party is conservative, but those who support Trump are not particularly bound by ideological shackles. I found that strong conservatives responded more enthusiastically to Trump. They didn’t really care whether Trump took a progressive or conservative stance. It was Trump’s direction, not his ideological direction, that determined their direction.

Many Republicans who support Trump have the mindset that they must wage an all-out war against the left. And if that requires big government, they don’t care at all. They think it takes a lot of money to fight illegal immigration and the left. In this election, the crowds that came to see Trump wore shirts that said, “I vote for a convicted felon.”

To them, Trump is a strong leader. In polls, Trump trails Harris in morality and trustworthiness, but he has the upper hand in leadership. Gallup said, “She is a strong, decisive leader who can get things done.” In particular, the percentage of people who believe she will make good decisions in a crisis has increased by 6 percentage points to 52% from four years ago.

Trump uses a dominant approach in political communication to set the agenda. This consistently makes the consensus-oriented, passive Democrats look weak and on the defensive.

Trump’s “dominance game” is his most powerful political asset. The dominant style of ignoring public opinion and insisting on one’s own ideas draws strong fans from those who long for strong leadership.
“Trump uses fear tactics to stimulate voters. Then he talks about self-pity and his anger. But what really sets him apart from other politicians is the way he reassures his followers, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix everything.’ He has an extremely dominant style.” This style has been observed throughout this election. Trump has said several times, “If I were president, I could have prevented Iran’s missile attack on Israel.” This is a scene that contrasts his strong leadership with Harris’s weak leadership.

The main groups that were attracted to Trump and pushed him into the presidency were the conservative white middle class and workers in the declining traditional manufacturing industry. These were also vulnerable groups who longed for someone to fix the current problems. Trump targeted the “left” and “illegal immigrants” as targets for their anger and advocated “America First” as a way to comfort them.

The extremely polarized American society is also a factor that reinforces Trumpism. The geographic conflict patterns and geography of the United States are more complex. Even within the same state, polarization between rural and urban areas is deepening, and there is widespread hatred between them. Polarization is also progressing within the same city. Looking at the division between urban and rural areas, this phenomenon existed in the past, but recently, it has become stronger and shows a much stronger political alignment.

Ironically, rural areas in the United States, suffering from lack of jobs and poverty, support the Republican Party, which reduces welfare and emphasizes competition. The Trump side is adept at politically exploiting the poor conditions of rural America. They define urban elites as “showing off while ignoring rural areas,” and provoke rural inferiority complex by saying that the Democratic Party and its supporters “criticize rural voters as being politically incorrect.” They also emphasize that they are the only ones who listen to the voices of rural whites who have been ignored so far. This division strategy was quite effective.
One of the reasons Trump was able to win this time is because of his performance in rural counties. Harris won in the big cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but Trump swept the rural counties with fewer voters.

Harris campaigned on how terrible Trump is. This means that Harris failed to explain why she is different from Biden and why she is a new leader. An exit poll released after the election showed that 72% of voters are dissatisfied with the direction the country is headed. Given these figures, it would take a miracle for Harris to win,” he said. Even the young generation turned their backs on Harris. Among voters under 30, Harris’s support was 50%, while Biden’s support was 60% four years ago.

The person who helped bring the young people who had turned away to Trump was Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk, who went all-in on Trump to the point that he was eval‎uated as “betting the company on the presidential election,” personally established and operated a super PAC (a political fundraising organization) for Trump called “AmericaPAC.” The amount of campaign funds he supported alone was about $132 million (about 184 billion won). He is the owner of X (formerly Twitter), one of the major social platforms, and he himself has 200 million followers on X.

Musk actively utilized new media instead of legacy media for the election. A representative example is his active appearance on comedian Joe Rogan's podcast (The Joe Rogan Experience). Rogan's appearance on the podcast was a demographically planned election campaign method. The 'Joe Rogan Experience' has 18.3 million YouTube subscribers. Of these, about 80% are male, and 51% are aged 18-34. There is no better channel to appeal to the young generation. Trump praised Musk so much that he spent more than 5 minutes praising him in his victory speech.

Ahead of this election, quite a few tech executives have expressed their support for Trump. This is in conflict with the tradition of being close to the Democratic Party. The addition of tech leaders helped to portray Trump as a more rational person.

They have argued that the Biden administration’s wrong policies are the biggest threat to little tech (tech startups that are just starting out) and that “it is time for the industry to rise up.” They have decided to choose Trumpism over the Democratic Party. They believe that Trump is better than the Biden administration’s regulations. Musk has also clashed with the Biden administration’s regulations in various areas, such as the realization of self-driving cars.

There is also a view that the direction of Trumpism, which is “America First,” has caught on in the tech industry. There will be a trend of more tech industry insiders agreeing with Trump’s views. Trump is the one who brought the threat posed by China to the United States to the forefront of national debate. It will also be a dynamic change for tech industry leaders to agree with Trump.