Why Trump Will Win
Donald Trump will be elected President of the United States because of three main factors: WikiLeaks, media mastery, and voter enthusiasm.
The WikiLeaks emails were released to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. If, as the Democrats claim, Russia was behind the hacked emails and Russia wants Trump to win, then we can expect an October Surprise.
The WikiLeaks emails also showed that Hillary had the covert help of the Democratic National Committee in her race against Bernie, who declined to attack one of her greatest weaknesses: the emails. She still struggled to become the presumptive nominee. In comparison, Trump lacked the support of the RNC establishment and faced a historically high sixteen primary opponents. Trump was declared the presumptive Republican nominee on May 3rd, having spent $63M. Hillary didn’t clinch the nomination until June 7th, having spent $196M against, for all intents and purposes, a single candidate.
The Democrats trumpet Hillary’s higher fundraising totals, but Trump has shown that he can be extremely cost-effective. He has shown superior mastery in dominating media coverage, receiving nearly $3B in free coverage throughout the primaries, versus $1.1B for Hillary. His social media efforts also blow Hillary’s away. On Facebook, his page has over 11M likes to Hillary’s 6.7M. On Twitter, he has 12M followers to Hillary’s 9.4M, and his posts regularly have triple the amount of retweets and likes. And of course, Trump does not spend millions to “Correct The Record” by manipulating votes on Reddit and Twitter. Their influence is obvious: her tweets average several thousand retweets and likes. Hillary’s rebuttal “delete your account”, a slightly more mature version of the common playground comeback “your mom”, received almost 500k retweets and 665k likes.
The WikiLeaks scandal also illustrates another point. Trump has been on the cover of tabloids for over four decades. Sixteen primary rivals attacked him for a year. Anything shady would have been dug up long ago. But Hillary must worry about new scandals emerging. Even past scandals can hurt her: while Trump’s previous tabloid-cover scandals range from allegations of mafia ties and shady business deals to marital problems, Hillary’s cover corruption, murder, conflicts of interest, international fiascos, and defaming victims of sexual abuse for speaking up. Who has the most to lose from the past being brought up?
Finally, there is the problem of voter enthusiasm. Democratic turnout for the 2016 primaries dropped 21% compared to 2008. Hillary received over a million fewer votes in 2016 than in 2008. Meanwhile, Republican turnout popped 62%, with Trump shattering the previous record, receiving over 2 million votes more than George Bush in 2000, despite splitting votes with sixteen other candidates. Trump’s supporters are highly enthusiastic, and willing to turn out in droves (almost as if their livelihoods depended on it!). It’s highly unlikely that Hillary’s supporters will turn out in such numbers. Young adults have notoriously poor turnout. Black and Hispanic voters, while heavily favoring Hillary in polls, are much less enthusiastic about voting for Hillary than for Obama.
Finally, consider the Shy Tory Factor: many who favor Trump keep it a secret, out of fear of social backlash. The Tab couldn’t find any Trump supporters at Cornell ahead of the NY Primary. Is Cornell really that much different from the rest of New York State, where over 60% supported Trump? Or even from the rest of Tompkins County, where 37.7% voted for Trump? No. It’s because nobody was willing to publicly state their support for Trump, at risk of being labeled “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it”. But while Trump supporters may not tell pollsters, they will vote.
