Harry Enten, a senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight shared many interesting statistics along with his own opinions on the outcome of our recent presidential election at a talk on Wednesday, November 16 at Manhattan College. He started with the fact that the polls were not in fact as wrong as people have made them out to be. While the polls were not that off, they did favor Hillary Clinton - incorrectly. The truth is that many polling companies were within, or in close proximity to, the same margin of error in the 2008 and 2012 elections. FiveThirtyEight gave Donald Trump a 30% chance of winning. However, they recognized that swing states often move together, and so if they were wrong it would make a large difference in the outcome. Ultimately, Donald Trump only won in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida by 1% or less.
Enten shifted to comment on the clear divide that exists in our country. The coast voted almost exclusively in favor of Clinton (with the exception of the south east states), while the interior voted almost exclusively for Trump. Enten described that elections are more dynamic than we give them credit for. People often expect that younger voters and people of color will always gravitate toward the democratic candidate while older, predominantly white voters will connect to the republican candidate. According to this analysis, it would become increasingly hard for republicans to win elections as more people of color move to the US, more people conceive mixed race children, and more of the older generation dies off. And yet, according to this election, we cannot depend on those stereotypes.
Obama, Enten explained, had more than enough of a lead in polling for it to be safe to call the election in his favor. Hillary, however, had much smaller margins that were much more spread out across the country. Because her leads were less dependable, they could easily flip â and they did. One of Clintonâs main downfalls was how much worse she did amongst whites in comparison to Obama. In white counties, Trump significantly outperformed Hillary and produced a surge of white voters without a college degree which increased his numbers further. Additionally, and surprisingly, Trump did better amongst African Americans than Romney. Even in Maine, which hasnât voted republican since 1988, Hillary only won by a small margin.
      What I found most interesting was his analysis on how each campaign was actually run, what was effective, and what was not. He shared that while campaigns are important, staff may not be in the same way we traditionally think. Though Donald Trumpâs team was much less known in their respective industries, in retrospect we know that he ultimately had the better pollsters and data collectors. Trump focused on the economy more than Clinton and this, Enten believes, appealed on a larger scale. He also explained how the candidate that was in the news most, actually did the worst in the polls. Because both candidates were already well known, TV ads acted as excess rather than working to get their name and message out. Neither Trump nor Clinton were preferable candidates for most Americans, so the more the more publicity they got, the more people were reminded of their faults rather than the other way around.
This election may produce a shift in the rolls of statisticians, and communication consultants as both seemed to produce less accurate and dependable support than in the past. It will be interesting to see what pollsters learn from this election and how they share their information with the public in the future. Additionally, I wonder if political advertising or public relations will change. In this election, both candidates spent a lot of money in these departments without much return. I would predict that teams in the future will have to get a lot more creative in order to produce further support for their candidate in a convincing and reliable system.
