Why did Trump get elected in the 2016 election?

Because colonials are not very bright.

My guess is that he had the most self-confidence, that didn’t come off a conceit until it was too late. In the beginning his conceit was masked with positive thinking to far beyond the norm for politicians.

After Mitt Romney I wanted to see if a billionaire would perform differently from a main party. Naturally Donald Trump was fascinating to see what happens.
Also I wasn’t the only person who burned a wish was curious about what would happen.

Wasn’t it that Hillary won the Popular Vote but Trump won the Electoral College vote? That’s why it was controversial and brought calls to abolish the Electoral College.

Hillary had the popular vote. But, clever comment placement and publicity stunts organized through over 100,000 fake social media accounts and blindly forwarded by followers influenced the undecided voters in places where the race was close.
Trump quote: I love the poorly educated . (They believe what they’re told.)

Its simple, he offered hope and change without being a career politician. He was the Obama of the Right. Some people still consider him the best choice even now.

No matter your views, we have to remember this huge political divide. Half the country doesnt view things the way you do about issues.

Exactly what @luckyguy said.

Because he’s not a politician & simply put, they’re all lying, self serving wankers who quite rightly, the electorate have had enough of.
Welcome to the future, get used to it.

IMO, since the polls had Hillary in the lead, many Democrats decided to just stay home on election night, and the election was thus handed to Trump.
It didn’t help that Hillary was a woman, something many are/were not ready for.

Popular vote Trump: 62,984,828 Hillary: 65,853,514
Percentage Trump: 46.1% Hillary: 48.2%

Democrats didn’t stay home on Election night.

Trump won the Electoral vote. This is not necessarily (apparently) the vote of the American citizens.

Too many Democrats did. Otherwise the Electoral vote would have thrown the election the other way.
Think about it: Obama won two elections. Where were the extra voters when it came time to elect Hillary? Sitting on their asses at home. They must have been because they sure weren’t at the voting booths!

It’s called gerrymandering. The Reps had to cheat in order to get in the WH. They’ve had to cheat twice and I won’t be shocked when they do it for the third time

I think he won because he appealed to white working class voters that Hillary couldn’t appeal to. They are the people who helped Trump win the crucial swing states that won him the election. I don’t see it as being much more complicated than that.

Most of my friends thought I was nuts when I told them that I thought Trump was going to win.

There’s a lot of discontent in the country. And Trump taps into it. He gives them something to rally around. A scapegoat for your problems can be a powerful draw.

Sure. Like all those Obama voters just up and voted for Trump…

Votes for Obama in 2008: 69,498,516

It sure looks like Democrats sat out according to @kritiper. That’s almost 4 million more than Hillary received in 2016.

@raum Plus being a ‘non-politician’ has it’s own anti-establishment voters.

@Stache They didn’t just sit out. Something like 9–13% of Obama voters also voted for Trump.

He promised people what they wanted. Unfortunately for the democrats it turned out that there were more ultra far right facist religious fundamentalists in America than they’d thought.

1) There are far too many people willing to have an obnoxious inarticulate inexperienced sleazy narcissist loose-cannon TV personality as President of the United States of America.

2) Our voting system is absolute bullshit forcing what should be a false dilemma on voters and raising it up as a choice by the voters, when really it is the voters being forced to place a single vote “for” one of only two candidates widely proclaimed as the only two electable choices – each one selected by one of the two mainstream political parties which dominate US politics, both of which are deep in the pockets of manipulation by the mega-wealthy, giant corporations and “special interests”.

3) The other “electable” choice offered by our sorry excuse for a voting process, was Hillary Clinton, who ran a campaign that stank of the establishment and often felt like she thought it was a foregone conclusion she should get to be president, with her supporters even including the phrase “it’s her turn”.

4) Clinton also has a long-standing movement of people who have hated her for decades.

5) Clinton gained many more people who hated, resented, and/or distrusted her during the primary campaign, especially in her race against Bernie Sanders, where despite Sanders miraculously giving her a surprise challenge despite starting with little name recognition and all individual non-corporate donors and undermining by the Democratic Party, the Democrats tries to deny that and blow off that Sanders had actual authentic support and enthusiasm. It also was clear at many points during the Primary that Sanders was being denied a real chance at the nomination, again the main reason being that the DNC had already pre-selected her. Many people resented that and she lost many votes from it.

6) Both “electable” candidates had (and continue to have) negative approval ratings. That led to low voter turnout. Many people who would prefer Clinton to Trump did not vote, or did not vote for her, because it was assumed Clinton would win, and/or they wanted the DNC to notice how pissed they were about the primary and/or Clinton’s lazy entitled campaign. But Trump fans were fans and did tend to vote.

7) Also, when voter turnout is low, the proportion of wealthier and statistically more conservative voters is higher, and vice versa. Republicans tend to win low turnout votes, while Democrats tend to win high-turnout votes.

8) Also, US politics have become very polarized and many Americans vote on party lines. Trump’s terrible behavior increases that effect. Many people voted Trump not for Trump himself but because he was the Republican candidate, because he was not the Democratic candidate, and because of other party-line issues such as abortion or immigration.

9) So how did Trump become one of the two choices? Well, the other Republican candidates were all terrible and boring and reeked of the same old establishment politics more Americans are sick of, and more people preferred Trump to them because he was not an establishment politician and was telling those Republicans off. Trump was also just more noticeable and attention-getting than the other Republican candidates.

10) Clinton was also a woman. Sexism is still a factor in US politics.

11) The new media normalized Trump more than he deserved to be normalized as a candidate.

12) Some people had other specific reasons not to vote for Clinton, such as seeing her as intent on getting us into wars, and/or trade treaties that would give away many sovereign rights to corporations.

13) Before the election, Trump also had some people hoping he might be a random non-establishment chaos factor in government. Many people feel a lot of resentment for establishment big-party politics and business as usual, and Trump’s randomness and “drain the swamp” line had some people (even me) somewhat hopeful he would cause problems for corrupt business as usual. (Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case in practice, as he turned out to be utterly in the pocket of corporate interests and to be an experiment in throwing out all real pretense of being anything but a tool to give as much away to corporations as possible).

14) There are also a lot of racists and xenophobes and gun nuts and idiot Bible thumpers in the USA, and they all saw a champion in Trump.

15) Trump also champions the “anti-intellectual” vote, being a great example of how idiocy can prevail.

16) There may also have been some electronic voting machine issues – since they don’t leave a real paper trail, we’d likely never know if there were.

etc.

He won because our screwy system uses the Electoral College. 15 states are trying to make it obsolete..
GW won because of the EC, but only trump could light a fire under everyone’s ass to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Trump had the good fortune to run against Hillary Clinton, who must be one of least personable presidential candidates of all time. The only one to ever have poorer ratings than Clinton was Trump. Link Even with that going for him, and even with Clinton’s email problems, Trump still managed to lose the popular vote.

I remember when I was around 10 being told that no one could explain how a bumblebee was able to lift itself into the air with such tiny wings for so huge a mass. And then one day In a supermarket I saw on the cover of a magazine. Julia Roberts on the arm of someone named Lyle Lovett (of whom I knew nothing).

The point is, no one, including Trump himself believed the fool had a chance in hell of winning that election. But then again, as H L Mencken announced concerning another political upset “No one ever lost money through underestimating the taste of the American public”. There is one thing I will say for Trump. What you see and hear is EXACTLY what you get. Whatever the fool’s faults, like jazz, vaudeville or burlesque, Mr. Carrot is distinctly and uniquely American, the living embodiment of Archie Bunker with a mean streak.

You know you still haven’t told us why Putin was so hot to see him elected.

@stanleybmanly was that statement directed at me?

Yes. But I just asked the crowd on another thread

Obviously he wanted him elected because he is SO stupid he can be told to do virtually anything by men in power, and he’ll do it because he desperately wants to please them.

I don’t think Putin was hot to see Trump elected. After all, Trump has been harder on Russia than his predecessor ever was. And remember, Hillary helped sell control of our uranium supply to Russia. No, I think Putin wasn’t hot for Trump. He may have a personal grievance with Hillary, I don’t know. But he may have had a “anyone but Hillary” attitude.

Trump has been “hard on Russia”? You must be joking. He’s treated Putin, the leader of a country that is hostile to the basic values of the United States, as an equal and at the Helsinki summit went so far as to accept Putin’s word over that of his own intelligence services. Putin must have been laughing all the way back to the Kremlin.

@flutherother it is common courtesy as well as standard behavior to treat the leader of another country with deference. Like it or not, Russia is quite a powerful country. But as for my statement, Trump HAS been harder on Putin and Russia than Obama ever was. This is an interesting article that spells out all the actions Trump has taken against Russia and Russian oligarchs

https://politicallyshort.com/2018/07/21/trumps-actions-against-russia/

Common courtesy doesn’t oblige you to forget your values. Theresa Mae stood up to Putin after the Salisbury incident despite Putin’s Russia being much more powerful than the UK. I admired her for that.

@flutherother so you are saying the Theresa May got up into Putin’s face and chewed him out? The first time she saw him and he was introduced, she called him a wanker? Or did she treat him with decorum?

Lots of answers already, but I will chime in.

First, I have a question. @SEKA said gerrymandering was part of the reason. I didn’t realize gerrymandering affects the electoral college. Does it? Or, does @SEKA mean that the electoral college is a form of gerrymandering?

I think the polls were wrong, because I think a lot of people who didn’t like Trump were undecided what to do until the very end. A friend of mine said she held her nose and voted for him for the Supreme Court. I don’t think she would have necessarily answered a poll saying she is voting for Trump. A close friend of my dad’s was very gung-ho Trump at first. His wife and one of his son’s were relentless in telling him not to vote for Trump. Eventually, Trump did something that my dad’s friend said, “ok, I’m not going to vote for him now.” I still think there is a good chance he did.

I think Trump did well with blue collar Catholic voters, which I think is the true swing vote in the last election. Many of the Catholics he won over are union workers, and often union votes Democrat.

I also think having Obama for President, and having Bernie Sanders stating he is a socialist (I know he said Democratic Socialist, but “they” hear the word socialist) was a double whammy of scare the shit out of a lot of Republicans, making sure they went to the polls. Some people believed Obama was a Muslim and anti-Israel, some believed he was a socialist, some believed Obama wanted to be a dictator, and some didn’t like that he was black. The reaction to the hate is to make sure another Democrat doesn’t win.

More voters voted for Trump than for Mitt Romney. Either more people came out to vote, or some switched to Trump. When I went to my polling place the woman here told me under her breath “they are coming out of the word work.” I inferred that as Trump voters were being brought into the polls by family to make sure they voted, but I might be wrong on that. It would be interesting to analyze the number of voters in my voting district, and around the country.

Most Trump voters think Trump is doing a great job. They liked what he had to say before, and still like him now. The majority of Democrats don’t understand it, they probably never will. Most of them won’t listen to the Trump voter’s point of view, instead they dismiss it. I hear Democrats constantly say, “this is it, Trump will lose his base now,” like they think they understand what will make Trump lose his base, and they simply don’t understand the base at all.

I think the media helped him a lot. The left leaning media has no idea how they sound to Republicans, and it just fuels the Republican hate of the Democrats. The media continues to screw it up. One blatant thing is the media uses terms that make Trump voters feel they are being condescended to. Media says thing like educated voted for Hillary, or people voting for Trump are ignorant, or Trump voters are racist, etc. That only ensure they will make it to the polls.

There are a lot of white Americans who don’t consider themselves racist who do think white people are better. More specifically Protestant white people. Protestants created the US, they will point to Catholic Latin America as having taken a different path when the Americas were first being conquered and settled, and they will point to majority black nations with black leadership, and then hold up white Protestant nations as being more industrialized and more successful. They fear immigration will destroy our success as a country. Trump played into that. The Democrats do not address it in a way that will calm their fears.

Trump used three word chants to rile up his base. Lock her up, build the wall, this is very effective. Those people chanting felt powerful. Those same people continue to feel powerful with Trump as President.

Trump said things that a lot of people say behind closed doors.

Trump saw how people can be manipulated. He talked about it during he Kerry v Bush election. He was fascinated by it. He said the Republicans were really good at manipulating the people and that the Democrats better figure it out. His comment about John McCain and about shooting someone on the street I think is directly related to this. I think he sits back just in awe of how he can manipulate people.

About the comments above regarding the vote, Hillary won the popular vote, there is no getting around it. I just think most Republicans don’t care, because they think the Electoral college is all that matters, and the EC in their mind is more fair for electing a president than a direct popular vote. To them, Trump won period. Republicans winning when the popular vote went for the Democrat, only reinforces for them that the EC is the better way. They don’t want big city people and the coasts determining who will be president when we have a vast country full of rural towns who feel they are losing power, losing their voice.

Let’s just say that Theresa May treated Putin with as much contempt as decorum would allow. Anyway it was in marked contrast to Trump’s Putin is my buddy approach.

@flutherother Ahhh…so really May didn’t jump down Putin’s throat…she used decorum. So you just didn’t like Trump’s style. And if May didn’t jump down his throat when she saw him, the only way you are measuring her “standing up” to Putin is by her speeches and actions. Well, Trump did the exact same thing. He has taken far more actions than his predecessor and has dinged Russia up some. I am continually amazed at how the left tries to hold Trump to a different standard than they do anyone else. You expect Trump to do something that you really don’t and didn’t expect another leader to do. You look at the other leader and praise them for the speeches and actions but entirely ignore Trump’s speeches and actions and, in fact, argue to try to avoid actually having to acknowledge them.

Ignore Trump’s speeches and actions? You mean the ones you claim the media makes up? Your line of bullshit is more absurd than the drivel erupting from the fool himself. I mean the truly absurd allegation that it is the left which holds THIS lying idiot to a different standard, when it is patently obvious that Trump defies ANYTHING passably acceptable as normal or even sane. I mean how can you persist here with this hopeless distortion of reality? With this moron directly in front of you, you have the temerity to insist that it is the media , the left, the world that is lying and distorting the facts? You cannot possibly be as absurdly dense or ridiculous as you pretend. No one is that thick.

Okay, Mr. Harding, Let me ask….Joe Biden has lied blatantly almost every day on his campaign trail. Where is your outrage? I haven’t heard you call him a compulsive liar even once. So until you can do that, you are treating Trump differently…holding him to a different standard. So Obama lied repeatedly throughout his time in office and you still defend him. You want to slam Trump for stupid things he says but gloss over the stupid things said by others. I have given example after example of times the media has taken things entirely out of context just to create the “Trump Rhetoric” you are so adamant about. Yet you ignore that because, obviously, it hurts your fantasy realm. Basically, you confirm everything I have said.

Sigh, Russia meddles in every election. This was no different except that the rise of social media has made it easier. That was part of it. It’s not gerrymandering when the EC does what it’s supposed to do. The real reason we have Mr. Trump is simply because enough people voted for him. He won the nomination so he was the Republican ticket but also “something different.” Different is not always good but enough people apparently thought that this gamble…(and it was a gamble) was worth taking over what the democratic ticket was offering. This is why he was elected and the left needs to own that if we want Trump gone. I don’t see it because they are doubling down on what got him here. They need to focus on the economy if there is any hope or prayer.

@seawulf575 You consistently hunt for Democratic scapegoats to prop up as comparisons to your psychotic imbecile. It’s a pathetic and hopelessly stupid effort at evading the blazing undeniable truth. The fool is in a class by himself! No one you can pull up can even stand in his lying shadow. We have a President who at this very instant is lying about the WEATHER on national television, and you tell me that I should be outraged at BIDEN?

@stanleybmanly Not to be rude, but we bring things up because you all are hypocrits (with all due respect.)

If you can produce proof that Trump used Sharpie on a map, let’s see it.

If you can’t produce proof, then perhaps it wasn’t Trump using a Sharpie and you’re wasting everyone’s time and energy over a lie to try to make him look bad. Like you’ve done for almost four years.

It’s time to stop making the Dem party look ignorant, especially if you want to win. Do you really not get it yet?

I love these threads, always see the same tired old bullshit from the same tired old salty members.
Best bit is, you get 4 more years of this shit :D

@ucme Truth. If there were actually anything new being said here, the political threads might be more interesting, but it’s always exactly the same. I could probably predict the next 20 posts from stanley and seawulf.

I saw Trump with his hurricane chart this evening. It showed Dorian moving west across Florida and moving in to Alabama which is an old prediction. The National Hurricane Center predicts that the storm will not make landfall in Florida but will turn north.

I don’t know who wrote on this old map with a Sharpie but it was very misleading and Trump shouldn’t have used it.

@seawulf575 trump’s behavior with Putin goes far past decorum. He fawns all over him.

And the most ridiculous aspect @flutherother is that trump won’t let that Alabama prediction go.

Why? Would anyone think less of him if he just admitted that he was using an early prediction which proved erroneous? In a way, Trump’s idiocy is his saving grace. Imagine someone as malevolently power hungry but who was also intelligent.

In other words, “if he had a brain, he’d be dangerous.” @LostInParadise. Hahaha!

That’s EXACTLY the point. And I don’t care if the rest of you are tired of my same old arguments. If you are not prepared to reject and rail against a VISIBLY vile and corrupt IDIOT, what is the hope for us when confronted by true evil backed by intelligence. Hostility to Trump is not a matter of vindictive political disagreement. The issue supersedes any and all political considerations. NONE of us here have faced, and I hope to God will ever face a threat more serious to the meaning of this country and its purported possibilities than the issue of THIS man at the helm of THIS country. Wake the fuck up you guys. LOOK at him, and prepare a story for your descendants on why YOU put up with this shit! ALL of you should be screaming your asses off!! What the fuck is wrong with you?

I second every thing The Man just said, including “What the fuck is wrong with you?” ^^^^^^

And every one of you hung up on this hurricane prediction are showing your lunacy. And you entirely ignore the statement Trump made. What he said, as he showed the old chart was:
“Our original chart was that it was going to be hitting Florida directly … It was going to be hitting directly and that would have affected a lot of other states. But that was the original chart. And as you see it was going to hit not only Florida but Georgia and sort of was going toward the Gulf, that was what we — what was originally projected, and it took a right turn.”

So he did acknowledge it was their original prediction. He did acknowledge that had changed. He did everything he was supposed to and didn’t lie about anything. Yet you guys want so hard to create this evil “Trump rhetoric” that you cannot even face reality.

He is hanging on the his map like a terrier.

For days he defended that whole scenario.

He is STILL defending it today!

Very funny Colbert video on “Sharpie-gate” or “Water-gate” and energy efficient light bulbs. What I love about Colbert is that he shows the video of Trump, so it’s not just Colbert making fun of him, he’s showing the silly words coming out of Trump’s mouth.

And it isn’t that we’re hung up on the fool lying about the weather. I’m more hung up on the fact that no one living can keep pace with the lies. If the fool is going to lie simply because a comparable windbag is stealing his news coverage, clearly no matter is too trivial for exclusion from the panoply of deceptions——scumbag!

@stanleybmanly Ok…his lies. What about his statement of the original prediction was a lie?

@seawulf Nothing. Early models were concerned about the southern coast, too. I was on call myself until Tuesday for the west coast of Florida.

Honestly, whomever drew the map should be the butt of the joke -if anyone. He doesnt do any of that himself, come on.

Hmmmm, ranting repetitive nonsense on a q&a site to the point where the veins in your heads pop.
I know what’s wrong with you!!

I forgot to post the link to the Colbert video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW1sR6mlrhk