Donald Trump’s election to the office of President shocked political scientists, pundits, and pollsters, who had all predicted his demise long before he became the Republican presidential nominee (Mclaughlin, 2017).  In this essay I will discuss the reasons why President Trump succeeded in his White House bid. To give background knowledge I will begin with a brief overview of who Donald Trump was before prior to entering the political arena. I will then give the main reasons why I believe Trump was successful. Firstly, I will explain how Trump’s lack of public office experience aided him as voters saw him as an outside solution to a broken political system. I will then explain how the Trump campaign, dating back to the Republican primaries, engaged a number of Americans who had become alienated by the political process. Then I will show how his supporter’s sharing of alternative media, including Breitbart and Huffington Post, aided in spreading his message amongst many people who do not consume traditional media, and how fictions news played a role in supporting him. Lastly, I will lay out the unique way in which President Trump’s platform was able to appeal to many Americans, some of whom did not agree with each other on big issues, but agreed that Donald Trump should be president. I will conclude by giving a review of the counter argument, explaining the other popular opinions that aim to explain Donald Trump’s rise, and I will contrast those points with my own beliefs and the research that supports it.

When Donald Trump was sworn into office, on January 20th, 2017, he became the first president to have no prior military or government service (Mclaughlin, 2017). In order to understand President’s Trump’s rise to power, one must understand the advantage he had due to his lack of prior political involvement. As his supporters noted numerous times during the campaign; Trump was a successful businessman. While his success is often debated, he does come from a long line of business people dating back to his family’s immigration into the United States. Trump’s paternal grandfather, Fredrich, came to the United States in 1885 and quickly became successful running restaurants and boarding houses during the Klondike gold rush. Donald’s father, and Fredrich’s son, Fred started working in the family real-estate when he was 15. Donald followed in his father’s footsteps and attended the University of Pennsylvania to pursue studies in real estate. Trump’s business successes can be found mostly in New York City where he developed Trump Tower and Trump International Hotel. However, not too far from New York City, in Atlantic City New Jersey, Trump’s real estate failures are clear. Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, as well as Trump Taj Mahal, have both been shuttered after years of financial trouble. Despite his questionable business record, Trump was listed as the 544th wealthiest person in the world by Forbes. The publication estimated that Trump had a net worth in 2017 of $3.5 billion (Mclaughlin, 2017). 

Trump is not the first business person to run under the Republican ticket for president recently, but he is the only business person to have no prior political experience. Mitt Romney ran in 2012 against Barack Obama who was vying for his second term. Romney had a track record of business success, including being credited for saving the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and making it a success. However, Romney was a one term governor of Massachusetts. Romney’s campaign staff never touted his business success during the campaign like Trump’s staff did. Despite Romney’s estimated net worth being a quarter billion dollars, his proponents focused on his life of political and public service, hoping that those credentials would be valuable. Romney arguably ran against a more appealing candidate in Barack Obama than Trump ran against. Some might argue that Romney would have been successful against the weaker Hillary Clinton. But I believe that what Trump had, that Romney didn’t, was an outsiders label when it came to political office. This label as an outsider allowed Trump to criticize politicians, both Democrat and Republican, with virtually no recourse. Trump’s opponents found themselves constantly under fire for their decisions when in office. When pundits and opponents tried to pin Trump for his shady business practices Trump was able to shrug off their criticisms by saying that they didn’t understand the business world like he did. Trump was able to get away with things that no onlooker could ever have imagined prior to the 2016 election (Krieg, 2016). One particularly shocking story during the campaign involved Trump speaking years prior to Access Hollywood interviewer Billy Bush. In the off air conversation, Trump brags about his ability to have casual relations with women, even going as far as to say that he grabs women by their genitals and can get away with his actions. Not only did Trump apparently get away with sexual assault, he was let off the hook by the public by arguing that his comments were “locker-room talk”. Furthermore, Trump’s campaign argued that he couldn’t be held responsible for his recorded comments like a normal politician would be because he wasn’t in office at the time (Mclaughlin, 2017). 

It can be argued that Trump’s flippant, and often offensive, comments appealed greatly to a subset of the American population who had become alienated from the political process. While no scholarly reviewed empirical data has been released since the election showing the full extent to which first time voters, or voters who hadn’t participated in a long time, voted, exit polling data shows that many went to the polls in support of Trump who wouldn’t have if he wasn’t the Republican candidate. These voters, according to exit polling data, were primarily white, poor, from rural areas, and did not have college educations. While some may argue that there is a paradox between the disenfranchised voters who came out in support of Trump and his status as a billionaire, I argue that there is much about him that would appeal to these voters. True or not, Trump and his campaign staff painted a picture of the Trump family as the epitome of the American dream (Mclaughlin, 2017). Trump constantly stressed that he started his own real-estate ventures with a small loan from his father that he paid back with interest. Furthermore, his campaign never mentioned that he was only a second generation American, focusing more on Donald’s father as the starter of the family business and not his grandfather, and immigrant, Fredrich. By presenting the Trump family as an American success story, he was able to appeal to many who had given up on the promises made to them by career politicians. While Trump often criticized who he called “establishment Republicans”, or those with long political careers, he benefited by the work done by those Republicans during the Obama administration. The Obama administration did not have control of both the House and the Senate for much of their time in power. During the Obama administration, Republicans stonewalled all Democrat efforts, regardless of their merit. This stonewalling lead to little getting done under Obama and the perpetuation of the belief by many Americans that the government system was broken. Trump used the notion of broken government through both the Republican primary elections, and the President race, to show that those with previous government experience would only be part of the problem and not the solution going forward. This notion allowed Trump to defeat very successful candidates like Ted Cruz, who had won the support of many “Tea Party Republicans”. The Tea Part was an ultra-right and socially conservative wing of the Republican movement that had been seen as an extremely influential group during the Obama years. However, due to their ties with the “establishment” Trump was able to nullify their influence in favor of a more libertarian stance. Trump’s supporters carried him through huge wins during the Republican primary even though the Republican party did not want him to be their candidate. Many of Trump’s main opponents failed to endorsed him and some went as far as to campaign against him, including former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. It can be argued that the Republican party’s constant dismissal of Trump as a legitimate candidate added fuel to the fire of his supports and furthered an “us versus them” dynamic that lead to increased engagement amongst his proponents (Mclaughlin, 2017). 

Media, and it’s influences on elections, continues to develop every year. In 2008, when Barack Obama was elected, Twitter had just been created. Some attributed Obama’s success among youth to the effective use of the social media service by staffers. Four years later, in 2012, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, had become mainstream and both political parties were exploiting the services to reach a wider demographic who may not have been served by traditional media. The 2016 presidential election may be noted for the multiple storylines involving social networks and the sharing of news articles from fringe publications. Social media, explicitly Twitter and Facebook, were now trusted by many voters as a way to find news and political analysis. A general trend started during the recession for individuals to save money by cancelling cable television and newspaper subscriptions, filling the information gap with free news publications and videos available on the internet. Many reputable news publications responded to the cord cutting by using their social media presence to share their vetted and factual stories Other outlets, with little credibility, came into question during the election for sharing and creating stories based on a misrepresentation of facts and going as far as completely fabricating stories. 

Both Presidential candidates were victims of fictitious stories, dubbed “fake news”. However, the Hillary Clinton campaign was subjected to more of these fake news stories and thus I believe that Trump was given an advantage overall.  There were two types of stories that were spread online during the campaign. First, there were stories with misleading headlines based on a questionable interpretation of facts by journalists. Those stories were published by online news sources that had clear political allegiance such as Breitbart and The Huffington Post. Social media aided in the spreading of these stories because many would just see the “thumbnail” or preview that included a photo and a headline and share the story without reading it or judging its merit. Stories like these became so popular in terms of shares and “likes” that traditional media sources such as CNN and Fox created catchy headlines known as “clickbait” to increase traffic to their sites. The other form news story that became an issue during the campaign were utterly fake stories that had no grounding in real facts and were published on sites that lacked any creditability whatsoever. One fictitious story, accused the Clinton family of being part of a child sex exploitation ring that involved a pizza restaurant in the metropolitan Washington DC area. The story, which was wildly outlandish, was shared hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter. While to the discerning reader the story would seem completely unbelievable, one man believed it so much that he drove to the restaurant with an assault rifle and demanded answers from the confused staff. The extent of the pizza restaurant-sexual abuse story shows how many voters were unable to discern real stories about candidates from falsehoods. The source of the false stories was unknown during the election but soon after President Trump assumed office, some of the stories were attributed to Russian operatives created and disseminated the stories in order to aid Trump. Russian involvement in the election continues to be a hot topic and the details are still unclear regarding the level of influence the Russian government had in the 2016 campaign. Thus, I chose not to select Russian involvement as one of the causes for the Trump victory although I acknowledge that it may be thrust into the forefront of the discussion in the coming months as more details emerge (Hazen, 2016). 

Lastly, I attribute Donald Trump’s victory in 2018 for his remarkable ability to appeal to voters from different socio-economic backgrounds, religions, and races. As previously mentioned, Donald Trump created a unique political brand from the start of his candidacy in the Republican primaries. His colloquial tone and reduced use of a teleprompter made him seem like an average American at his rallies. He addressed complex issues like illegal Mexican immigration, Islamic extremism, and healthcare reformed, with simple answers. While he was often criticized by the media for his comments, many of his supporters grew fond of the simplicity of his plans and the apparent honesty of his answers. There was, however, a paradoxical nature to his supports due to the fact that many adamantly disagreed with, if not hated the views of their fellow Trump supports. The example I have chosen to support this point is the endorsement of Trump by former Grand Wizard of the of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) David Duke and the continued support of Trump by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Mclaughlin, 2017). The KKK is a Christian white supremacist group that was founded in America during the Jim Crowe segregation era and revived during the civil rights movement. Most known for its acts of violence against African Americans, KKK members also have great distain for people who practice the Jewish religion.  The rational for the hatred of Jewish people by the KKK stems from Jewish people not accepting Jesus as the messiah. David Duke has written hate speech against Jewish Americans using slurs and defamatory claims to incite violence against those who practice Judaism in America. Duke and other former and currently KKK members, as well as other individuals identifying as white supremacists or white nationalists, feel as though Donald Trump has given them a representation in Washington that they have not had in many years. White supremacists began supporting Trump when he made disparaging remarks towards undocumented Mexican immigrants and Muslim-Americans. Trump’s support by white supremacists is juxtaposed by the glowing endorsement he received from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who supported Trump due his reiteration of the Republican’s pro-Israel stance. Israel is a country established for the Jewish people who had been persecuted many times in history for practicing their faith. White supremacists do not support American funds being used to bolster and protect Israel due to their hatred of the Jewish religion.  I believe that the example of Trump’s support from both white supremacists and many Jewish people including the Prime Minister of Israel shows his unique ability to appeal to so many Americans, even those who have hatred towards each other. In every election each party tries to be a “big tent party”, meaning that they are able to encompass the views of many Americans in order to gain a majority of the vote. The Trump campaign, however, redefined what it means to be a big tent party in America; Trump got the votes of wealthy businessmen and as well as long out of work coal miners, he even had first generation Mexican immigrants using social media to become outspoken supports of him despite his rude comments towards Mexicans and their government (Hazen, 2016). 

There are other theories that differ from those mentioned by me as to why Trump won the 2016. One of the main theories is that Trump secured the votes of older voters who always turn out to the polls while Clinton appealed to a younger crowd who were less engaged with her message and less likely to go to the polls. While that theory garnered a lot of attention during the aftermath of the election I do not believe it had as much influence as many pundits thought. I argue that older voters have historically leaned Republican since the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, younger voters have historically leaned Democrat since the same period of time. Thus, while Hillary Clinton’s message may not have been as engaging as Barack Obama’s, I do not believe you can attribute Trump’s victory to a voting phenomenon that has existed for many decades in American politics. As I have previously discussed, there is a theory that Russian interference played a larger role in the election than previously known. However, I chose not to included that in my main reasons because I do not believe we know enough about the Russian influence on the election at this time. Lastly some political theorists felt that support from white supremacy played a significant role in Trump’s election (Mclaughlin, 2017). However, I feel like this point has been overblown by news outlets who want a scandalous headline. I believe that race issues had a larger role in the election and re-election of Barack Obama. I argue that individuals who held white supremacy views would have voted Republican regardless of whether or not Trump was the candidate because they saw their vote against Clinton as a vote against Obama.  

The reasons why Trump won the 2016 Presidential election will continue to be a debate had in political science classes and on news talk shows for years to come. In this essay I argued for the main reasons I believe as to why Trump was victorious and supported those theories with data from secondary sources. Trump was able to win the electoral college, and thus the office of the President, because he was an outsider, engaged disenfranchised voters, and brought together different groups of Americans with differing opinions in support of him. 
