A wild margin of error

Much to the chagrin of the three Ps: pollsters, pundits and politicians — Donald Trump is President-elect of the US

Much to the chagrin of the three Ps: pollsters, pundits and politicians — Donald Trump is the President-elect of the not-so United States of America. How did they all get it wrong by the miles? In the case of polls, the entire focus was on the percentage point difference between the leading and the lagging candidates. What was important, it seems, was the margin of error.

These polls are snapshots of a given time and place. They cannot be the basis for prognostication. But they did capture the widespread anger of the marginalised Americans. Both Trump and Sanders gave their opponents in the primaries the run for their money. Bled by the financial crisis, hurt by the trade deals leading to export of jobs and deindustrialisation, the unemployed white workers of the so-called rust belt were ready to do a Brexit on the establishment, Democratic as well as Republican. The Democratic establishment stopped Sanders from giving the workers some hope, while Trump marched on with his protectionist rhetoric. The workers of the rust belt united to vote Trump to win back jobs. Another wave of anger that the pundits steeped in the mainstream media based in the coastal states failed to comprehend was the depressed state of the agricultural belts. This is where most undocumented immigrants that Trump wants to deport, toil for wages and under work conditions that keep the white workers away. The white farm owners and their immigrant workers voted for Trump in the hope that he would find it difficult to act against his own constituents. They handed Trump a massive win in 90 per cent of the rural counties.

Trump said, unashamedly, what an average white American feels deep down in her/his heart. To her/his delight, Trump made a bonfire of political correctness. This enthused the undecided voters who saw him as relatively more honest than the cryptic Hillary. Despite the tilt of the undecided voters towards Trump, the overall voter turnout in such a hotly contested election was nothing to write home about. The perceived support of women, the youth or the so-called millennials and Afro-Americans for Hillary was, in fact, never mobilised into action. The turnout, lower than the last election, speaks volumes for their apathy. Though the count is not yet complete, the latest estimates put the turnout at 56 per cent of the eligible voters for presidential election, down from 58 per cent in the last Obama election. The Republican-governed states did try to discourage voting by these groups by making the ID mandatory and manipulating the location of polling stations and the voting hours, but it only strengthens the argument that the Democrats failed to reach out to these voters to ensure voting. True, 54 per cent of women, mostly black, voted for Hillary. But this is far from the tide that was promised by the Hillary supporters. On the whole, the turnout dropped in the states won by Hillary, but remained roughly the same in the states carried by Trump. This shows that the groups who felt terrified by the ludicrous Trump agenda did not fully rally behind Trump, while the Republicans maintained their traditional support base and, in addition, did better with farm and non-farm workers.

For the world, the Trump victory signals the end of Hillary’s wars. But his own agenda remains subject to a wide, even wild, margin of error. One only hopes that world is not heading for a replay of the trade wars preceding the Second World War.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2016.

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