TUESDAY’S vote by Americans to send Donald Trump to the White House and make him the 45th President of the United States of America has shocked the world, defied trusted polls and delivered a stinging rebuke to the political elites. Reuters, which had conducted tracking polls throughout the elections season conceded in an article on Wednesday it had pumped out two kinds of poll stories. Some were national surveys designed to estimate the entire country’s popular vote, but not the outcome in individual states, where the contest is actually decided. These polls actually got the big picture right: Clinton won more overall votes than President-elect Donald Trump – but not by as much as the polling averages predicted, and not where she needed to. Reuters said too that news organisations also produced a blizzard of stories meant to calculate the probability of victory for the two candidates. These calculations were predicated on polls of individual states. “In hindsight, though, the stories seem to have overstated Clinton’s chances for a win by failing to see that a shift in voting patterns in some states could show up in other, similar states. In part, this is because polling analysts got the central metaphor wrong,” the news agency’s article stated.
The sheer unpredictability of the polls is also the story of President-Elect Trump who many thought could not have made it past the first round of the Republican primaries, yet on Tuesday the Republican billionaire defeated his Democratic rival, plunging global markets into turmoil and casting doubt on Washington’s leadership. He later told supporters he was president for all of America.
This year’s election had attracted much local and international attention. It was also special for many reasons outside of a 240-year-old nation for the first time having a female candidate of a major party, and a billionaire businessman turned politician the candidate of the other major party. Come January 2017, the president-elect Trump will influence the U.S. domestic state of affairs and its relations with the international community. He will also be the Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful military.
By now, even the casual political watcher has insight into the vastly different policy positions of both Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Trump. Their policies inform how they see the world and what role they are communicating the U.S. will play in the world under their leadership. Clinton’s campaign theme was “Stronger Together” and she had adumbrated a philosophy of inclusion, equality, and advancing the economic conditions of the people, irrespective of their diversity. On the international front, while she is seen as comparatively hawkish to democratic presidents, she had promised to advise, and explore all options and collaborate with other international forces before taking military action.
Trump’s campaign theme “Make America Great Again” was premised on a philosophy that the country has lost its greatness and its restoration is reliant on an isolationist policy of sorts, including deporting millions of un-documented residents, building a wall at the Mexican border, refusing Syrian refugees, and having Muslims resident in the U.S. entered into a system where they are identifiable. On NATO, he thinks the U.S. should dial back its leadership role. In Foreign Policy, Trump has yet to define a clear position, though what is undoubtedly clear is his admiration for Russia President Vladimir Putin, whom he thinks is a stronger leader than President Barack Obama.
His isolationism on the economic front calls for returning manufacturing jobs to the country and stimulating the growth of business through tax incentives. In international trade, he is opposed to U.S. trade deals NAFTA, signed by President Bill Clinton and TPP signed by Barack Obama. He has argued that such trade devastated swats of the economy, resulting in high unemployment and increased poverty. Though this agreement is not without some merit, Trump is yet to clearly articulate an acceptable reversal policy. On social policy issues such as healthcare, it is Trump’s plan to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act aka Obamacare. All eyes would be on him and his colleagues from the Republican party who now control both the Senate and Congress with an expanded majority.