John Hudak
A year ago, the 2016 US presidential election looked like an easy race to predict. Hillary Clinton was expected to coast to the Democratic Party nomination. For Republicans, Donald Trump was expected to fail quickly and let qualified candidates like Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Rand Paul to fight for the nomination. None of that has come to be true, and expectations have been defied.
The State of the DemocraticRace
Bernie Sanders entered the Democratic primary race, largely as an unknown candidate and quickly excited passion and enthusiasm among far left portions of the Democratic Party. His had an ability to connect with voters, raise funds, and organize in states with early primary contests. By fall 2015, Sanders became viable and serious competition for Clinton. Her status as frontrunner remained, but the expectation that she would easily secure the Democratic nomination rapidly crumbled.
Over time, Clinton’s numbers faded in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire—where at one point she was as much as 50 points—and Sanders was on the rise. Even as a terrorist attack in Southern California thrust foreign policy and homeland security to the forefront—topics closely related to Clinton’s experience—Sanders’ message about economic inequality continued to connect with Democratic voters.
As American began to vote, the early results showed a highly competitive Democratic race. In the first state to vote, Iowa, Clinton won by the narrowest of margins. In the second state, New Hampshire, Sanders won by more than 20%. The results were shocking and signaled that the race for the Democratic nomination would be long, hard fought, and tremendously expensive.
In fact, the Democratic race quickly began to look more like what was expected in the Republican race—competitive and challenging.
Moving forward into later states, Clinton’s numbers appear strong. She outperforms Sanders in nearly every state in which public opinion polling is conducted. However, American presidential campaigns can change quickly when one candidate appears to have momentum.
Every additional race that Sanders wins or at least outperforms expectations (that is, loses to Clinton by a narrower than expected margin) will encourage voters in later states to reconsider their support and perhaps give Sanders a chance. That scenario is good news for Sanders. Meanwhile, Clinton’s best hope is to win several more state primaries in rapid succession (especially the 13 that take place on 1 March) in order to take back some of the momentum she lost.
The State of the Republican Race
The biggest expectation that never came to be was the failure of Donald Trump. The brash, offensive businessman with no political experience and little regard for the norms of behavior on the presidential campaign trail was widely expected to make a politically deadly mistake and exit the race. His behavior was full of moments that would ruin another candidacy in another year, but Trump continued defying the odds. It seemed that as his comments became more vitriolic, offensive, and untrue, he either sustained or gained support.
Trump was expected to play a short-lived, limited role in the race. Pundits, analysts, party leaders, and even the other candidates believed this to be true. Instead, the opposite happened. Trump has dominated almost every minute of the race. His popularity, fueled by unending—nearly obsessive—attention from the mainstream media, has changed the conversation in the primary. Topics are being discussed because Trump wants to discuss them. The tone of the race—at times equal parts disrespectful and shocking—has been almost entirely in Donald Trump’s control. His ideas and rhetoric are far outside of the mainstream of American politics and the worldview of most Americans; yet, his messaging has pushed other candidates further to the ideological right. At times, other candidates have tried to outperform Trump’s rhetorical flourish of their own.
How can someone so far from the mainstream of American politics do so well? The answer is largely in the numbers. While Trump’s popularity appears quite high, it is important to remember that his support is at about 35-40 percent of Republican voters, and Republican voters make up only about 30 percent of the American voting population.
Trump’s reach is limited to about 10-12% of American voters, but appears enhanced by a fractured Republican Party that seems incapable of settling on a single counterweight to Donald Trump (five other Republicans remain in the race), and American media outlets that fail to hold the candidate to account for his outrageous words and a message that refuses to offer legitimate policy details. In the end, it is difficult to know what the Republican Party will do with a problem like Donald Trump, but it is hard to imagine the American voting public embracing him as their president.
The writer is deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings.
