Andrew Crighton
News Editor
The 2016 election has felt extremely long to some, and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been at the center of it for over a year. Tuesday the 8th it all culminated in a surprising result.
Almost all polls showed Clinton winning by varying margins, but around 1 a.m. Wednesday, it was announced that Trump won with 290 of the required 270 electoral votes necessary to win. Hillary Clinton received 228 electoral votes.
This unexpected election left many in different types of shock.
“I think everyone was surprised by [the election]. I think even Trump himself was surprised,” Alan Bench said. This sentiment was shared by everyone interviewed.
Vivian Trinh had another emotion mixed with the surprise.
“[It was] pretty sad. It was disappointing, the whole campaign was disappointing,” Trinh said.
Luther Kromschroeder believed it was that the voters were tired of the typical politicians.
According to Kromschroeder, Trump brings an entirely new mindset to the Presidency, one that is focused on business, is able to stand up to foreign leaders like Putin and says what he thinks. This is some of the reasons he voted for Trump. “Am I saying Trump is a perfect person? Absolutely not. He wouldn’t have been in my top ten to vote for,” he said.
Because the polls were so far off, it left a lot of people wondering why the media wasn’t able to predict this.
Burns Matthew Leavitt and Trinh explained why they thought that Trump swept the election.
According to Leavitt, Trump gained the support of middle class through his campaign promises of bringing manufacturing jobs back into the country, lowering taxes and boosting the economy.
Trinh believed that the issue was more with the polling methods.
“I think people were just afraid to say they were going to vote for Trump even though they agreed with some parts of what he said,” she explained. The reason people would lie about who they were going to vote for is because people automatically assume that if you are voting for Trump than you are a racist and a bigot, she said.
There was a large amount of controversy this election as well because for the fourth time in United States history, the winner of the electoral vote lost the popular vote.
Clinton won 574,064 more votes overall than Trump at last count. This has raised a lot of questions about if the Electoral College should be changed or removed.
“There’s definitely better ways to count the vote than the Electoral College system, like preferential voting,” said Mason Wegert.
Bench, Kromschroeder and Leavitt shared a similar sentiment about the Electoral College.
Trinh, on the other hand, was not as cut and dry about if there needs to be a change.
“Do I think there needs to be a change, yeah possibly. Maybe we should go to a popular vote; but if we’re going to go do it, we got to make it happen,” Kromschroeder said.
Changing or removing the Electoral College would require a Constitutional amendment.
There is no way to know what the next four years will be like, but the opinions of the people interviewed to have some ideas what it will be like.
Most don’t see that much happening.
One thing that Trinh was concerned about was that if Trump’s plan to bring factory work back into the United States, it would increase pollution problems. That combined with Trump’s disdain for climate change could be a bad situation.
Kromschroeder believed that not much would happen, because there are checks and balances that would keep anything crazy from changing.
Bench however, thinks it will be different. “I think it’s going to be interesting. I think chaos is going to outbreak, just the last four days have been interesting,” he said.
“I think it’s really bad in the short-term Trump was elected, but possibly in the long term it might be good for future elections, to have something stirred up,” Wegert said.
Wegert voted for Trump even though he agrees with none of his policies. Wegert said he would rather have had Bernie Sanders run, and would have voted for him.
The reason he voted for Trump was to try and show people what could happen.
“I don’t want an election like this again, it’s really the [Democratic National Convention’s] fault.”
