Perspectives on the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Re-Thinking Democracy and the Media

The 2016 U.S. presidential election has finally reached its conclusion and the people of America have chosen Republican Donald Trump as their new president. This result has sent shockwaves around the world. It appears that the level of public dissatisfaction with the Washington establishment had grown to the point where people were prepared to vote for the ultimate outsider. Also, Trump's long experience as a reality TV show star has helped his campaign: He knows how to get media coverage, possibly more than any candidates in this history of U.S. presidential campaigns. Even his numerous raucous remarks have been modified into steady support from white blue-collar male voters.

We need to re-visit the various analyses and commentaries on the reasons for his victory. Why did almost every media outlet in the US and most researchers and experts like me fail to predict the election outcome? We all based our judgments on opinion polls that showed support for Hillary Clinton outstripping support for Trump. This may caused "social desirability bias." In the run-up to the 1982 election for the governor of California, the African-American candidate Tom Bradley polled much higher than rival white candidates, yet he lost the election. This outcome was thought to be due to many white voters not revealing their true voting intentions in the polls for fear of being regarded as racists, and the phenomenon became known as the "Bradley effect." In the 2016 presidential election it was difficult, especially for women, to express support for Trump, who had repeatedly lashed out at women, and ethnic groups in discriminatory terms. In other words, it is possible that polls were skewed by the Bradley effect.

Experts in social sciences should have been able to anticipate the existence of such distortions and judge that, in states where Clinton held a slim lead, the candidates' chances were almost even or upsets were possible. However, in their minds—and maybe in mine—belief in the social undesirability of a Trump victory created an even bigger bias, leading to over-estimation of electoral margins. Thus, researchers and the media both stated that Clinton was ahead.

The election has been characterized as a battle between very unpopular candidates. How did the two candidates so reviled by voters get to be the nominees? Up until late 1970s, party bosses in each state acted as kingmakers in the caucuses for presidential elections, backing their preferred candidates, and the final decision was made at national conventions where party executives gathered to choose a nominee. However, after long debate over the procedures, the criticism that this method was undemocratic led to a sudden rise in states opening up the primaries to a wide range of general voters. In this open procedure, media coverage, especially from television, started to have a big influence on the voting intentions of such voters. The media have replaced the party organizations as the principal link between the candidates and the voters.

Although the media pay tremendous attention to the primary races the reality was that voter turnout in the primaries was 30% at most, and just a few percent in some states. Winning wasn't all that difficult for candidates who managed to achieve publicity that spurred specific supporter groups to head to the polling stations. Armed with a good understanding of this rule of the game, right from the beginning of the Republican primaries Mr. Trump stood out for his simple lines of argument portraying clear-cut distinctions between enemies and friends, and a high-impact, but raucous manner of speech, which garnered him a small but enthusiastic core of supporters.

Since the Democratic Party has superdelegates to prevent the emergence of populist candidates, leaving party executives scope to control results at their national convention. Because of this mechanism, Clinton always gave the impression that she always led the nomination race over her rival Bernie Sanders, who gained a lot of support among young people in particular. But a glance at the number of delegates she secured outside the superdelegates reveals that the lead was actually very slim. Sanders is a self-described "Democratic Socialist," and his status as an outsider like Trump should be noted as a sign of changes in U.S. politics.

The year 2016 could become the watershed year in the politics of democratic countries. It could be a year that made us re-think the very nature of democracy. Along with Trump's successful race, Britain chose to leave the EU in accordance with the results of a referendum that defied expectations. Democracy is without a doubt the best political system among those so far attempted by humanity. However, there is of course a risk that societies can be led in unpredictable directions if populists are elected as leaders. I hope that the Trump presidency does not prove to be such a case.

The state of the media plays a big role in these matters. The U.S. has experienced a major shift towards 24-hour cable news channels and the Internet as substitutes for newspapers and terrestrial broadcasters' evening network news programs, which were once the mainstays of the media. In the case of the Internet, there is a striking trend towards users "selective exposures," in which only sites that match their own views and ideas are likely to be accessed, and like-minded information are propagated among peers. Under these circumstances different ideas are easily to be omitted, and objective arguments may become difficult to conduct. It may be an exaggeration but it could lead to the crisis of democracy. We need to nurture our media literacy, which enabling us to compare information and consider whether it is relevant. In this context, those of us involved in university education also have an important responsibility.

I joined the Faculty of Global Studies here at Sophia University when it was first established in 2014. The key feature of this Faculty is the distinctive concept of integrating global perspectives on international relations and local perspectives on area studies. I am sure that studies in this Faculty offer clues for not only understanding the complexity of world phenomenon, such as the Trump presidency, but only exploring the way how the Japanese should exercise in the international community.

Since I graduated with a minor in International Relations, one of the parent fields of this faculty, I feel like I have returned to my roots. As an undergraduate I supplemented my classes in the Faculty of Foreign Studies' Department of English Studies by studying international relations in an effort to develop my own understanding of the world. Like Professor (now Emeritus Professor) Kazuyuki Matsuo of the Department of English Studies, who taught me in my undergraduate days, and the late Father John Nissel, I value Sophia's tradition of earnest engagement with each individual student. In the same way that I learned from the professors who taught me, I hope to join with my students in examining America, Japan, politics, and democracy, and to share with them all the knowledge I possess.