Explaining the Trump victory

Abstract

This thesis investigates some of the most acknowledged academic theories on Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election. The literature reviewed presents three main theories on Trump’s main appeal to the voter. The first theory argues that Trump was able to appeal to voters with economic concerns. The second theory argues that Trump appealed to voters with racist attitudes. The third theory argues that Trump was seen as an authoritarian candidate, and thus appealed to voters with authoritarian mindsets. The presumption of this thesis is that if Trump’s campaign was successful because it evoked economic concerns, racism or authoritarian attitudes, these would likely be present in other campaigns that were run during and soon after the 2016 presidential election. In this thesis, 14 such elections were examined to see whether Republican campaigns drew upon these themes. The findings suggest that other successful campaigns tended to focus more on appealing to voters with economic concerns, than to voters harboring racial animus or authoritarian-minded voters.