Abhishek Aryal Pd-6 The 2016 Presidential Campaign The 2016 election will go down as one of the most shocking presidential campaign result in recent history. Most polling organizations and people did not anticipate the outcome of this election. The Presidential Campaign race was between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and business and reality tv personality Donald Trump. The candidates started to announce their candidacy quite early because there would be no incumbent president and vice president running, Ted Cruz a Republican senator from Texas was the first major candidate to announce his presidential bid for 2016 in March of 2015. Soon other Republican candidates such as Marco Rubio, Neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Rand …show more content…
Over the course of the campaign, he was very aggressive against her. He used social media(especially Twitter) to criticize Clinton and her policies. Trump used Twitter to post his opinions, the use of Twitter made it easier for him to connect with his followers and gather support. The way he used twitter was less formal and an average American could easily relate to his ideas. He also had an upper hand in media coverage, according to cnbc.com he got about 4.6 billion dollars worth of free media. That number dwarfs the amount of money that he actually spent on ads (78 million), and his campaign as a whole(322 million). This helped him increase his popularity among the electorates. Secretary Clinton, unlike Trump, did not get as much media coverage as him. But she was already a popular figure in American politics. She was the First Lady from 1993 to 2001, Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. Like Donald Trump, she also used social media to gather voters. According to telegraph.co.uk, she used social media to mostly gather a specific set of voters, which included young people, and people of color(blacks and Latinos). This might not have been the best strategy to use because historically those demographics have a low turnout. She also failed to gather votes from older voters(45+). In …show more content…
He visited more states than her, especially during the last ten weeks before the election. He visited the Rust Belt states which included Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, these states usually voted democrat and were considered to be safe for them. Those visits turned out to be beneficial to him as all those states voted for him. Unlike Trump, Clinton did not visit as many states as he did. As a result, she did not win any swing states that she visited. She did not visit Wisconsin once during the last weeks. She mostly placed her efforts in North Carolina and Florida, which she also lost. Trump made a comment on her lack of campaign visits, he blamed it on her health, saying that she is worn out. That statement was complemented by the 9/11 memorial event when she fainted and had to be escorted away. This event favored Trump since the American people do not want a president who is physically weak and would need regular medical care. One of the major events that hurt Hillary Clinton would be the Comey letter. The Comey letter addressed her using a private server to send emails. It harmed her very severely, the letter was released just weeks before the election day. This letter might possibly have changed people’s opinion on Clinton and made them question her