Donald Trump is fundamentally different from any other single candidate that has run for the office of the president. Holding no prior political or administrative roles, he was able to defy all prior political norms by launching a campaign that ended with him in the White House at the start of 2017. Seven years later, the framework of the American election system has been reshaped.
The formula for Trump’s rise to the office of the White House has been, for the most part, relatively uncharted. The rhetoric Trump notoriously espoused sought to foremost divide the nation and sow discontent within specific pockets of the electorate rather than unify it.
From the outset of his campaign, Donald Trump sought to use the divides in the country as a political tool. An eight-year period with two consecutive Obama administrations, had caused political polarization to surface as a knee-jerk response. This is something he sought to exploit in his 2016 campaign.
Whether for or against him, the reality is that Trump is a highly politically astute figure. He quickly picked out the pressure points in the political system, the issues that sparked American’s anxieties, and used these to build his foundation in politics.
It became apparent early on that immigration was an incredibly divisive issue in American politics as people felt their security was threatened by the influx of those from outside of the United States’ (U.S.) borders. The reality of this is that the U.S. has had a long history of immigration. According to the Migration Policy Insitutue, in 2016, a total 1.49 million foreign-born individuals moved to the United States, a 7% increase from the 1.38 million who arrived in 2015.
The reality however is that the share of the immigrant population in the United States has consistently remained at under 15% in the past 150 years. Immigration, at the point at which Trump was speaking, was not a breakaway from typical U.S. policy discussions, but a core asset of it.
After being elected president in 1981, Former President Ronald Raegan said that “Our nation is a nation of immigrants. More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.” Trump’s main policies in his first election surrounded immigration and the economy. His core message was to fix the country by giving the blue-collar Americans, who he claimed had been forgotten by Obama, a fairer deal.
The other thing that the former president was incredibly talented at was making point attacks to undermine the strength of his political opponent. In the first month of the campaign, Trump had assumed the epithet “Crooked Hilary” for presumptive Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton. This, and the messaging of untrustworthiness and a lack of transparency that surrounded her election bid ended up creating fundamental damage for her campaign.
As a former reality TV star best known for firing people in front of an audience of millions of Americans, the firebrand elements of Trump’s personality, much to the awe and chagrin of many of his political opponents and detractors, consistently worked in his favor. As a candidate, he used this to double down and hyperbolise prior claims which is where we saw rhetoric about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and a barrage of unvetted information around the Clinton campaign being influenced by Russia.
Winning by a margin of 77 electoral college votes (304-227) this strategy set a precedent and will continue to be remembered, as an electoral success. Former President Trump’s completely unorthodox run to the White House starkly proved that politics does not come in one form. However, if his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 proves anything, it is that the demographics wants and needs in the country are constantly changing.
Eight long years later he is using the exact same strategy on the back of the Biden and Harris’ administration. The biggest question of course being, does this brand of dog whistle politics still work? The answer is “yes.” Trump has been able to tap into the same supports from his base, whilst studies show the trending of younger, particularly male, 18–29-year-old voters towards the former president. The possibility of a second Trump presidency is very real and would showcase the categoric potential of a political campaign built on division as a path to the White House.