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COLUMN — I Knew Trump Would Win, How Didn’t You?

By Dawn Richard, Layout Editor
Posted 1:45 PM EST, Fri., Oct. 11, 2016

With Donald Trump now elected to be the 45th president of the United States, I have already noticed the dissatisfaction and confusion from the millennial generation from tweets and other forms of social media. Throughout his campaign, Trump continuously tried to tell the public that the polls being used showing Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, were mostly faulty. Trump also expressed his concerns with the lack of coverage that his campaign was receiving in comparison to the coverage that was allowed to Clinton’s. As someone who has been following this election closely since  Senator Bernie Sanders was still an option, I saw all of this coming and I always knew that Trump had a better chance of winning than what most people thought. I watched as Trump gained electoral votes with a calmness and this is how.

With humility, I deeply encourage my generation to learn how to go out and seek more knowledge that goes beyond their social media for the future. There’s no secret website I discovered on the web that told me exactly how this election would go, nor am I psychic. I am simply a journalist with a deep desire to constantly seek knowledge, and this election was no exception. I am almost baffled at how I was able to precisely predict the success of Trump after Sanders lost to Hillary in the primaries.

Looking back, I am also disappointed with the “political analysts” from major news outlets that constantly said that Trump had little to no chance to win. I was checking my New York Times app daily and they always said Trump’s chances to win the presidency were around 10 to 15 percent. So I have a major concern with how Trump went from having almost no chances of winning presidency to now having the great honor to be inaugurated in January of 2017 as our next president.

If you were listening to the political conversations leading up to election night you should have witnessed the “leaners” as one political analyst explained it. Trump had people that didn’t openly want to say, “Yes. I support Trump and so should you!” Instead many people would “lean” in to someone they knew and would whisper, “I actually am thinking of voting for Trump.” These “leaners” had a tremendous impact in the election at the polls and greatly tied in to Trump’s win which was another reason I was in no shock as he won key states such as Florida.

I personally believe that millennials did not think that Trump could truly pull of gaining presidency, but they thought this without realizing so much of the information that was being presented to us was from the media and social media was somewhat faulty and inaccurate.

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For those in my generation that are shaken with fear or worry, I hope you use those feelings to challenge yourself to understand your country better and the way politics work, along with learning to question everything you see, even the major news outlets you follow. I encourage everyone to be more adept to what’s going on next time, even if it means just talking to people that are opponents of what you believe in, reading new media outlets, etc.

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