An extra long rendition of the ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ kicking off the evening was the first indication that it was unlikely to be a short and sweet affair at the Groninger Forum on Tuesday.
The building was fairly star-spangled itself as a sold-out crowd of 350 America fans and political spectators packed into the various halls and viewing areas of the art house cinema on the Hereplein. The initial round of results, which saw three electoral college votes for Clinton and 24 for Trump, was not terribly surprising for the predominantly young crowd who turned out for the occasion.
With HRC in NYC
While hundreds were huddled around the screens at the Groninger Forum, RUG history and economics student Jasper Been was one of roughly 10,000 people at Hillary Clinton’s election night event in New York City. He was able to score a free ticket to Clinton’s party – Trump’s was by invitation only. ‘At first, she was winning in Florida with the first 30 per cent of precincts reporting, so everything was still going well then’, he says. ‘Everyone was really positive, but they were the true diehard Hillary fans’, he says. ‘Every poll that came in got a big cheer.’
But after waiting in line for three hours, he discovered upon finally getting in that only the lucky few who were personally invited had a view of the stage – complete with a glass ceiling – where Clinton was supposed to give her speech. After half an hour of just looking at the television screens in the convention centre, Been – who is also a board member of the GroenLinks youth faction Dwars – decided he could just as easily watch the results from Times Square.
‘When we made it to Times Square, it became clear that Trump was likelier to win it’, he says. ‘After we left the Clinton event, the results began changing dramatically.’ Some members of the midtown crowd, which was also solidly pro-Clinton, burst into tears – ‘Everyone was really in disbelief.’
He hung around until 2 a.m., and by the time he made it back to his hotel, Trump had won the night. ‘I’m glad that we left the Clinton event after all, he says – unlike the thousands of other people who remained there waiting all night for a speech that never came.
Redder
But the paper American flags in attendees’ hands began approaching half-mast as Florida appeared closer than expected and North Carolina also proved to be decidedly redder than polls had predicted. The general wisdom of many polls and, subsequently, much of the mainstream media in the months and weeks leading up to Tuesday night was that Hillary Clinton was highly likely to win. So how did it turn out like this?
‘They didn’t see so many angry voters coming’, according to Kees Aarts, dean of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, whose area of expertise includes opinion polling and political trust. ‘The most interesting group of voters is the hardest to reach, namely those who never participate in opinion poll research in the first place.’
Aarts says that poll respondents who decline to participate are often economically disadvantaged and younger voters, and their unwillingness to take part in polls can create a considerable blind spot. But among those who do reply, feeling obliged to give an answer they believe the person conducting the survey wants to hear rather than their honest opinion can also cause polls to be deceiving.
Anti-establishment
As of now, it also appears that Clinton may have ultimately won the popular vote, even though Trump won the magical 270 electoral college votes. But were those ballots for Trump genuinely in favour of his policies, or a statement against the political establishment – including Hillary Clinton – in America? ‘I think that those two things go hand in hand in this case’, Aarts says.
‘Trump has presented himself as the anti-establishment candidate, as a man of the people who is very clearly against the elite. I think that this is a very loud wake-up call for the political powers-that-be in America and in Europe, and it shows that this doesn’t just go away on its own. It’s more prominent than ever’, Aarts adds.
‘Make America great again’
RUG campus Fryslân dean Jouke de Vries agrees that the disaffected voters of America are indeed Trump’s target demographic, and that he was clearly more successful in his outreach to them than predicted. ‘That’s why I think his simple message of ‘Make America great again’ is so successful’, he says.
‘In globalisation, there are winners and losers, and I think a lot of losers are parts of America that have experienced the downsides of the economic process. I think many people feel that America is in decline because of the changing geo-political world order, and they can feel they are not as powerful as they were in the past. That is why they jumped onto the Trump bandwagon.’
Deflated
At the Groninger Forum, there were no Trump bandwagon riders to be found. Far more people were sincerely wearing Hillary shirts than ironically sporting ‘Make America great again’ hats. As the viewing party attendees began to trickle out the door in a sleepy stupor around 5 a.m., freezing rain glazed the sidewalk, the parked bikes and the inflatable Statue of Liberty out front. Lady Liberty would soon be deflated – it was back to business as usual at Groninger Forum on Wednesday morning, as it was for the rest of the world on the day after this grueling election.