SOC433H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Opinion Poll, Job Performance
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Lecture 4
2016 U.S Presidential election
• Electoral college votes: Trump: 306 Clinton: 232
• Popular vote: Trump 62,979,879 (46.1%) Clinton: 65,844,954 (48.2%)
• By state (electoral college) (not exactly representative of the total population)
• By county
• Urban- Rural divide
o Rural went to Trump and Urban went to Clinton
• People who had lower incomes voted for Clinton
• People who had middle or higher class voted for Trump (over 50,000)
o The middle class were scared by his inflamed rhetoric
• The country seems increasingly polarized
• Overall white people favoured Trump
o Over 90% of the people who voted for him were white
• Clinton got 88% of the Black peoples votes
o Less than Obama got
o Latinos also voted for Clinton
• Whites who were not that educated went for Trump (highschool diploma or less)
o This demographic was key to his victory
• In 2012, Obama lost whites without a college degree nationally by 25 points. Four years later,
Clinton did 6 points worse, losing these voters by 31 points. Had Clinton hit the marks that
Obama did, she would have won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Iowa fairly easily, as
well as (with narrower margins) Florida and Ohio.
• Women went to Clinton, but white women went to Trump in a big way
• Younger people went to Clinton but older people went to Trump
Media coverage of 2016 US election
• FIGURE 1: Media focused on issues that benefited Trump
• FIGURE 2: Immigration and Muslims/Islam were the two most widely covered substantive
issues of the campaign.
• FIGURE 3: Trump swamped media coverage (mostly negative, with a bit positive)
• FIGURE 4: Partisan Distribution of Media - The structure of the overall media landscape shows
media systems on the left and right operate differently. The asymmetric polarization of media is
evident in both open web linking and social media sharing measures. Prominent media on the left
are well distributed across the center, center-left, and left. On the right, prominent media are
highly partisan
• FIGURE 5: Twitter is a more partisan environment than the open web media landscape
• FIGURE 6: Facebook is more partisan than Twitter
• The media coverage tended to systematically favour trump
• Focused on issues that helped trump
• Sentences that are related to Clinton were based on scandals eg. Email scandal
• Focus on trump focused on his core issues
• Sentences by substantive topic
o Focused on muslim, Islam people
o Shows that the media coverage focused on immigration and Islam much more than any
other topic
o Trump focuses on solutions to the issued many raised by the media
o Trump focused stories are much more than other stories
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
In 2012, obama lost whites without a college degree nationally by 25 points. Clinton did 6 points worse, losing these voters by 31 points. The asymmetric polarization of media is evident in both open web linking and social media sharing measures. Prominent media on the left are well distributed across the center, center-left, and left. Global approval of us leadership plummets: the average approval rating of u. s leadership around the world, dropped 18% overall, approval rating dropped 40% in a year in canada, biggest change in approval ratings occurred in canada. In canada, 20% respondents said they approved of the job performance of u. s. leadership; 76% disapproved. The canadian respondents approval of the job performance of the u. s. leadership dropped 40% in one year (from 2016 to. 2017): germany replaced us as country with most respected leader, the u. s. is now just behind china at 31%, and just ahead of russia at 27%.
