Masks and Emasculation: Populist Crisis Rhetoric and the 2020 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422110112
Author(s):  
Meredith Neville-Shepard
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Preventative Measure ◽  
Litmus Test

This essay illustrates how Donald Trump engaged in what I call “populist crisis rhetoric” throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and coinciding 2020 U.S. presidential campaign cycle. By performing a critical rhetorical analysis of textual fragments surrounding how Trump addressed the preventative measure of mask-wearing, I show how he rejected the role of comforter-in-chief and instead opted for the role of victim-in-chief. Specifically, turning the bare face into a litmus test of Trump loyalism, his rhetoric suggested that masks threatened masculinity and functioned as a form of anti-choice bodily oppression.

scholarly journals Micro-Expressions of Fear During the 2016 Presidential Campaign Trail: Their Influence on Trait Perceptions of Donald Trump

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick A. Stewart ◽  
Elena Svetieva
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Contrast Study ◽  
Leadership Traits ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
National Convention ◽  
Acceptance Speech

The 2016 United States presidential election was exceptional for many reasons; most notably the extreme division between supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In an election that turned more upon the character traits of the candidates than their policy positions, there is reason to believe that the non-verbal performances of the candidates influenced attitudes toward the candidates. Two studies, before Election Day, experimentally tested the influence of Trump’s micro-expressions of fear during his Republican National Convention nomination acceptance speech on how viewers evaluated his key leadership traits of competence and trustworthiness. Results from Study 1, conducted 3 weeks prior to the election, indicated generally positive effects of Trump’s fear micro-expressions on his trait evaluations, particularly when viewers were first exposed to his opponent, Clinton. In contrast, Study 2, conducted 4 days before Election Day, suggests participants had at that point largely established their trait perceptions and were unaffected by the micro-expressions.

Feeling protected: protective masculinity and femininity from Donald Trump and Joe Biden to Jacinda Ardern

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Gendered Leadership ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Negative Feelings

This article emphasises the role that political leaders’ discourse plays in evoking positive emotions among citizens in uncertain times, such as feeling protected, secure and proud in addition to the leaders’ (often interconnected) role of encouraging negative feelings such as fear, resentment and anger. The article argues that such discourse frequently involves performances of gendered leadership. It cites examples from a range of countries to illustrate the points being made, but focuses on the 2020 US presidential election which saw a contest between two forms of protective masculinity: Trump’s exclusionary, macho, hypermasculinity versus Biden’s more socially inclusive, empathetic and softer version. Trump’s protective masculinity failure over managing the COVID-19 pandemic was arguably one of the factors contributing to his electoral defeat, while Biden aimed to make voters feel safer and more protected than under Trump. The article also provides examples of protective femininity, with a particular focus on the discourse of New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern.

scholarly journals EFFECT OF 2008 AND 2016 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN THE INDONESIAN STOCK MARKET

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn Evelyn ◽  
Sautma Ronni Basana
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Black President ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. Presidential election was an event that received widespread attention across the globe. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barrack Obama nominated to be the first black President. In 2016, Hillary Clinton poten­tially becomes the first woman President in American history, while the other can­di­da­te, Donald Trump, ma­de some unpopular and controversial proposals. The purpose of this paper is to ana­­­lyse whether the 2008 and 2016 election were considered as the rele­vant information in the Indonesian Stock Market (IDX). The daily closing prices of all all share listed in IDX wo­uld be examined used event stu­­­dy method. The results provide insight about the res­pon­si­­­veness of IDX parti­ci­pants to the U.S. Pre­si­den­­tial election event that could be used in decision making.

“It’s Largely a Rigged System”: Voter Confidence and the Winner Effect in 2016

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 854-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betsy Sinclair ◽  
Steven S. Smith ◽  
Patrick D. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Election Outcome ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Election Administration ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Election System ◽  
Competing Hypotheses

The 2016 presidential election provided a unique opportunity to revisit two competing hypotheses for how voters establish their perceptions of electoral integrity. First, mass public opinion is believed to derive from elite messages. In the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump maintained that the election system was “rigged,” while election administration experts and officials received considerable media coverage in their efforts to counter Trump’s claims. Second, literature on voter confidence has established a “winner effect”—voters who cast ballots for winners are more likely than voters on the losing side to believe their vote was counted correctly. Thus, voters were exposed to two theoretically opposite effects. In this paper, we find that the “winner” effect mitigates the effects from strong pre-election cues from elites. We also show the effect of pre-election attention to the rigging issue, find a symmetry of the election outcome effect for winners and losers, and reconsider our explanations of the winner effect. Finally, we go beyond the existing studies of the winner effect to consider the kind of citizens who are most susceptible to that effect.

“I’m (Not) with Her”

2020 ◽  
pp. 209-240
Author(s):  
Melissa Ames
Keyword(s):  
Homeland Security ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Debates ◽  
Final Study ◽  
Live Broadcast ◽  
Ongoing Dialogue

The final study presented in this book focuses on one of the most impactful events of the 21st century: the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, which likely ended as it did in part due to a combination of the cultural fears discussed throughout the previous chapters. For example, the presidential campaign run by Donald Trump played on post-9/11 insecurities about homeland security and employed fear-based, divisive rhetoric about race, gender, class, and sexuality. The acceptance of this rhetoric -- and his ultimate victory -- may be explained by the process of phobic construction highlighted in this text. Chapter 10 analyzes the final months of the election cycle, in particular the televised presidential debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton and the ways in which they stimulated conversation among viewers during the live broadcast and ongoing dialogue and activism beyond it.

scholarly journals Why Would Hispanics Vote for Trump? Explaining the Controversy of the 2016 Election

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Quinn Galbraith ◽  
Adam Callister
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Illegal Immigrants ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Hispanic Voters

Donald Trump was particularly vocal in shaping his presidential campaign around policies perceived as being anti-immigration. Consequently, many were shocked that Hispanic support for the Republican Party did not drop in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, our survey, which consisted of 1,080 people of Hispanic descent living in the United States, found that 74% of Hispanic Trump voters were in favor of generally deporting all illegal immigrants. Our results suggest that the population of Hispanics who voted in the 2016 presidential election was, on average, more conservative than the overall population of Hispanics living in the United States. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that issues such as the economy, health care, and education were more important to Hispanic voters than were issues related to immigration.

scholarly journals How did that happen? Making sense of the 2016 US presidential election result through the lens of the ‘leadership moment’

Leadership ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Ladkin
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Relational Leadership ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Election Result ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Leaders And Followers ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
The Creation

This article analyses the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 US election through the lens of the ‘leadership moment’. A phenomenologically based framework, the ‘leadership moment’ theorizes leadership as an event which occurs when context, purpose, followers and leaders align. Perception links these four parts of leadership, in particular the perceptions followers have of their context and the relative strengths competing leaders have to respond to that context. By considering how key voters perceived Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump in relation to their circumstances, the ‘leadership moment’ offers a way of making sense of the election result, as well as emphasising the importance of perceptions of context in the achievement of leadership more generally. Importantly, it highlights the economic and identity-based dynamics which attracted voters to Trump, and which remain in play no matter who holds the Presidential office. Theoretically, the argument contributes to the emerging field of relational leadership in two ways: by looking beyond the ‘between space’ of leaders and followers, to include the ‘around space’ in which those relations are embedded, and by emphasizing the role of affective perceptions (rather than discourse) in the creation of those perceptions.

Moral Foundations, System Justification, and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election

The Forum ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Weinschenk ◽  
Christopher T. Dawes
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political System ◽  
System Justification ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Voter Decision Making

Abstract We examine the role of moral foundations and system justification in explaining support for Donald Trump in the 2016 general election using data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. A number of important findings emerge. First, we find that there are important partisan and ideological differences when it comes to moral foundations and system justification. Second, we find that moral foundations predict support for Trump above and beyond traditional determinants of vote choice such as ideology, partisanship, religiosity, and demographic characteristics. Third, we find that a measure of political system justification is not related to vote choice in our sample. This casts doubt on the idea that support for Trump was mostly about protesting the political system. This paper adds to the growing body of research showing that psychological concepts and theories are important in understanding voter decision-making in the 2016 presidential election and in elections more generally.

scholarly journals The fragile blue wall: analyzing geographies of the 2020 US presidential election

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
John Agnew ◽  
Michael Shin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Election Polls

US presidential elections are peculiar contests based on mediation by an Electoral College in which votes are aggregated on a state-by-state basis. In 2020, as in 2016, the outcome was decided by a set of states where the two candidates were equally competitive: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Two geographical stories tend to dominate accounts of what happened in 2020. The first story is based on red (Republican) versus blue (Democratic) states, and the second story relies upon rural versus urban biases in support for the two parties. After showing how and where Donald Trump outperformed the expectations of pre-election polls, we consider these two geographical stories both generally, and more specifically, in relation to the crucial swing states. Through an examination of the successes of Joe Biden in Arizona and Georgia, two states long thought of as “red”, and the role of the suburbs and local particularities in producing this result, we conclude that the polarization of the United States into two hostile electorates is exaggerated. 

Twitter Versus the Traditional Media

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Partial Explanation ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Campaign Messages ◽  
Social Media Platforms

In the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, both the traditional media and social media platforms, like Twitter, were critical in attempts to influence voters. Prior to the 2016 presidential election, the assumption was that campaign messages sent through the traditional media are perceived as more effectual by the public than those sent via Twitter. But after the election of Donald Trump, there is now a sense that things may have changed. In this new era of American politics and campaign discourse, do campaign messages sent via Twitter resonate equally with messages sent through the traditional media? This study attempts to address this question by utilizing a survey experiment to test whether campaign messages sent using USA Today headlines were perceived as more believable and persuasive by potential voters than messages sent via Twitter. The results suggest that campaign messages about candidates sent via Twitter—regardless of the candidate of focus—resonate just as strongly with potential voters as those sent via the traditional media. This provides a potential partial explanation for the shocking rise of Donald Trump’s political fortunes.

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