POST-TRUMP DIPLOMACY OUTLOOK

The electoral defeat of Republican candidate Donald Trump and the return to power of the Democrats with Joseph Biden cannot be left unexamined, considering its implications for international relations. Here we present notes from NERINT Strategic Analysis, written by experts and divided into thematic issues and bilateral relations between the United States and the most relevant nations at the global level.

Life Expectancy and Voting Patterns in 2018 US House of Representative Elections

IntroductionIn the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, voters in communities with recent stagnation or decline in life expectancy were more likely to vote for the Republican candidate than in prior Presidential elections. We aimed to assess the association between change in life expectancy and voting patterns in 2018 U.S. House of Representative elections.MethodsWith data on county-level life expectancy from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and voting data from Harvard Dataverse, we used weighted multivariable linear regression to estimate the association between the change in life expectancy from 1980 to 2014 and the proportion of votes for the Republican candidate in the 2018 House election.ResultsAmong 3,107 U.S counties, change in life expectancy at the county level was negatively associated with Republican share of the vote in 2018 House of Representative elections (parameter estimate −7.3, 95% confidence interval, −8.1 to −6.5). With the inclusion of state, sociodemographic, and economic variables in the model, the association was attenuated and no longer statistically significant (parameter estimate −0.9; 95% CI, −2.2 to 0.4).ConclusionCounties with a less positive trajectory in life expectancy were more likely to vote for Republican candidates in 2018 U.S. House of Representatives elections, but the association was mediated by demographic, social and economic factors.

Electoral College bias and the 2020 presidential election

Donald Trump’s 2016 win despite failing to carry the popular vote has raised concern that 2020 would also see a mismatch between the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the Electoral College. This paper shows how to forecast the electoral vote in 2020 taking into account the unknown popular vote and the configuration of state voting in 2016. We note that 2016 was a statistical outlier. The potential Electoral College bias was slimmer in the past and not always favoring the Republican candidate. We show that in past presidential elections, difference among states in their presidential voting is solely a function of the states’ most recent presidential voting (plus new shocks); earlier history does not matter. Based on thousands of simulations, our research suggests that the bias in 2020 probably will favor Trump again but to a lesser degree than in 2016. The range of possible outcomes is sufficiently wide, however, to even include some possibility that Joseph Biden could win in the Electoral College while barely losing the popular vote.

The behaviour of US investors during presidential elections

PurposeThis study examines the influence of the presidential elections on the behaviour of US investors according to the trading activity of two of the most popular investment vehicles: exchange-traded funds and close-ended funds.Design/methodology/approachBased on the fact that investors in these two investment vehicles differ by, at least, two demographic factors that influence investment decisions, age and labour status, inferences are made about the degree of interest and the amount of trading activity that presidential elections provoke.FindingsThe evidence demonstrates that, during the last four US presidential elections, exchange-traded funds' investors trade significantly more than close-ended funds' investors during several event windows centred on the day of an election in which a republican candidate is elected. Close-ended funds' investors are more active during the election of a democratic candidate, although the statistical evidence in that regard is weak. Thus, it appears reasonable to conclude that younger investors who are gainfully employed are induced to trade by a presidential election in which a republican candidate prevails. Apparently, a democratic victory does not provoke the same behaviour.Originality/valueAlthough the relation between politics and economics is not an unexplored topic, it is not clear whether the presidential elections themselves constitute an event that triggers the trading behaviour of investors.

“Aspects of an anti-Trump guerrilla campaign”

During the 2016 presidential election debates, Donald Trump became the subject of a guerrilla campaign initiated by the anarchist group Indicline, through which five grotesque nude statues of the Republican candidate were installed in various cities in the United States. The message was not accidental considering that nude photos of Melania Trump from the beginning of her modelling career were re-published simultaneously. Through aesthetic antithesis, the image of the naked body was supposed to stigmatize the couple in public perception, starting from an artificial reality created in the everyday landscape, but which had to become viral in the online environment.

An Ignored Jurisprudence: Bush v. Gore

This chapter examines Justice Antonin Scalia’s actions in the notorious case of Bush v. Gore. There, five conservative justices voted to stop the recount of the Florida vote in the election of 2000 and make George W. Bush president. The chapter outlines the position of the justices and focuses on the two opinions that Scalia joined, a per curiam for seven relying on the Equal Protection Clause and a concurrence by Chief Justice William Rehnquist for three of the seven based on Article II. The chapter argues that both of those opinions contradicted virtually all of Scalia’s jurisprudential principles, including those involving standing and the political question doctrine. Further, it argues that both of those opinions—together with the solo opinion Scalia wrote supporting a stay of the Florida recount and certain other contextual factors—demonstrate that Scalia’s actions in the case were deeply personal and inspired by his intense desire to see the Republican candidate win the election.

Running for Office and Running a Business

In 1971, outgoing Governor Nunn handpicked Tom Emberton to be the Republican candidate for governor and Host to run for lieutenant governor. At that time, the two offices were elected separately, so the two men were not on the same ticket. Emberton lost to Democrat Wendell Ford, and Host lost to Democrat Julian Carroll. After his defeat, Host decided to return to the private sector and established Jim Host & Associates. The Lexington Tourist and Convention Commission also hired him to serve as its executive director and tasked him with obtaining an urban renewal grant for downtown Lexington that would include the construction of a convention center, arena, hotel, and retail shopping mall. Host became the executive director of the Lexington Center Board, which developed plans for the new complex. He convinced University of Kentucky president Otis Singletary to move UK basketball games downtown to the new arena, oversaw the bidding process to construct the site, convinced Hyatt to build a hotel at the location, and oversaw the building of Rupp Arena, the mall, and the Heritage Hall convention center.

School Teasing and Bullying After the Presidential Election

In response to media reports of increased teasing and bullying in schools following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we investigated its prevalence with a Virginia school climate survey completed by approximately 155,000 seventh- and eighth-grade students in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Survey results were mapped onto presidential election results for each school division’s locality. In localities favoring the Republican candidate, there were higher adjusted rates of students reporting that (a) they had experienced some form of bullying in the past year (18% higher) and (b) “students in this school are teased or put down because of their race or ethnicity” (9% higher). For these two outcomes, there were no meaningful differences prior to the election. These results provide modest support for educator concerns about increased teasing and bullying since the 2016 presidential election in some schools and warrant further investigation.

Semiotic space invasion: The case of Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign

This paper uses a social semiotic perspective to analyze Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage of the US presidential campaign from 16 June 2015, when he announced his candidacy for nomination as the Republican candidate until 8 November 2016, when he was elected as President of the United States. The paper argues that one of the keys to Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage was that, in presenting himself and his agenda, he foregrounded interpersonal meaning by making himself the focus of attention of the campaign through strategies that invaded various semiotic spaces to form a “sub-semiosphere” of Trump dogma. The effects of this were that what he did and what he said captured the majority of media attention at the expense of his opponents, enabling him to win the election, despite his complete lack of background experience as a politician.

Glass Houses and Friends-and-Neighbors Voting: An Exploratory Analysis of the Impact of Political Scandal on Localism

The 2017 U.S. Senate Special Election in Alabama, which was decided on 12 December 2017, was one of the most contentious and scandal-laden political campaigns in recent memory. The Republican candidate, Roy Moore, gained notoriety during the 2017 campaign when a number of women alleged to national media that as teenagers they were subject to sexual advances by Moore, who was then in his early 30s and serving as a local assistant district attorney. The process and results of this particular election provide the heretofore unexamined impact of political scandal on localism or friends-and-neighbors voting in political contests. Based on data from the 2017 special election in Alabama, econometric results presented here suggest that a candidate who is embroiled in political scandal suffers an erosion in the usual friends-and-neighbors effect on his or her local vote share. In this particular case, the scandal hanging over Moore eroded all of the friends-and-neighbors effect that would have been expected (e.g., about five percentage points) in his home county, as well as about 40% of the advantage Moore had at home over his opponent in terms of constituent political ideology.