On Tuesday November 8, 2016 the United States and the world got a huge shock.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget where I was and what I was doing that night.
We sat down to watch the election around 6 pm.
We cooked dinner with friends, poured red wine, and settled in on the couch, prepared to watch the first female president of the United States get elected.
I figured it would all be over and I would be in bed by midnight at the latest.
All of the polls and experts told us that Hillary was the favorite.
No one imagined that Trump would have been able to gain enough votes to even give Hillary a run for her money.
The early voting in the week prior to the election came in with Hillary in the lead and even early votes that night seemed to favor Hillary but as the night went on, we started to see Trump’s name at the top as the favorite in most of the important “swing states.”
Next he won Florida which is a very important state. Then he won Ohio and I had a sick feeling in my stomach that things were going to change in this country.
That was when we heard the announcers on every TV station start to show a slight panic in their voices.
They started talking faster.
They started questioning whether their own polls might have been wrong.
Finally somewhere around midnight or 1 am it became clear that Trump had taken the election.
We sat in the living room with our jaws dropped to the floor- stunned.
Why did Trump win the election?
- He converted traditionally Democratic Rust Belt states into Republican states because their economy is weak and they haven’t seen their job market recover in the same way that the rest of the country has
- Fewer black voters voted for Hillary compared with the number of black voters that elected Obama
- Some people who didn’t trust Hillary voted for Gary Johnson (third party) instead of Hillary
- Fewer young voters voted for Hillary
- (watch the episode to get more reasons)
We were shocked and disappointed by the result.
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