Nov 19, 2020

The Political Dismay That Entangles Around the Nation’s Main Political Parties

Written By: Bricen Boudreault

The date of November 3rd, 2020 has been anticipated to come for over four years now due to the uprile and the call from the masses to urge citizens and voters to vote for what they believe to be a potential transition in power by either retaining Donald Trump as president or allow Joe Biden to take the wheel for our nation. Even if an individual wants change or to keep things the way they are, many individuals from both sides of the spectrum have reasonably made claims and plans to get a larger voter turnout then the election in 2016 where many demographics/groups in our nation were undervalued and had less of an impact(this includes minority groups such a the African Americans and Hispanics of our nation). Through social media’s influence and observing the meltdown that has formed from the pandemic and more, a new fuel to the flame emerged as many youthful voters (Generation Z voters) pledged to show their voice and anger towards the control that Washington presides over our dear nation. Through the use of sharing information and posts on platforms such as Tik Tok and Instagram, many users are able to see a whole variety of sources/content that exemplifies the constraints and difficulty in both parties(this goes to show the growing divide between the two polarized parties).

At the young age of sixteen, I remember getting my permit test and decided at that time to register to vote so that when the time finally comes for me this November, I would expect that I would have done my research and know who I should vote for that helps to encapsulate my political agenda. By taking AP Government last year with my old football coach as my teacher, I had the opportunity to volunteer and do some exit polls outside my senior center to get some data for my class to see an estimate for the results of votes in Tewksbury for the primaries that occurred earlier this year. Feeling morally obligated, while going home for the Halloween weekend till Election day, I took turns with a couple of old high school classmates to devise a similar scaled exit poll for the Presidential Election this time around. Similar to the Primary election earlier this year, the poll asked for the individual’s information that ranges from age, gender, house income, religion and race. The second portion is the area where the individual fills out the option if they voted for either Trump, Biden, or a third party on the ballot and the Senators(the Senators were optional to fill out). The last portion then was to focus on issues that were focused on being partisan towards a particular topic where we asked the voters to rank three of the top issues by order of importance by their own ideology out of a list that includes issues pertaining to COVID Relief, Economy, Civil Injustice, Education, Healthcare, Military, Business Funding and more. Compared to the exit poll results we got from the primaries, we garnered over six hundred responses from three different locations which are about two hundred and fifty more than what we got from the Primary and about one hundred more results than the 2016 election despite the dramatic increase in mail-in votes. By comparing the full actual results of votes in Tewksbury, the percentages that reflect the two main party candidates were similar to our results as we got a 54 percent/44 percent split with Biden to Trump while the actual was about 52 percent to 46 percent. Similar ties and assumptions can be made from the acquisition of data of the primaries to this Presidential election ranging from the ideas that people whose home income is higher than $200,000 are more likely to vote for Trump and individuals of color are highly regarded to side with Biden. The individuals who selected Biden were more prone to select topics such as COVID Relief, Healthcare, and Education while the people who voted for Trump selected issues in regards to Business, Military, and the Economy as a whole. It was also debated till the last minute about keeping a comment section available due to the potential obscurity of notions/words that could be written down but due to some of our curiosity of understanding why a certain person chose a particular person or not and their take on certain issues, we decided to keep it in but have a maximum one hundred character limit to keep it concise and somewhat “formal”.While taking a gander at some of the responses, many who voted for Biden decided to bash on how Trump has evaluated and led the country and pointing out his flaws and the concern that presides with him in office while the Trump voters took a similar approach to bash and call out the potential “catastrophe” that could ensue if Biden was president.

Looking back at the results again, a similar sort of perspective/intuition was made to project the same sort of “political dispute” and opposition back in 2016 by a reporter named Jonathon Rauch for The Atlantic. In his article, he does a pretty spot-on job at the beginning depicting how 2020 will look like by stating “that Trump is retiring from his first wretched term in office and is trying to bolster enough support to win his next” and by going into the article speaking more about “how the political parties no longer have intelligible boundaries due to the political behavior that is behaved by the voters of our nation”. As the tides change every four or so years, the importance of certain policies and ideologies changes to help impact the potential results of a certain candidate in an election due to Rauch’s thought process for “the idea of political party leaders are viewed more as anachronism” and that “the chaos of the environment of everyday life changes a certain leader and not the other way around”[1]. For many, Biden fits a role for many to pick in this election due to the uprising anger and disputes that they have with the incumbent President Trump so terms such as “Settle for Biden” sparked like a wildfire due to the party polarization that many Democrats have and even some of the Republicans have agreed upon like former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Alongside this, growing disconnection leading up to the election this November helped to spike trifling opinions to what the executive branch has been doing in likes of pursuing a push to place Amy Coney Barrett into the Supreme Court by members of the Senate and President Trump as well as the civil concerns that lies between BLM and the government as a whole. These polarizing topics/issues help to express the types of disconnections that are held between the public and these large national officials due to how many are scared in today’s time about their rights and liberty in the United States. After seeing that Biden won the popular vote by over five million votes while also garnering enough electoral votes to become the forty-sixth president, it is crazy to see a government official like Mitch McConnell who is backing up Trump about the legitimacy of the election. Stating points such as “how many of the states as of now haven’t finalized any of the votes” and that “President Trump has the legal authority to challenge the testament of the election results due to falsehood of a percentage of votes”. Chuck Schumer is one of many Democrats and other people who understands the extension of power this can bring to the POTUS and tries to make the reason that our current process for counting the ballots is “practical and correct”[2]. Although this sort of issue can stand in the way for Trump, the deficit of votes and the recounts of votes in states such as Georgia provides the legitimacy for Trump’s claims to be low and invalid. With this in mind, one could feel troubled and not understanding the transition between Trump’s administration to Biden’s administration between this lame-duck period as it was stated by the president before the election that if it did not go his way, this transition of power in the executive will not go very swimmingly. More questions about the Trump administration’s legitimacy in power can come from the stagnate rate of turnover that he has compared to the last couple of presidents due to having an alone “ninety-one percent turnover this year”. A lot of his cabinet members have either been resigned or have felt flustered by the Trump administration by criticizing the work ethic and decisions made by the president[3].  This lack of trust and competence in selecting long-term members of his cabinet and other important positions of the executive scares many citizens and voters in the process due to rethinking if he is functional enough to run our nation properly at a difficult time such as this. With it seeming that he has been just campaigning for the last four years now of his presidency, the correct initiatives that many voters in 2016 saw have slipped away due to the lackluster amount of conspiracies, corruptions, and questions that are brought by him and his people.

This sort of disparities/divides towards the citizens of our nation helps to encapsulate how a certain ideology or concept of the way of life we live in can impact one’s own political structure of how a government should be run and by who. By linking the exit poll answers to Chapter three of The Enduring Debate by David Canon, parallels can be made at the notions of “the relationship of poor people and rich people in society” and “how these certain traits can affect one’s own perspectives of the spectrum in which we classify ourselves as a collected nation”. Other areas that surround “trust in our own government’s legitimacy” and “the measurement of civic health” are included as examples to exemplify the direct effects that are “ingrown” in each and every one of us due to personal affiliation with the topic and the response that we project based on a certain leader[,4]. With the increased effects of partisanship, people often branch and latch onto a certain topic by only having one valid/solid connection to it rather than completely spreading “the love” of having the same sort of political ideology around as the Democratic party or Republican party(that’s why it is common to see mistrust and corruption in some leaders due to their other beliefs in other areas of policies). 

An era in which we are also dealing with an international pandemic also has played as a major outcome for how the election went and why there is tension on both sides of the spectrum. With the United States leading in over ten and a half million current cases, issues with over hospitalization and nearly a quarter of a million deaths, it is easy to point out the current administration for their carelessness of how they have handled coronavirus. Ties could be made in the same light as 9/11, Watergate, and more scandalous and horrific events in the past where political leaders are put on the major spotlight of it all to give their two cents. In an article by Bloomberg, this sort of concept is “idealized by showing how remnants of these events have stood till today’s time, where partisanship and prevention take control to try and persuade a group of people for change”[5]. Essentially, the idea states that due to the mischief of not locking down the country properly, making irrational claims and theories about certain topics/people, and being truthful to the public, President Trump was not re-elected president due to the pressure of certain policies and morals that a majority of our citizens stand for that the current president is unable to fulfill.

Overall, it’s been remarkable to see the voter turnout for this election due to the prior comments and statements made about the selection back in the election of 2016. Being a part of this young and hopeful generation of progressives seems delightful to know that we have the power to influence decisions and ideas towards the government through the likes of social media and civic engagement in any form. The exit polls helped to also further my understanding of the demographics/sample size of people of Tewksbury, Massachusetts and their own mental process of what type of president/political leaders they idealize the most. It also makes me skeptical to know what the next incoming couple of years have in store for us due to the existing divide that was illuminated again through this election as a battle could have been said to be won for one side but the war still rages on in our young divided nation.

Work Cited
[1] Rauch, Story by Jonathan. “How American Politics Went Insane.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 19 Apr. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/.

[2] “McConnell, Other GOP Leaders Back Trump in Questioning Election Results.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 9 Nov. 2020, www.wsj.com/video/mcconnell-other-gop-leaders-back-trump-in-questioning-election-results/8BDD420F-44B1-4B03-99EE-E69D908908C1.html.

[3] Tenpas, Kathryn Dunn, and Ph.D. “Tracking Turnover in the Trump Administration.” Brookings, Brookings, 9 Nov. 2020, www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/.

[4] Canon, David T., et al. The Enduring Debate: Classic and Contemporary Readings in American Politics. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. [Chapter Three, Page 28-20] [5] Lauerman, John. “Partisanship and Prevention.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 3 Nov. 2020, www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-11-03/partisanship-and-prevention.

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