Ashcroft - Hopes and Fears: Trump, Clinton, the voters and the future

FOR THOSE OF US WHO HAD STAYED UP to watch the results trickle in from Britains referendum on the European Union, there was something eerily familiar about the night of 8 November, 2016. For the second time in a year, the people had delivered a verdict that would surprise and horrify many in the political world and beyond.

For the previous two months, the Lord Ashcroft Polls team had travelled the United States to listen to the people who would decide whether to put Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House. In our focus groups, we spoke to partisans and especially undecided voters of all ages and backgrounds in seven swing states which turned out to be critical to the result: Wisconsin, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and Ohio. I wrote week by week about what they had to say indeed listeners to the Ashcroft In America podcast heard first hand, as well as my interviews with eminent participants in and observers of the American political scene such as Mitt Romney, Howard Dean, Rachel Maddow, Karl Rove, Joe Trippi and Jon Sopel.

Since I never make predictions about politics, it would be a bit much to claim now that we had any particular foresight of Donald Trumps victory. In any case, forecasting the result was not the purpose of the project. But looking back at the focus group findings, together with the results of a thirty-thousand sample poll we conducted over the final weeks, we can see how it happened.

I should make clear that I had no dog in this fight. As someone who has conducted political polling in the UK and Europe for over a decade, most recently focusing on the forces at play in the Brexit referendum, I was naturally drawn to such a fascinating contest. I came to observe, listen and learn, and to report what I found.

In this book I have brought together that research with two aims. First, I want to help understand how the result came about, because I think it can be, and in some quarters has been, misunderstood particularly in Britain, where many have not grasped the appeal of Trump, or the widespread antipathy for his opponent. It is one thing to wish, as many do, that the voters had made a different decision. But it is quite another to say they must have decided as they did because they were duped or misled, or that they cast their vote out of ignorance or prejudice. I dont think that was the case at all. As we will see in the chapters describing how people saw the choice between Trump and Clinton, and on the parallels between the presidential election and Brexit, people approached the decision as electorates always do: as a choice between imperfect alternatives and uncertain futures. They had to weigh their desire for change against the risk that came with it. And seeing both candidates failings, they had to judge which amounted to the bigger disqualification from office. Whatever you may think about the decision the voters made, they made it with their eyes open.

My second aim is to consider what the 2016 election tells us about the future. Our analysis of the various divisions in American society, together with the competing outlooks and agendas of the different kinds of voters who make up the new American electorate, reveals the scale of the challenge facing both parties. The Democrats predicament is perhaps the most obvious. A common trait among losing parties that I have observed in my research over the years is the inclination to claim a moral victory. One manifestation of this tendency among Trumps opponents has been to point to the popular vote, which Clinton carried with a margin of nearly 2.9 million. But comforting though it may be, this fact is a distraction from the more important question for the party: why it lost supposedly solidly Democratic counties in states that had not voted for a Republican presidential nominee since Reagan. The temptation will be to say that voters who switched sides will soon realise what a terrible mistake they have made and come flooding back, but this only postpones the reckoning with the real reasons for defeat that must come before a party can return to office. Much will depend upon who has the upper hand in determining the partys direction not least because, as our polling shows, the values and priorities of its activist core are at the other end of the spectrum from many of the voters it needs to re-enlist.

But the other side, too, has much to think about. The United States has never been so diverse demographically. At the same time, it hasnt been so politically monochrome since the 1920s. The GOP now controls the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate (not to mention thirty-one of the fifty state governorships and thirty-two state legislatures). If this amounts to a stunning victory, it creates its own headaches: however little Trump has in common with his Republican colleagues, as far as the voters are concerned, with one party in charge there will be no excuse not to get things done. But what, exactly? There will be tensions to resolve, not just between the administration and Capitol Hill, but within the Republican voting coalition between the cultural conservatives who constitute much of the partys base, and more moderate voters who worry most about healthcare and jobs.

Many look at the political scene, especially in America, and see plenty of reasons for despair: a more rancorous tone, increasingly bitter partisanship fuelled by a more fragmented and unforgiving media, readiness to believe the worst of opponents, and a terrible fate at the hands of his or her own supporters for any politician who dares work across the aisle. But I think our research also points to some reasons for hope. People recognise and regret the divisions before them. There is a desire to see problems solved. And while some worry about the outcome, others have had their faith in democracy restored. The electoral process propelled to the forefront a candidate who gave voice to peoples frustrations, and put him in the White House. Many who had felt ignored by Washington for as long as they could remember found that their votes really could change things whether to the astonishment, dismay, trepidation or delight of everyone else.