How Trump Destroyed Pluralistic Ignorance to Win the Election
Donald Trump’s stunning electoral college victory presidency sent reverberations across the world. All the pollsters had projected a landslide Clinton victory, and with Trump’s bombastic and crude demeanor, he seemed to be the last person many would expect to ascend to the leader of the free world. How did Trump manage to win the presidency?
The answer lies in the concept of pluralistic ignorance – the notion that most people within a society hold a particular view in private about a certain topic and believe that most of society holds contrary views. This phenomenon occurs when there is a lack of open communication between members of society.
In most elections, the media is a credible source of information among much of the population, and heavily shapes public opinion. However, people often hold personal views that are at odds with the views being pushed by the media. These private views don’t result in any political mobilization because most people believe that their views are uncommon, due to the media, so it is usually not worth it from the perspective of individual people to try to organize a movement that contradicts what they perceive most people believe. There is only a direct benefit to political activism if there are others who hold similar views; trying to start a political movement by yourself is a waste of time. In essence, every person has a certain neighbor threshold for political mobilization, and if the media gives off the impression that none of their neighbors hold similar views to them, there is no collective action.
Republican candidates often fall victim to the onslaught of criticism from large media outlets. The usual response from these candidates is to simply shrug off this derision and move on with their campaign. Trump’s campaign was a complete departure from this norm. Instead of appearing helpless in the wake of these verbal attacks, Trump fought back persistently by directly addressing the perceived media bias. This severely weakened the public’s perception of media, and lessened their influence. In addition, Trump was able to tap into personal feelings felt by much of the public through his Tweets and off-the-cuff remarks at rallies. The role of social media in this election had allowed alternate points of view to disseminate rapidly, and Trump became adept at using this new technology to his advantage. Trump’s rhetoric, combined with his command of social media, instilled within many segments of society that their feelings about the country were shared, and thus encouraged more dialogue among people with these views. In addition, Trump’s bashing of P.C. culture allowed opinions that were previously stifled to grow in intensity. As a result of these factors, many people’s necessary threshold for political action was reached, causing a large grassroots movement for Trump to form.
Once the media sensed that Trump was a serious contender for president, the media ran many stories about how Hillary’s poll numbers were better than Trump’s. The objective in doing this was to persuade voters that most of the population was voting for Hillary, so to decrease people’s willingness to show up to the polls and vote for Trump. This phenomenon is closely related to the concept pluralistic ignorance. If people are convinced that the race is close, then the threshold for voting is reached, and they show up on election day to cast a vote. But if the media does an effective job at conveying that the election is not close, then this threshold is not reached, and people do not vote. In reality, however, the race may be much closer than what the media says, which is what makes this situation related to pluralistic ignorance.
The media tactic of portraying a Clinton landslide failed in light of Trump’s persistent brash rhetoric and antagonization of the mainstream media. However, for those who still trusted the mainstream media, the Trump victory was even more shocking, since much of the content delivered by the press they took at face value.