Set advertisements to Attack!

Donald Trump’s advertising campaign follows the same pattern of his speech and social media style: braggadocios and brash. He uses a combination of candidate positive ads and attack ads, while mixing up image and policy style ads as well. To further understand Trump’s advertising campaign, I will break down four of Donald Trump’s most popular television advertisements. 

Make America Great Again

The first advertisement is Trump’s “Make America Great Again”. It is a 30 second television ad. The ad is an image ad that uses various issues to project the goal image. In this advertisement, Trump tries to create the image that is the savior of America that it needs. It is a positive image ad, that focuses on some of the issues that he knows his constituency will respond to. The issues he highlights the most heavily are that of health care reform, tax reform, and immigration control. The visuals in the advertisements are of Trump speaking to an audience. The purpose of these images are to focus solely on Trump and  project a powerful leader who can “save” America.

Corruption

The second one of Trump’s advertisements that I examined is titled “Corruption”. “Corruption” is a 30 second attack ad against Hillary Clinton. He is trying to paint her as a corrupt politician who's part of big money. Trump was very successful throughout his campaign at painting Hilary as a big money, career politician. Which is pretty ironic considering that Trump is worth much more money than the Clintons. In the advertisement, a creepy voice and blue colored images of Hillary paints helps set a negative image of Hilary. This advertisement is not very likely to change the mind of staunch Hilary supporters, but may give some undecideds something to think about. 

Deplorable

The Trump ad that I looked at was his ad called “Deplorable”. This is a 30 second attack ad that takes advantage of a Hillary Clinton gaffé, in which she referred to half of Trump’s following as nothing more than a basket of deplorables. This ad is an attempt to reach out to those offended by Hilary’s comments as well as make those comments known to undecideds and even some on Hilary’s side. This add helps draw parallels between Hilary and Romney in 2012 which would help persuade some of Hilary’s supporters. Trump is trying to use this advertisement to set himself apart from Hilary as someone who cares about the people as people.

Two America’s

The final Trump ad that I studied was called “Two America’s”. This is a 30 second television contrast attack ad. It is also an issue ad that highlights and compares Trump’s and Hilary’s economic issues. In the ad, Trump claims that Hilary’s economic plans hurts the middle class and will lose American jobs, while Trump’s economic plans will cut taxes, save the middle class, and create jobs. The intent of the advertisement is to make Trump seem as someone who cares about the working family, while making Hilary seem as someone who only looks out for their interests and the interests of the people on top. 

Trump ran a fairly effective advertising campaign. The goal of his advertising campaign was to seem as someone who understood the struggle of the average American, as well as coming across as someone who could do something about the struggle of the average American. Another goal of his advertising campaign is to make Hilary seem corrupt and out of touch with the average Americans. 

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ooCCMMXR4M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur1eeLK71Jc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBbtCvUGweo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4obk0P2YCFg

OMGDYSWDTJT? (Oh my god, did you see what Donald Trump just tweeted?)

One aspect of the campaign and even well into his first hundred days in office that Donald Trump has taken full advantage of, is his online presence. During the campaign, he tweeted, posted, and grammed nearly every day. He was the first candidate to fully understand that platform that social media presented. On top of having a strong social media presence. Donald Trump has a very interactive website that has links to his social media profiles as well as directions for people who want to donate to him.

He uses Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/POTUS/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/teamtrumpofficial/) about once a day to once every couple days. On these platforms he mostly posts pictures of his rallies, memes about making America great, and of course, how terrible Obama is. The social media platform that Trump is most recognized for is Twitter. The man actually has two twitter accounts (Potus link:  https://twitter.com/POTUS) (Personal link: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump). One business one for the presidency and one personal one! I don’t even think Kim K has two twitter accounts. The really interesting part about these two accounts is that they favorite and retweet the other one’e tweets. His POTUS accounts acts like a digital hype man for his personal account. On these accounts, he generally bashes various news sources, talks about how great America is doing, and as per usual, bashes the Obama administration. On top of these accounts, I found his interactive website (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/) that allows people who are interested to have access to his social media accounts as well as donate to his cause. There is also a fan page set up on Facebook for Trump (https://www.facebook.com/donaldtrumpfanclub). This page just posts pro-Trump memes and shares pro-Trump posts. 

Donald Trump did a very good job of running social media across many different platforms. This allowed him to reach as many people as possible. He also did a great job of flooding twitter. What I mean is that it is nearly impossible to go a day without seeing at least tweet on my feed, and I don’t even follow him. That meant that his message is constantly being transmitted to an audience outside his immediate supporter block. His website is also very professional and easy to use. 

Although he is the first candidate to fully take advantage of online social media platforms, there are still areas in which he can improve. One of which is he needs to cut the petty stuff out. YOU ALREADY WON!!!!! IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT YOU HAVE BEEF WITH OBAMA AND HILARY, SO STOP TWEETING ABOUT IT!!!! Aside from the siege on the images of Obama and Hilary, Trump should stop posting/tweeting about fake news. It just hurts his image and his credibility. The attack on news outlets has even drawn criticisms from within his own party. For example, George W. Bush, DUBYAA for short, openly criticized Trump’s obsession with the media in an interview with the Today Show. 

While scrolling through his POTUS account, one tweet stuck out to me. It is him demanding for an investigation to be opened on Nancy Pelosi for having close ties with Russia. What made this stick out to me is how ironic it is that he is accusing people of having ties with Russia when he is currently under investigation for the same thing. It just seems like a very bad attempt to throw people off of his trail and gains some credibility. 

By the numbers, the tweet had seemed to have the best reaction from the audience was a tweet about unity. It makes sense that this one was the one that garnered the most support because it was over something everyone can get behind. If he can keep the attacks that aren't based on anything factual down, and continue to make unifying posts, Trump will continue to set the bar for how politicians can effectively use social media as a platform for mass communication.

Sources:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

https://twitter.com/POTUS

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/

https://www.facebook.com/donaldtrumpfanclub

https://www.instagram.com/teamtrumpofficial/

https://www.facebook.com/POTUS/

Donald Trump: Businessman, TV personality, President, and... Poll Dancer?

Throughout the 2016 campaign, political analysts and pollsters were all but certain that Hillary Clinton would become the next POTUS, however, they were almost all wrong. The polls and predictions were off almost across the board.

Who got it right?!?!?!?!

 According to Real Clear Politics, only two pollsters the day before the election had a Trump victory, that’s right only TWO out of 21 polls had just the winner correctly called. One of the polls that had a Trump victory was a tracking poll from ISB/TIPP. Looking further into their data, they thrived where the other polls has faltered. They correctly predicted a resounding Trump victory in the mid west and southern regions, while  also showing that Hillary Clinton underperformed with black/hispanic voters. These accuracies are what allowed ISB/TIPP to correctly predict a Trump victory. Another poll that had a Trump victory was the USC Dornsife/ LA Times. They actually had an overshot prediction of Trump winning by 5%. There are two reasons as to why their poll had predicted a Trump victory. The first reason is that they had accurately shown that uneducated voters who generally break democrat went to Trump. The second reason is the same as why ISB/TIPP was accurate, it showed that Hispanics weren't flocking to the democrats as they had in the past.

What went wrong?!?!?!

The big question remaining, is why were so many pollsters off? The answer lies in two major mistakes. The first mistake is that there was an error in weighting methods. The pollsters miss weighted the Hispanic vote and the uneducated vote. These are two groups that aren't very likely to respond to polls, so there is a big opportunity to weight them and the majority of pollsters mis-weighted them. The second mistake is more of an error on the respondents part. It is an error that has to do with social desirability. Social desirability is the desire to be seen as a certain way by society so many people different feel comfortable responding as Trump supporters so they either lied or didn't respond. This same phenomena can be seen with black candidates. Respondents are more likely to respond in a poll in favor of a black candidate so as to been seen as a socially conscience individual. This is called the “Wilder” effect, Hillary Clinton experienced this effect. That is a large reason why I believe much of the polling data was off. 

What They Could Have Done Different

I don’t think that the polls could have done much about the “Wilder” effect. Maybe ask questions less directly so respondents can’t decide which candidate which views most directly supports. This may be unethical, but i don’t see another way to get around the “Wilder” effect. The incorrect weighting is an issue that I believe the pollsters would have to look beyond the data to who Trump is appealing to. It seems almost a little too obvious to me that uneducated white voters would be all aboard the Trump train. As for the miscalculation of the Hispanic vote, I think that could have been predicted as well if the pollsters looked outside of the numbers. Trump was staunchly against illegal immigration which is something I know from my experience with family friends who went the legal process are really against as well. Looking outside the numbers isn't something that pollsters do very much but I think that it could have really helped them in the 2016 election.

Importance and Limitations of Polls

Despite the occasional “inaccuracies” of polls, they provide a way to look into the mind of the average voter and figure out what strategies would work the best in a fairly cost/time efficient way. With that being said, they have some major limitations. Firstly, they don’t give a definite number, instead they operate on a 95% confidence interval. This means that the pollster is 95% confident that the true number is between a range of numbers, so the pollster isn't even 95% confident in the number that you see on TV or the internet. Secondly, pollsters have to rely

on a sample of the population and then play a guessing game trying to predict the rest of the population. They are pretty good but it isn't a 100% yet. Thirdly, they can’t take undecided voters into account. If polls were 100% accurate and predictive then there would be no need for the election, but unfortunately we are not there yet.

Sources:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html

http://cesrusc.org/election/

http://www.investors.com/politics/ibd-tipp-presidential-election-poll/

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/president/