Did a single word swing the US Election?
As is well known, though Trump got a decisive majority in the Electoral College, he lost the popular vote by a few million and the real margin for victory was just a few 100k of votes in key states. In this context, I've seen it plausibly argued that a single word was enough to swing the election and bring Trump to power. Interested if others can guess the word I have in mind?
Decisive? Swing?
Host of Apartment Gardening | Ashtanga Yoga | Literature | Migraine
My vote would be "Deplorables". Hilary lost the election by under 100k votes in 3 key swing mid west states. Its entirely plausible that had she not uttered that word it may have been enough to avoid a Trump Presidency.
I didn’t even hear of this until now! I think there were so many factors to consider that contributed to the results of the 2016 election. But yeah that certainly didn’t Help. From a linguistic standpoint, Hillary had a very slim chance of winning from the start. Unintentionally or not, Trump cleverly used language in a way the appealed to several different classes in the US. In my opinion, Hillary was sort of stuck in a linguistic gender bind. I write a paper about this a year ago for a linguistics course where I analyzed Trump and Hillary’s language. It was really interesting to research.
Host of Apartment Gardening | Ashtanga Yoga | Literature | Migraine