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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Leeds chapter.

With the 2016 US presidential election only a few days away, it’s nearly time for the citizens of the U.S.A to vote on who obtains the most powerful office on earth, unfortunately their choice lies between two of possibly the least popular candidates in history. In the weeks, months and what feels like years leading up to this vote the world has read every article, watched every broadcast and seen every opinion poll, all of which have defined Trump and Clinton’s credibility, character and likelihood to win the contest on November 8th. 

Having studied American politics as one of my A-levels, I wanted to put my understanding of voting behaviour determinants, the electoral college voting system and my passion for despising Trump into the current North American domestic political context. As a result of this, in the wake of the media circus, I was keen to find out what Americans my own age are saying about the upcoming election. I am lucky that my housemate from first and second year, Sophie O’Donnell, is currently studying at New Mexico State University (NMSU) for her year aboard, and she offered me a great insight in to what Americans on campus were saying about Trump, Clinton and all things politics.

The first thing Sophie told me was that New Mexico is a ‘Swing State’ with a slight leaning towards Clinton and the Democrats. A ‘Swing State’ means that there is no strong partisan leaning which would make the outcome of the state’s vote ‘predictable’ – something we can see in the state of Texas where the result is most likely to fall in the favour of Trump due to sociological factors. From the outset, this makes the views of those in New Mexico even more interesting as we can view them as shaping the result of Tuesday’s election – it’s the opinions in states like this which will determine if Trump will become North America’s next president. (Gulp.)

 

As you would expect, the New Mexico university campus is largely liberal – a universal trend throughout universities. All of the North American born friends Sophie has made during her time in New Mexico see Trump in a very similar light to how we chiefly view him here in the UK. Largely, they see Trump supporters as ‘uneducated or racist, they can’t really give other reasons why someone wouldn’t vote for Hilary’, stating that they ‘can’t fathom the idiocy behind Trump’. I guess this is a promising sign for the result of the election in New Mexico as looking at the size of the millennial population young people aged 18-21 equal 54,714- around a quarter of New Mexico’s total population. It seems clear to me that if Clinton and Trump were running in this country our university age population would also vote for Clinton due to our liberal leanings.

However, it’d be naive for us to assume every 18-21 year-old will vote for Clinton – or indeed vote at all. There are some students who are Trump supporters, with Sophie saying one particular student’s justifications were due to; ‘Hilary’s role in Benghazi and the FBI emails’. She added that he didn’t necessarily agree with Trump’s racism, but ‘he trusts him [Trump] more than Hilary who he described as an idiot’. In her true comedic style, at the end of that sentence Sophie added ‘lol the irony’– an anecdote I found particularly amusing and had to share with you all! It’s interesting to see that there are some people who choose only to listen to things that they’re interested in and in doing so, ignore massive issues such as racism and misogyny. This reminds me of the ‘rational choice’ voting behaviour model we studied at A-level, whereby voters will pick the ‘best deal’ relative to the other candidates, not a particularly bad way of deciding who to vote for but given the presence of racial issues pretty shocking to me.

Outside of the University campus, Sophie explained her encounter with a caretaker in an Arizona hotel who offered further insight into the Trump voter rationale; ‘People are frustrated with the norm, they want something different from a standard politician’. This was his explanation as to why Trump is the answer to so many of North America’s political prayers. The caretaker also brought up the issue of Clinton’s reputation as a warmonger, which is a major deterrent for many citizens- most of us in the world want to avoid the prospect of war! I assumed that this caretaker was a Trump supporter but was surprised to read the rest of Sophie’s message where she states that he was in fact a liberal trying to help her understand the state of American politics. I think if anything, this shows how the rhetoric that goes with understanding the reasons to vote for Trump has become normalised in citizen’s political discussions. It shows how people are ready to defend their choice of candidate and how these reasons are not necessarily based around his grand plan to build a wall (I can’t believe I have to write that in reference to a serious political policy).

What I took from Sophie’s account was that New Mexico has the potential to help define the US election result in a few days time. There is a clear trend that shows student’s political leanings are pretty universally liberal, but that there are always exceptions to this trend (a similar image of student Tories in the UK). It’s particularly interesting to hear the justification for voting for Trump, which to many people seems impossible. I guess from a domestic perspective some North Americans see Trump as the best solution to their personal internal circumstances as opposed to the international standpoint we see it from. I’m sure the eyes of the world will be watching the election results as they unfold on Tuesday and I think we should pay particular attention to Florida as the main ‘Swing State’ as it is often seen as a good determinant for the final result. A lot of my friends and family in the UK are hoping for a Clinton victory – as I’m sure the majority of the UK is… unless of course you’re Nigel Farage, but that’s a whole other story in itself!

 

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Images:  – http://fromnewtoicu.com/new-mexico-state-university-bsn/

 

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