Politicians in B.C., with an election coming in the spring, should look long and hard at what happened in the United States on Tuesday. As with the Brexit vote in the U.K., a groundswell of resentment and a demand for change took politicians, analysts and many voters by surprise. Anyone who faces a vote has to pay attention and change the way they view the restive and unpredictable electorate.
British Columbians already have recent experience with unexpected election results. Premier Christy Clark was headed for certain defeat in 2013, at least in the eyes of observers and opponents.
But the voters disagreed. They handed her a massive victory that nobody saw coming — nobody except her inner circle, who apparently had better polling data than did the NDP.
Much of the blame for the shock in that vote, in the Alberta election in 2015, in the Brexit referendum this year and in Tuesday’s American election was dumped in the lap of the polling companies. But that oversimplified what happened.
Suspicion and resentment of elites who were out of touch with the concerns of working people bubbled up in ways that blindsided those who have long thought they could read the public mood. It was as if masses of voters hid themselves away from pollsters, reporters and campaigners, staying silent until they emerged on election day to confound the experts.
In states such as Michigan, even Donald Trump’s own campaign didn’t foresee victory. Both parties thought Michigan was safely in the Democratic column.
The traditional tools of political strategy seemed to fail south of the border. Polls were unreliable. Clinton’s massive organization of paid and volunteer staffers failed to get out the vote or to read the public mood accurately in key states. Her spending far outpaced Trump’s, but to no avail.
Trump appealed to voters at an emotional level. He saw that they felt left behind by a changing economy and a changing culture. He read white Americans’ belief that they were losing ground to other races.
Although statistics suggested the United States and its citizens were doing well, those people didn’t feel hopeful. Even those who seemed safe and prosperous believed their good fortune was precarious.
Feeding those fears and using social media to bypass traditional media, Trump bent, ignored or denied the facts. Earnest reporters in the mainstream media poured their time into fact-checking his statements and pointing out his errors.
But it made no difference. Just as his racist and sexist comments and actions made no difference. Revelations that would have sunk any other candidate made no impact on Trump’s supporters because he tapped something powerful.
Indeed, they admired him for “telling the truth.” People in traditional political and media circles didn’t understand that for those voters, “truth” meant speaking his mind forthrightly and saying the things they thought, not a literal adherence to fact.
As B.C.’s own referendum on the harmonized sales tax showed, politicians can march out legions of facts and armies of experts, but still fail to win over the voters. Economists, businesspeople and accountants agreed that the HST was a better tax system for everyone, but their arguments could not overcome British Columbians’ sense of betrayal over the introduction of the tax.
That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. In our idealized vision of democracy, the people debate the issues rationally and arrive at rational decisions.
We cannot abandon that ideal. Our politicians must debate issues responsibly.
At the same time, they must recognize that in a world that often seems to be spinning beyond the comprehension of ordinary people, politicians ignore those fears at their peril.
