I've started enjoying traveling around campus asking our student population some contentious questions. This time I asked students, "Why Would You Vote For Trump?", and got some pretty interesting responses. All participants were aware that I would be recording their answers and relaying them here on Odyssey Online. I thought it would be super interesting to ask this question specifically, because we all thought it would be funny if Donald Trump became president, but now the joke has turned into a possible actuality. Fair warning, there's only so many ways you can ask this question while trying to ask as many people as possible, my questions will be repetitive, but the answers sure won't.
So where are you in regards to Donald Trump?
All I've heard anyone say is that he "tells it like it is," which I guess makes sense if you think "how it is" is that everything sucks for upper class white males who are losing their grip on controlling things. I encountered this guy the other day who was just straight-up in denial that he had ever said anything derogatory 'bout anyone, which, given everything from his racist generalizations to just calling people pussies for lack of anything smarter to say, I have no idea how they were managing. I think it's simply a matter of him having incredibly racist, conservative values, and his supporters approving of that.
Why do you think people will be voting for Trump?
Because he speaks to the id of america. There are people out there who want things and don't tend to think very much. They're likely to be Trump supporters.
Why would you vote for Donald Trump?
If I vote for Trump, it would be because someone put a gun to my head in the voting booth telling me to vote for him, in which case I'm sure I would be able to rescind my vote because it was cast under duress. I would vote for him for no other reason. Thankfully, I don't see that happening so I will not vote for him.
But as others have said, people vote for him because he apparently "tell things like they are."
One sentence only, why vote for Donald Trump?
"Because he's not Hillary"
Why do you think Trump is doing so well this election season?
Couple of reasons for that guy. He has no censor, some people like that.
He wants to secure the border. Something that Republicans have been stressing for awhile, he's tapped into it with grandiosity for his "Great Wall of Trump".
There is generally an anti-Muslim sentiment that exists and he has tapped into that. And then there's the whole, he's not exactly part of the current establishment bit who also happens to have a persona. Regardless how you feel, he's playing his cards right.
How do you think the election will turn out?
We're still in primaries. Do you think Trump has a better chance in a general election than every other GOP candidate? I'm not sure, but if it came down to Trump vs Hillary my money would be on the latter since she will get the centrist vote.
Why would you vote for Donald Trump?
Why I would vote for him? He actually seems interested in bettering the country, rather than following a party's ideology. Also, I don't want to see what's going on in Europe happen here, and he seems like the only candidate that doesn't want the floodgates opened to anyone that can swim the Rio Grand. As for voting for him over Bernie, it's because Bernie's social rhetoric seriously bothers me as a straight white male. I get the feeling that he wouldn't really have my back in the end. Also, Bernie's economic policy sounds like complete foolishness, not that Trump's tax reforms are really that much better.
The candidates other than Trump and Bernie, I wouldn't even consider voting for, though.
(Continuing from above) If your beliefs are close to Trump I wouldn't expect you to vote for Bernie. I'm interested in why you would vote for Trump over the other Republicans?
See, your first statement is wrong. Trump and Bernie actually have a fairly sizable overlap in some of their ideologies, it's just that the details tend to be different. Trump's actually to the left of your standard GOP rhetoric on a lot of issues, but everyone focuses on his immigration policies so they think he's extremely right-wing. What got him attention early on wasn't his talk about a wall between the US and Mexico, it was him saying he would tear up NAFTA, believe it or not. I won't vote for the other candidates because they're hawkish pawns for the elites, placing the interests of multinational CEOs and Israel over America and its people. I don't want more war in the Middle East. I don't want to see our STEM graduates work the fries while Silicon Valley brings in workers from India for tax breaks. I don't want to see an already-diluted working age populace further diluted by people willing to work for pennies on the dollar. I don't want to see more American cities become like Detroit and Cleveland, where free trade agreements with the third world lead to a massive exodus of manufacturing jobs, ruining American cities built on the backs of American labor.
No other Republican candidate will address that, and let's be honest, Hillary will be a neo-con with an intersectional feminist social policy.
What are you going to do with the vote coming up soon?
Where is the "Oh god, all these choices are shit, can we just get 4 more years of Obama or something?" button? I would like to press that button.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Obama has been the perfect president, but at least he's gotten shit done. We get anti establishment people like Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump into office and Congress is going to stone wall them ever harder then they have been stonewalling Obama. The last thing we need is another Clinton in the oval office, and no one else running has a snowball's chance in hell of beating these three.
I've very frustrated with the political system here right now.
A majority of the people I spoke to weren’t in favor of electing Trump at all. And yet, some people had some pretty genuine things to say in support for him. Only time will tell, I guess.
