On Sunday a poll of 50 randomly selected people at Exeter Summer School revealed that a staggering 68% would vote for the Democratic’ presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Many believe that Clinton will be the next U.S. President. The Economist predicts that she will be moving into the White House with 5% more votes than Donald Trump. Another report from USA Today predicts she will come away with a 4% margin over her rival. Yet no source quite compares to the drastic results obtained on campus.
Chris Cassidy (USA,17), an upper school student who takes politics as a course doesn’t think Clinton is a picture-perfect politician. “I see Clinton as the lesser of two evils when compared to Trump. She has many flaws, but would do a much better job relative to Trump.” With the issues of Benghazi and the CIA email scandal still in many American’s minds, it is easy to see a degree of truth in Chris’s statements.
Hillary Clinton was first lady to Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001 and since then has been a Senator and Secretary of State. After a grueling political chess match with Bernie Sanders in order to secure the party’s nomination, she looks set to go head-to-head with her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump.
Trump has had to take a fairly interesting journey to win over the support of Republicans. Early on a very crowded political scene seemed daunting, with 17 candidates in the initial Republican debate last August. Yet Trump’s statements, whether they are inspiring or ludicrous have pushed him to become the nominee of conservative voters. With all his competitors dropping out of the race, Trump has won 1,534 Republican delegates for the convention in Cleveland this month.
Despite his nationwide popularity, Trump received only 16 votes of confidence from the summer program’s youth. None of those who voted for him were willing to speak; however a number wanted to point out his flaws. Cameron Ahmad, (15) an American citizen and a proud Muslim is skeptical of a Donald Trump presidency. With his most prominent policy being the barring of entrance of Muslims into the country, Cameron fears for what will happen to him and his family who currently reside in Abu Dhabi.
This week, The debate and argumentation class participated in a class discussion on the topic of whether or not the mainstream media have been irresponsible in its coverage of contemporary political events. Many points were raised by the group which related to the race for the White House. Many agreed that the two nominees mainly relied on the media in order to boost their image.
For example, The New York Observer is owned by Jared Kushner, an American businessman and investor. He is also Trump’s son-in-law. This led to his publishing a self-written article titled “The Donald Trump I Know.” It is examples like these that pushed the debate group towards the theory that the news media are is subjective rather than objective. This definitely affects people’s perception of certain figures as media are what many people read and believe.
As Chris put it: “Donald Trump’s rise to prominence can largely be attributed to obsessive media covering. Trump’s name makes networks money, so naturally they devote lots of time to him. This in turn makes him more popular. It’s like a positive feedback loop.”
How will the race turn out? Stay tuned.