Politics, News, and Public Opinion

When I think of politics and media, one of the largest examples that comes to mind is the recent 2016 presidential election between Donald trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Months before the election day, Hillary Clinton across almost all of the polls had as much as a 10% lead over Donald Trump, showing that it was no question as to who the next elected President of the United States would be. For Hillary to have that much of a gap over Donald Trump and lose the election was a harsh reality that many people did not believe would happen. But what was the cause of this to happen? In my personal opinion, I believe this was due to the Spiral of Silence theory. According to the lecture, The Spiral of Silence Theory says that if someone’s opinion on an issue is the minority to everyone else’s opinions, then that person is less likely to share or voice their opinion because of their fear of being ostracized or made fun of for holding that opinion. If the media continuously covers and feeds perceptions of who or what is the majority and minority opinions, it can create false results and can make the true majority believe they are the minority. According to NBC News, this was one of the biggest reasons that Trump was elected. This is called the “Silent Majority.” The Silent Majority is a tangent of the Spiral of Silence Theory in the sense that so many people believed that they held the minority opinion and chose not to share that opinion, giving false representations of numbers to the media and their polls, which in turn, was the reason why the United States population was so surprised when Trump came out on top. Marie Whitaker at NBC News says that her prediction that Donald Trump would win was based on three things, the fact that pundits are incredibly disconnected from a vast majority of voters who reside in Middle America. Pundits, because they are so disconnected with Middle America, become blind to the fact that their vision of America might not match what the rest of America believes and what they want to see happen. The next reason is because she believed that there were thousands, if not 10’s of thousands, of silent Trump supporters that steered pollsters in the wrong direction. Although the media uses polls to find this information, people should be very skeptical of the information given, not because the pollsters are not trustworthy, but because many people who partake in the polls are not always truthful with the answers they give, which can create a ton of misleading information that will be given to the public. Lastly, the third reason she believed Trump would win was because of the fact that she believed Americans would never elect a woman president. The media, in a way, fooled themselves into believing that Hillary would win because of the fact that they honestly believed the polls were truthful and reinforced their opinions by feeding perceptions to people that made them believe Hillary was the majority, thus creating the Silent Majority that powered Trump through the election and into office.