Elections!!!!!!!

I am sitting at my computer some 8,000 miles from a very important election occurring right now, and I am unsure what to think. The critical question is, what drives an elector to vote the way they do? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different reasons behind people’s electoral decisions, but when the current US presidential election is considered, there are only two obvious choices.

It is now late on the evening of November 5th, 2024, and it looks like the majority of American citizens have made their choice. It is not what I expected, but as I am a very logical person, I am not sure that logic has had much to do with the current tussle.

With the assistance of a very knowledgeable person living in Washington State, I have been following what has occurred over the last ten months or so. As I live on the other side of the Pacific Ocean and am not a US citizen, although I lived there for seven years, I feel I am lucky to have the opportunity to assess what has occurred independently. That is, trying not to bring too much of my own political thinking into this post, but at the same time, being as critical as possible with my observations.

While many people would think that citizens of all English-speaking countries would have similar views of the world, it is evident that things have changed in each of these countries over the last two or three hundred years. Some of those countries have only slightly moved away from the traditional way of thinking of the original “mother country”, England. US citizens currently only maintain a very thin veneer of thinking compared to those closer to their original roots. In other words, they have radically changed, and for one who has lived over 90% of their life in non-US English-speaking counties (five outside of the US), I was finding it difficult to understand what was happening. Then it dawned on me.

The three main questions recently reported to be of interest to the majority of US voters have been the economy, immigration, and abortion rights. While these are very important in any country, they have, for one reason or another, been considered to be more important than the integrity, history, and ability of the two major candidates. Fear and religion have had an effect on the last two questions, while the first one is more personal than societal. Everyone feels hard done by when they believe the economy is not benefitting them, and then they will act, as they have indeed done in today’s poll.

Now, why have a majority of the electors voted as they have? I believe there are many reasons, but I will only address the most important one at this time. Many societies and economies worldwide are changing in that the top half of the income demographics are doing well, thank you very much, but the bottom half feels that they have been left behind “to carry the can”, so to speak. In other words, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. They not only feel they are being left behind, but I believe the statistics prove it.

On top of the above financial problem, social issues exacerbate that “left-out feeling”. In the last few decades, the Western World has moved on from what was considered normal before the Second World War. The most important of these changes revolves around the significant changes regarding the relationships between men and women and the rise of the status of women in business, politics, education and the family. Females, particularly in much of the Western World, have moved on, but those who live in the more conservative and “old-fashioned” parts of that same world have not moved on to that extent and now feel disenfranchised. This particularly applies to men. They not only feel left out and not part of the modern world, but they fear the constant march of modern liberalism. It is not them, and they fear that the liberal front is forcing them towards a type of society that they don’t want.

In other words, they have expressed their resentment, anxieties, concerns, and fears by voting for a person who they feel understands their situation and who will do something about it. In a nutshell, fear is the strongest motivator of any action, and they have acted accordingly. Whether their wants and desires are fulfilled is another story.

Any comments welcome.

Phil Page