Political campaign professionals and a student discussed the 2024 presidential election results and what it reveals about the American electorate and future of political campaigns at the School of Media & Public Affairs on Tuesday.
Co-founder and partner of bipartisan public affairs firm Rokk Solutions Rodell Mollineau, Partner of political campaign management company Public Opinion Strategies Jim Hobart and Abigail Brubaker, a senior majoring in journalism and mass communication at SMPA, discussed the salient issues that Americans voted for, the reality of President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda and the future of the Democratic Party. David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs, moderated the panel for the final installment of the school’s Campaigns & Elections discussion series for 2024.
Karpf introduced the panel and their respective experience in the political field and began the discussion by asking the panel about lessons learned this election cycle.
Mollineau said the economy and rising prices were important factors for voters when deciding what candidate to cast their ballot for and voters were “angry for some time” about the state of the country. He said the issue of the economy was more important for voters rather than other issues because of the changing electorate.
“I think groups, constituencies that we thought might break one way or another, or issues that we thought that would have more credence, they just didn’t say,” he said. “And it was, at the end of the day, it was people were upset about inflation. They’re upset about rising costs, and they wanted to be heard, and they had their say at the ballot box.”
Mollineau said for the 2028 election, Democrats need to find a candidate who can “bring people together” and is “authentic” in order to appeal to the American people. He said having a candidate that has authenticity is often more important to voters than the policies they support.
“And so that’s what we’re looking for, someone who’s authentic, someone who, and this is the thing where I always think Democrats and even some Republicans get wrong, is I don’t think voters want someone who agrees with them on every single issue,” Mollineau said. “They want people who are going to stand up for what they believe in.
Brubaker said it was more clear this election cycle that Trump will try to implement the policies he promised during the campaign because it was proven in his last presidential term that he did. She said going into the 2016 election, Americans did not know if he was actually going to stay with his word and implement the specific policies he supported, but he did do so during his first term, and she said in his next term, he will try to implement tariffs and his immigration policy.
“I think the difference between going into 2016 and now is we saw how much of what he said on the campaign trail actually came to be what he tried to enact in office,” she said. “And so I think going into the 2016 administration, we didn’t know, but I think now we know that, like you said, he’s gonna double down on tariffs and immigration, I also think that it will just be a new normal.”
Brubaker said the way that people are now getting their news, especially young voters, is changing and that this was an “influencer election,” like when Trump went on Joe Rogan’s podcast. She said people do not watch the news on television, but are on social media and listening to podcasts to get their news, which political campaigns may not have thought about before.
“We’re not getting it from mainstream sites, even if we are then following the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, whatever. Those are not getting the same kind of views as the personalities that are influencers now,” Brubaker said. “So I think that has been interesting to see their impact, and how Trump going on Joe Rogan and Kamala Harris not being that impactful, which before probably was not a thought that political campaigns had at all.”
Hobart said “every single person” Trump nominated for a cabinet position is someone he trusts to be loyal, and as a result Trump is going to try to achieve his tariff and immigration goals by doing “everything he can.” He said there’s also a system of checks and balances in place to make sure that a president doesn’t abuse their power.
“It’s really easy to say you’re going to do something, but look, we do have a system of checks and balances, still, you can’t just do anything by executive order,” Hobart said.
Hobart said Vice President-elect J.D. Vance will have the Republican nomination for the 2028 presidential election, but it’s not clear who the Democratic candidate will be. He said the Democratic Party is “clearly” self-assessing following their loss and looking at trends in this election, especially when voters that tend to vote Democratic voted for Trump in this election.
“They know that they cannot allow some of the trends that they saw happen this election cycle, with especially Hispanic voters, but then some other constituencies too, if those trends continue or if those trends don’t even reverse, the electoral map gets very, very difficult,” Hobart said.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/John-McCain-Meghan-McCain-Donald-Trump-Kamala-Harris-112124-a94d238beb1f4019a5b06f765a1917fe.jpg "Meghan McCain wrote in her dead dad, John McCain, in presidential election")
