By Selen Ozturk

WASHINGTON, DC – The presidential election left a country questioning the results on political violence, women, immigrants and the environment.

Through all of these issues, Nov. 5 shattered public assumptions that an increasingly multiracial America necessarily means an increasingly progressive one, political, immigration and economic experts said.

Political violence

There’s a similar public misconception about political violence: “We seem to assume that we can either predict it or it won’t happen at all, which is why we’re constantly surprised when it does,” said Dr. Robert Pope. professor of political science at the University of Chicago and founder and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Already, as of November 8, the Department of Justice has revealed a murder plot for an Iranian government asset accused to kill President-elect Trump before the election.

Professor Robert Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and founder and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, shares what he believes are the potential triggers of post-election political violence.

“We have to be careful about this. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were more assassination attempts between now and January 20th…and in the first 100 days after that, especially if he continues with aggressive deportation plans that include sending ICE agents into blue sanctuary cities like Chicago. , San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Portland … where anti-immigration protests have turned violent in 2020,” Pape said.

“Political violence works like a fire. We can measure the material that can burn, but we can’t predict lightning strikes, cigarette butts thrown, campfires unattended,” he added. “Just because the resistance march on Washington in January, for example, is planned to be a peaceful gathering of 50,000, that doesn’t mean it will be. We are in a pen.”

Ladies

“What contributes to political violence are narratives that blame any group of people for the outcome of this election — like that woman lost the election to a woman candidate,” said Kelly Dittmar, research director of the Center for Women and Politics American from Rutgers. University.

Exit polls in 2024 show that 54% of women and 44% of men voted for Harris, while 44% of women and 54% of men voted for Trump.

Kelly Dittmar, director of research, Center on Women and American Politics, Rutgers University, says Trump has consistently played on the fear of disrupting gender roles and threatening masculinity, which has proven effective in a campaign against a woman candidates.

The gap between women and men in 2024, where women were 10 points less likely than men to support Trump, is like that of the last election; in 2020 the difference was 12 points, while in 2016 it was 11.

Women have been more likely than men to support the Democratic candidate and less likely to support the Republican candidate in every election since 1980 — “But these aggregate counts are insufficient to really understand the women’s vote,” Dittmar said .

While a majority of white women (52%) voted Republican, for example, more than 90% of black women voted Democratic.

An AP Vote Cast exit poll shows that a third of black women said Harris being the first female president “was the most important factor” in their vote, compared to 14 percent of all women and 11 percent of all men .

“We talk about the gender of voters, but we also need to recognize the ways in which gender plays a role in who we are willing to vote for,” she continued.

An October 2024 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that while 43% of Americans overall agree that “society as a whole has become too soft and feminine” is down from 48% who were agree in 2023, partisan divisions have doubled since 2011.

Now, 73 percent of Republicans say society is too soft and feminine, compared to 42 percent of independents and 16 percent of Democrats.

“It’s less about Harris’ identity and more about why a man exploiting grievances about threatened masculinity didn’t disqualify him from winning,” Dittmar added.

Vanessa Cardenas, executive director, America’s Voice, discusses the impact the Trump presidency will have on immigration, as well as the lives of immigrants.

Immigrants and Asian Americans

“Without sugarcoating it, this is the worst outcome we could have expected … That the majority of the popular vote is against us,” said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice. “Economic problems trumped everything.”

A September 2024 Pew Research poll found that 81% of registered voters said “the economy will be very important to their vote.”

An AP exit poll found that “voters generally believed Trump would be better equipped than Harris to manage the economy and jobs.”

“Unsurprisingly, immigration was another major motivating factor, as Republicans have run the most vicious anti-immigrant campaign of any major party in modern history,” Cardenas continued.

An October 2024 America’s Voice report using AdImpact data shows that Republican candidates and organizations have spent “$964 million on 1,892 unique TV ads mentioning immigration so far this year.”

John C. Yang, president and chief executive officer, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, AAJC, says the survey data shows that immigration was a major concern for Asian-American voters, with a majority in favor of laws that support immigrants.

“Immigration itself is being redefined,” Cardenas explained. “As conversations about ending birthright citizenship, TPS and DACA become integrated, the lines between ‘legal’ and ‘undocumented’ are blurring.”

“The Asian American voting bloc strongly supports pro-immigrant laws, especially those that allow citizens to bring relatives to the US,” said John C. Yang, president and CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC).

The AAPI community has the highest proportion of immigrants of all racial and ethnic groups, with approximately two-thirds of Asian Americans and one-sixth of the Pacific Rim population born outside the US.

An October 2024 Pew poll found that 82 percent of Asian-American immigrants supported family-first immigration policies.

A poll of AAJC voters found that overall, however, the issues most important to AAPI voters were similar) to those most important to voters overall, with the top three being jobs and the economy (86%), inflation (85 %) and health (85). %).

Green jobs

“These issues have made Trump the first Republican president to be elected by winning the popular vote in more than 20 years,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club and former president and CEO of the NAACP. “You can’t explain this without looking at the deindustrialization of our nation over the last 30 years after NAFTA.”

Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club and former President and CEO, National Association for the Advancement of Black People, discusses the Inflation Relief Act and the impact it will have on the US economy.

From 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect under President Clinton, the US lost more than 80,000 manufacturing plants through 2014, the latest year for which Census Business Dynamics Statistics data is available.

In comparison, there are about 19,500 cities and towns in the US

“That means most Americans now live where a factory used to be, and when that factory closed, what exploded was despair, poverty, unemployment, drug abuse and death by suicide,” Jealous said. “We need to go back to the basic American formula of building an economy that lifts all boats by doing what we’ve always done: designing new things following the science, then building them here.”

With the Inflation Reduction Act, passed under President Biden in 2022 and authorizing $783 billion in domestic energy and climate change spending, the largest in US history, “We’re doing something I’ve never done in my lifetime: we open factories through the biggest ones. economic opportunity on earth, a chance to change the way the world is powered,” he continued.

In August 2024, Climate Power data shows that US companies reported 646 new clean energy projects, created 334,565 new jobs and generated $372 billion in new investment.

“The right turn that we’ve seen is a straight line from us betraying the working people of this country,” Jealous said, adding that this was reflected in Trump’s own performance: “In 2016, he promised that he will kill Obamacare and his. the party rebelled. This time, Vice President-elect Vance attacked the new green jobs as ‘mass scraps,’ and Republican voters revolted.”

“In many red states, voters may be divided on whether or not they want clean technology, but they are united in wanting it to be produced there, because they understand that their wealth is tied to it,” he added. “Trump can say what he wants, but this is the future, and people are not coming back.” (Ethnic media services)