November 10, 2016
President-elect Donald J. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence
President Ronald Reagan gave insights into the question that voters asked themselves as they went to the polls and voted for Donald J. Trump, "Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?"
Why was this difficult to predict?
It is because Donald Trump is a political "black swan."
The black swan is a theory that was developed by Nassim Taleb that helps explain the Donald Trump victory and why it was missed by experts. The black swan theory is outlined below:
1) The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, politics, science, finance and technology
2) The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods owing to the very nature of small probabilities
3) The psychological biases, which blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs
How could all of the experts be wrong?
Has the blue wall collapsed? Is the model broken? The answer is yes.
In an age when attention spans have gone from 12 seconds to eight seconds, President-elect Trump communicates in four to six-second bites, which is both highly effective and memorable.
Mr. Trump is a communications genius in the way he is able to drive news cycles. Through his methods, he has generated between $2 billion to $2.5 billion in free media to the frustration of many media companies and opponents.
The swing from the incumbent party to challenger party is well documented. It is difficult for any party to maintain the White House for three terms.
"This an ideological and major political shift,” said political analyst Charles Krauthammer on the Fox News Channel. “He won the Reagan Democrats and the White working class.”
The Republicans have won the presidency and retained control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
"Trump is a movement candidate which represents a fundamental realignment,” said Monica Crowley, a news commentator, on Fox.
THIS IS AN inflection point and a fundamental shift in the mood of the country.
This is a movement that is beyond the person of Donald Trump. Those close observers of Mr. Trump say that it is not Mr. Trump changing the country but rather the country that has changed Mr. Trump.
Dan Hodges is managing director of Consumers in Motion
Daniel Hodges is CEO of Consumers in Motion Group and a member of the American Association of Political Consultants. Reach him at dan@consumersinmotion.com.
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