8 Sex and Gender in the 2016 Presidential Election Trump entered the Republican primary as one of sixteen candidates and bested his opponents with a campaign playing upon nationalist and anti– politically correct sentiment. He was the first president elected without previous government or military experience and the fifth president to win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote. THE ELECTORAL CONTEXT The 2016 election marked a year of insurgent candidates at the presidential level. Sanders and Trump were both candidates who branded themselves as working against the status quo. Sanders built a cam- paign and attracted large crowds with his pitch for economic populism and disdain for big banks and Wall Street. Trump’s campaign actively promoted mistrust of the Republican Party, and he targeted various groups in society with his nativist rhetoric. Insurgent elections occur in the United States with some frequency—for example, Ralph Nader run- ning against the Democratic establishment and Pat Buchanan running against the Republican establishment for several election cycles. The eco- nomic crisis of 2008 presaged Sanders’s popularity, while the election of the first African American president and subsequent rise of the Tea Party in 2010, a group of white Americans with significantly higher levels of racial fear and racial resentment,20 portended Trump’s rise as the titular head of the birther movement. As Norm Ornstein points out, Trump in particular was able to rile the Republican base, which “had been told that once they got [Republicans] in power, they’d force Obama to his knees. Instead, they got compromises. That [anger] has been fueled by a lot of conservative media.”21 As we discuss in later chapters of this book, the context was ripe for insurgent candidates, so Clinton’s extensive political experience did not help her as much as it would have in a typical election year. We also discuss how Clinton was defined in public discourse as an establishment candidate because few voters acknowledged the inherently insurgent nature of a female candidate for the presidency. CHAPTER SUMMARIES This book is organized into two distinct parts. The first three chapters present an overview of research on the barriers faced by female politi- cal candidates in the United States. It provides a useful primer for lay readers and scholars who are not familiar with this line of research. The remaining chapters focus on the 2016 primary and general elections. We apply theories and findings from the first part of the book to the 2016
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