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New ( ish ) world order
US President-elect Joe Biden . Photo : Chandan Khanna / AFP
Trump , polls and the new Bidenlead approach to diplomacy .
Mark Kenny interviewed by Wade Zaglas
Although little credibility has been
given to US President Donald Trump ’ s claims that the 2020 election was a fraud , he obstinately holds on to office , delaying the transition of power .
But , given the president ’ s penchant for litigation and the denials flying around in the Republican camp , can we be sure Trump will finally get his marching orders and move on ?
To answer this important question and more , Campus Review spoke to journalist and Professor of Australian Studies at ANU , Mark Kenny , about this transfer of power , as well as the accuracy and complexity of polling in the 2020 election . He also discussed President-elect Joe Biden ’ s likely domestic and international policies , as well as how a Biden administration will approach an increasingly aggressive China .
Kenny said that , based on all reports , “ there is no systemised voter fraud that has been going on ”. While he conceded that some errors may have occurred , the journalist stated that this is not uncommon in elections around the world .
“ All the evidence seems to point to these attempts by the Trump administration to cling on as just the kind of desperation that has come to characterise Trump ’ s rhetoric for a long time ,” Kenny said .
The ANU professor also believes a Biden presidency heralds a return to a more
global and less isolationist America , keen to rebuild alliances and commitments to a rules-based order .
In your opinion , does President Trump have any chance of overturning this election result ? I don ’ t think there ’ s much evidence that he does . We , of course , are operating largely on the basis of second-hand information . We have to go on the advice and evidence of people on the ground in the US . But all of the evidence suggests that there is no systematised voter fraud that has been going on in the election .
In the casting and counting of more than 160 million votes there may be some errors , and there may be some errors that have occurred as a result of the parcelling of votes , but none of these things are uncommon in elections .
And all of the evidence seems to point to these attempts by the Trump administration to cling on as just the kind of desperation , really , that has characterised Trump ’ s rhetoric for a long time . Divisive , shrill , and in the end , pointless .
After the 2016 election , polls obviously lost a lot of credibility . Were there any changes to how polling was conducted this year that you are aware of , that provided more accurate results ? Yes . Well , certainly the polls got it wrong in 2016 . There was a widespread consensus as you ’ re noting , that Hillary Clinton was going to be the next president going into that election campaign .
It was a view shared , I must say , by Donald Trump and his team as well , who we know booked a relatively modest venue for election night , not expecting to win . But they did better in a number of those swing states , states that we ’ re much more familiar with now as a result of watching that count and then this count this year , but the polls certainly failed to understand what was going on .
It ’ s always difficult , of course , when you ’ ve got voluntary voting . So you ’ re not just trying to make judgements as a pollster about where people ’ s preferences lay . You ’ re trying to make judgements about their strength , the level of conviction that they have around those issues . Is it enough ? Are they sufficiently motivated to go out and vote on election day or before it , as has been the case with this election , in particular , because of COVID .
So it ’ s always hard . You ’ re taking a sample and then trying to extrapolate from that sample , trying to make it as representative as possible , and then trying to extrapolate from your findings what the implications are for the broader electorate .
There ’ s always going to be some assumptions built into that . They ’ re educated assumptions , but they ’ ve turned out to be wrong on a number of occasions , and they certainly failed to pick up an undercurrent in particularly white , blue-collar , former Democrat supporters in those northern , north-western states , for example .
The polling in Florida does seem to have been fairly inadequate . It did predict a
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