00:00The result may not have been a surprise for some, but may have been a surprise for others
00:05that former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party's candidate, won his second term as
00:10the U.S. head of state.
00:12During the TV6 Morning Edition program on Wednesday, Dr. Karen Niles, lecturer at the
00:17Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies' St. Augustine
00:21campus, acknowledged that there are those in the Caribbean who would have favored a
00:25victory by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the candidate of the Democratic Party.
00:31I'm certainly not dismissing the elements of race and gender in this election.
00:39What I want to, however, caution citizens against is oversimplifying the vote, right?
00:45This is not, you can't look at the results of the election and say, well, the voters
00:50are racist or the voters are sexist.
00:53The answer is simply not that simple.
00:55People vote for candidates for a myriad of reasons, and a number of citizens from the
00:59Caribbean would be incredibly disappointed because they themselves were looking forward
01:03to somebody with Caribbean heritage being in the White House.
01:07Dr. Niles said Vice President Harris ran a very careful campaign.
01:11That falls in stark contrast to Donald Trump, who, if you listen, he simply goes up and
01:19speaks.
01:20And essentially, we're at a stage in history where I think other countries, including ours,
01:28need to take stock of what this means.
01:30The upcoming general election in Trinidad and Tobago is due next year, 2025.
01:35If a candidate presents themselves as somebody who the average person can relate to, and
01:43that average person might be fed up of the political establishment, then they can go
01:47and capture people's imaginations and capture their votes.
01:51Dr. Niles made an apparent reference to voter turnout in Trinidad and Tobago in recent elections.
01:58So it might also be a warning to our own political parties as more and more voters, if more and
02:05more voters continue to not show up at the polls, if more and more voters continue to
02:10be fed up of the bi-party rhetoric, a candidate may very well come around and say, listen,
02:17I'm not a politician, I don't care about any of this, and for better or worse, misread
02:21the entire population.
02:22And Dr. Niles says there's another lesson to be learned beyond the style of the individual
02:28candidate.
02:29As you would have seen in the last two weeks, a month of the campaign, candidates are almost
02:34exclusively focusing on the swing states.
02:36They're like marginal seats in Trinidad and Tobago.
02:40We always knew that they were going to determine the election this time around.
02:44And as it has occurred, the Republicans have managed to flip some of the seats that were,
02:49some of the swing states that were previously Democrat.
02:52And that indeed was significant.
02:53Intensely, what happened is that the Trump campaign did their homework and went to work
02:58on those states, and obviously spent quite a bit of money in the process as well.
03:03Dr. Niles said votes are incredibly complex things.
03:07Jule Brown, TV6 News.
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