The Conversation - One nation, divided and waiting

What America wanted was an answer. What it got was: “Wait and see.”

That’s how rhetoric scholar John Murphy describes election night in his essay on how news organizations conveyed to viewers, listeners and readers the uncertainty of the 2020 presidential election. “They used metaphor to shape public expectations about their election night reporting,” says Murphy. From “mirages” to enhanced “transparency” by the news media, those metaphors were all about ways of seeing.

In other election coverage, W. Joseph Campbell, a scholar of presidential poll history, provides a critical perspective on 2020’s election polling. He cites a poll that seemed like it had an odd result – that 56% of Americans said they were better off now than they were four years ago – but could prove to have been an indicator of better news for candidate Donald Trump than many had predicted. And in a story about the “rainbow wave” in the 2020 election, Timothy Bussey writes that in a year that saw more LGBTQ candidates running than ever before, both the candidates themselves and LGBTQ rights were on the ballot.

At The Conversation US, we will be watching along with you as the results continue to come in, and doing our best to help you understand the world we live in, which increasingly looks like a divided nation.