With just one day more until Election Day, the expectation seems to be that Hillary Clinton has an edge, but that nothing is guaranteed.
Bettors give Trump just an 18 percent chance of winning the election. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives him a 35 percent chance. That said, here are three things that will happen on Wednesday if Trump pulls off the upset:
Expect Google searches for “Donald Trump” or “Who is Donald Trump?” to spike. People all over the world will want to who Trump is, and perhaps even educate themselves on his policy proposals. In the United States, even though almost everyone knows who Trump is, many will want to know more about him, regardless of whether they voted for him or voted at all.
When the Google searches spike, expect pundits to freak out and say it shows people didn’t know what they were voting for, or that voters were ignorant and ill-informed. It will be used as evidence that Clinton was the choice of smart people, and that Trump voters were uneducated and ill-informed.
Regret
Trump is no normal presidential candidate. Many people like him because he’s an outsider, because he vows to give Washington, D.C., the shakeup it needs. They’re often called advocates of the “burn it all down” approach, (though not literally).
If Trump wins, expect liberal members of the media to zero in on anyone who says they regret their vote. “I voted for Trump — I didn’t think he’d actually win,” someone would inevitably tweet and get thousands of retweets. Similar people will be shoved in front of TV cameras for cable news interviews to talk about how they just wanted to cast a “protest vote,” they didn’t actually expect Trump to win.
Again, it will be used as condescending evidence that Clinton was the choice of smart people, and that Trump voters were uneducated.
Impeachment
Trump is already very unpopular. Almost 60 percent of the country views him unfavorably and the list of people he’s offended is long. It’s not hard to make a case that he (or Clinton, for that matter) are unfit for the presidency.
There may not be legal grounds for impeachment, but expect people to start an online petition to make it happen anyway. It will draw hundreds of thousands of signatures, if not millions, within a few days.
“We call on Congress to immediately impeach Donald Trump upon his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017,” the petition will say. It may even call on the Electoral College to reject the result, go rogue as faithless electors and pick Clinton instead.
Pundits will seize on this and show that momentum is already building against Trump. They’ll say he already has almost no chance of winning re-election in 2020 and that he may not make it through his first term.
Granted, this could also happen if Clinton wins, given her sordid past (and present) with FBI investigations and given that 55 percent of the country also views her unfavorably. With either candidate, the chance of actual impeachment is next to zero.
In other words, if Trump shocks everyone and pulls off the upset, expect what happened in the United Kingdom after the surprising Brexit vote to happen in the U.S.
In Brexit’s immediate aftermath, the second-most common Google search from the U.K. was “What is the EU?” Media outlets rushed to find voters who regretted their choice, even though polls show Brits think it was right to leave the European Union. An online petition calling for a second Brexit referendum was signed by more than 3.5 million people.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
