KOLUMNI
“They might win the election, but it’s a longshot.”
Ten years ago, I was sitting in a lecture about cultural
differences and similarities between Finns and Ame-ricans.
I thought I’d heard it all as a Finnish American
having lived in both countries, but no. I quickly disco-vered
that my two representative nations are equally
fascinated by underdogs and longshots.
There is a deep appreciation on both sides of the At-lantic
for people, teams and companies that overcome
extreme adversity to pull off something huge. Finnish
and American cultures abound with stories about see-mingly
impossible victories in the sports and business
worlds, which describes a whole article in itself. But
this isn’t the sports and business issue of SAM Maga-zine;
This issue is all about U.S. presidential elections.
Underdogs, the surprise candidates in elections, are
known as political longshots, and there are more than
a few when it comes to U.S. elections historically. The
biggest political longshot in recent memory is likely
the 2016 election of President Trump.
Millions of people around the world relied on polls
and new outlets for a sense of which direction America
was headed four years ago. Many mainstream media
outlets pointed to Hillary Clinton’s victory as election
day approached. For instance, The New York Times gave
Trump a 15 percent probability of winning, while CNN
offered only 9%. After results were announced, mem-bers
of the public were reasonable to question whet-her
political polling in the United States could still be
trusted. Research organizations and think tanks like
Pew Research Center have noted valuable lessons learn-ed
from 2016, and they’ve since adjusted their polling
variables and margins of error.
Yet politics can be wildly unpredictable, even with
more accurate polling.
2018 midterm elections, general elections that are
held near the midpoint of a president’s term, gave us
the political longshot known as Alexandra Ocasio-Cor-tez
(AOC) from New York’s 14th Congressional District.
Now the star of viral videos that promote her politi-cal
agenda across the globe, AOC was once considered
a longshot to veteran pundits with a track record of
correct predictions. She ran a mainly online campaign
with only sparse coverage by traditional media, and her
progressive approach helped secure a landslide victo-ry.
AOC became the youngest woman to ever serve in
Congress at 29 years old.
These examples may make it easy to assume that
political longshots are a recent phenomenon in U.S.
politics, perhaps a sign of the technological and un-predictable
times we live in. However, as soon as I said
political longshot, I’m sure that you history buffs im-mediately
thought of U.S. President Truman.
In 1948, Harry Truman ran for president as the lea-der
of a struggling Democratic party, after having lost
both chambers of Congress to the Republican party in
the 1946 midterms. The media, pollsters, and fellow
politicians all affirmed Republican Thomas Dewey as
the next president. In fact, the Chicago Daily Tribune pre-maturely
reported Dewey as the winner in one of the
most famous media gaffs of all time. Harry Truman was
forever cemented as a political longshot in U.S. history.
It is difficult to predict who will win 2020 elections.
But we know for certainty that political longshots will
appear again in the future, and the world will follow
them with great interest. I know I will.
ALEXANDRA PASTERNAK-JACKSON, CEO at Amcham Finland, is working to make Finland a more open and
international place to do business and to help Finnish companies navigate the US market. She has taught on the
importance of networking as well as held non-profit board positions, both in Finland and the US. Alexandra holds
an MBA from Haaga Helia University of Applied Sciences and a BA from the Elliott School of International Affairs
at the George Washington University. She lives in Helsinki with her Texan husband and two kids.
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