Recently Donald Trump has begun to change his views and
proposals in preparation to battle Hillary Clinton in the primaries. The
article describes how Trump has been taking some of Bernie Sanders’ ideas and
proposals to try and win over some of the traditionally blue states. As far as
types of data used, the story uses qualitative data almost exclusively. There
are no graphs charts or numbers listed. Instead, the journalist pulls quotes
from many different sources ranging in political views as well as social
standing. Some of the people quoted are politicians working for Sanders, others
work for Clinton and others are unaffiliated members of the house or senate. In
addition, they have quotes from people not in office who would be effected by
some of Trump’s newest ideas. The story is generally well thought out. There
are very few anecdotes and it follows a relatively straight line of thought.
The story essentially starts by talking about what Trump has changed his mind
about and what his new ideas and proposals are. Then it compares those ideas to
what Bernie Sanders’ proposals were. After that it is essentially all cleanup.
The writer loaded the back half of the story with quotes and other qualitative
data to support his claim that Donald Trump is “borrowing from Bernie Sanders’s
playbook to woo Democrats”. While most of the data is opinion based; there is
one quote from an Arizona Senator who does use numbers to help prove his claim
that if Trump continues his strong anti-immigration campaign, he will not be
able to win Arizona. This is essentially the only time in the article that
qualitative data is used. I would have liked to see much more data in this
article. One statistic I would like to see (which may not be available yet) is
how his polls have changed since he has made these semi-radical changes to his
campaign, compared to how Sanders’s and Clinton’s numbers have changed. Trump’s
goal with these changes is to win over as many blue states as possible while
still keeping the red states red. I would be interested to see if he has been
successful or if his name and reputation is already to set in stone to be
changed. One final aspect of the story that I particularly liked was how the
writer barely mentioned Trump’s wall. Since Trump publicized his idea of
building a wall on the southern border of the United States, essentially
anybody who criticizes him uses that against him and it has almost become the
easy argument.
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