ABSTRACT
The 2016 election was one of the potentially most consequential campaigns in the recent history of presidential politics. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent-Socialist running on a populist, anti-Wall-Street platform, nearly toppled the candidacy of the Democratic Party's frontrunner Hillary Clinton during a hard-fought primary campaign. Real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump, who had earned political notoriety for having questioned whether the nation's first African-American president was born in the United States, defeated sixteen Republican rivals to win the Republican presidential nomination and, ultimately, the presidency.
