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Park Hong Min, Associate Professor in the Political Science department of the University of Wisconsin, argued, “From a political scientist’s perspective, Donald Trump’s shooting won’t bring significant changes to the U.S. elections.”
During CBS Radio’s Kim Hyun Jung’s News Show on the 15th, Park stated, “Republican supporters will support Trump regardless. Because they are known for their strong unity, there will not be a significant increase in the voter turnout.”
“Democratic supporters, who already disliked Trump, won’t be greatly affected by this incident. On the contrary, there might be a reverse effect where the turnout increases because of a sense of crisis that the Democrats might lose due to distrust towards Joe Biden,” he added.
He continued, explaining that moderate voters were the most significant group in the 2020 U.S. election. There was a prediction that as moderate voters shifted their votes to support Democrat Biden, voter turnout would increase following the George Floyd incident—an unarmed Black man who died due to police brutality in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. However, he added that research by political scientists found no change in the level of support or voter turnout for Biden among moderate voters. Therefore, he advised caution in assessing whether this incident would influence them.
In response to some Republican supporters declaring the election win due to this incident, Park said, “I personally question that. In the U.S., the election is not about persuading the moderates, but about how many supporters each party can bring to the polls.” He suggested, “The trends in support and the results of public opinion polls this and next week will provide more clarity.”
When asked about the Democrats’ demands for a candidate replacement, he responded, “The Democrats seem to be making a strategic decision about who would be better between Biden and another pinch-hitter to rally people to the polls by capitalizing on this crisis. Their decision-making will take about two weeks because it won’t be too late to decide after seeing the results of the Republican convention, starting this week.”
Previously, on Saturday, there was an incident where Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, was shot during an outdoor campaign. Trump suffered a graze wound from the bullet, and the shooter was immediately killed on the spot.
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