Trump's Playbook of Electoral Manipulation: An Interplay of Manipulation Tactics in a Longstanding Democracy

Abstract

The attempt by former President Donald Trump to manipulate the United States’ 2020 presidential elections is a salient example of how electoral manipulation has changed to adapt to the new political and societal context that marks present-day elections. This highlights the need for a novel approach to help us better understand electoral manipulation, which is becoming increasingly common all over the world. This article addresses this need by presenting a novel framework for examining electoral manipulation in the United States in the 2020s. A novel feature of the framework is a focus on the interplay between different manipulation tactics. It identifies nine electoral manipulation tactics that interact with and reinforce each other: breaking democratic norms, disinformation, gerrymandering, voter suppression, hacking and leaking, collusion with foreign states, intraparty pressure, intimidation and violence, and corrupting state and government institutions.