Harris or Trump? A New Tool Gauges How the World Would Vote in the 2024 Election
Doctoral student Tom Etienne is leading a global collaboration to provide international audiences with objective information about the American presidential election.
As the U.S. election season heats up, people around the world want to know how Americans will vote in the upcoming presidential elections. But how would people in other countries vote in the U.S. election? Tom Etienne, a joint doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, is helping answer that question.
This election season, he is part of a team at the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES), an undergraduate research program dedicated to developing data-driven approaches to understanding political outcomes in the United States, that is partnering with Dutch research institute Kieskompas to create an online tool that allows people around the world to compare their political views with those of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Launching in mid-October, this voter advice application prompts users to rate how much they agree or disagree with statements revolving around issues that are dominating American election campaigns, like: “Taxes on the wealthy should be increased” or “The U.S. should complete the wall along the border with Mexico,” and hopes to give global citizens a better understanding of how their views align with the candidates’ positions.
“Hopefully, our tool will share reliable information about one of the most impactful elections in the world, with the world that will feel its consequences,” Etienne says. “This tool is also highly relevant to both U.S. and foreign policymakers. The degree of alignment between foreign countries and the U.S. can either hinder or support advancing U.S. foreign policy objectives.”
During the last presidential election, Etienne was part of a team at Kieskompas that created a version of this tool, nicknamed the “Trump Meter,” that allowed users to compare their views to those of then-candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The “Trump Meter” was used by over 700,000 people across eight countries, revealing the degree to which each candidate’s views resonated with different populations.
For example, the Danish newspaper B.T. Nyheder asked their readers to use the “Trump Meter” and found that in Denmark, men agreed with Trump more than women.
Etienne hopes that the collaboration between the Annenberg School, PORES, and Kieskompas will enable the 2024 tool to reach a broader audience across different countries.
To achieve this, Etienne is seeking media partners in a diverse set of countries. Newspapers and news websites can request a translated version of the tool for integration into their platforms. The use of this tool not only offers readers unbiased information about the U.S. election but also allows the research team to contribute to data-driven journalism.
