As a phone bank volunteer, I hoped to counter the Republican attacks and half-truths, but people really believed them
It has been an extraordinary week for US politics – and a very depressing couple of days for those such as me who spent hours on the phone to people, trying to persuade them to vote for Kamala Harris and not Donald Trump. This is what voters told me time and again, and why so many did vote for Trump.
The first type of voter I encountered as a volunteer on the Harris phone bank was the one focused purely on the economy. It is hard for us to grasp on this side of the Atlantic that soaring growth rates and low unemployment in the US would not be seen positively in the eyes of an American voter. But it was clear in my conversations that the Trump campaign was extremely effective at countering that story. Wages may well be rising at all levels, but everyday inflation was more discernible to voters.
Oliver Hall is a journalist and podcaster
