Was Trump’s U.S. Election Victory a Rare Event?
Our risk mitigation and communication approaches change in the presence of rare events.
The nature of low-likelihood, high-consequence (rare) events makes them unexpectedly and disproportionately impactful. In the context of the Trump US election victory, three indicators can be used to determine if it was truly a rare event.
Three Indicators of a Rare Event
There are three potential indicators that an event may be a rare event.
Frequency of Past Occurrence
The first indicator is determined by examining the frequency of an event’s past occurrence.
For many events, we can look backward and determine the frequency of a class of similar events and feel reasonably sure that it will not happen with regularity in the future. However, context can be tricky.
In the Trump 2024 election, a president is elected from one of the two major political parties every four years. And in this case, Trump won the presidency just eight years ago.
On the other hand, Trump and Grover Cleveland are the only two U.S. presidents who have served non-consecutive terms. Trump is the first president to win an election while facing multiple pending federal court cases, the first president to win an election after being impeached, the first convicted felon to win the presidency, the oldest person to be elected President, and the first candidate to survive two assassination attempts.
Human Impacts
The second indicator of a rare event is how humans treat a potential event once it has been identified.
People in power often believe the rare event will never happen. If it does, they have the control to deal with it just like any other emergency. They also have access to corrective resources. Biases such as overconfidence bias are in play.
People who are most likely negatively impacted by a potential rare event will want protection. The need for protection usually plays out in legislative or regulatory protection against the event. Outside stakeholders join the lobbying efforts of those most likely affected but not in power.
In the Trump 2024 election, the Democrats who held power believed they could control events. The people who believed they would be negatively impacted by a Trump election also demanded protection. Unprecedented legal challenges and a one-sided media were the forms of protection. The name-calling began as a last-ditch defensive mechanism when it became apparent that Trump may get elected.
Crisis Mode
Sometimes, we actually hear the term. Sometimes, we move into formal procedures, such as an emergency response plan. But when you see the shift from normal to crisis mode, you have a third indicator of a rare event.
In the Trump 2024 election, “normal mode” ceased when Joe Biden stepped down as a candidate. This was also when the Trump legal team started making significant headway against all four lawsuits.
“Crisis” crept into the language of the Democrats and the media. One hundred days before the election, there was a real chance that Donald Trump could be elected as the 47th President.
Risk Management
In risk management, we use a lot of statistics and talk base and compound probabilities. We also reference the fat and skinny tails in probability distributions to understand and mitigate rare events.
Despite our best efforts to quantify risk (and rare events), risk is more subjective than objective. Humans invented the concept to help them understand and cope with the dangers and uncertainties of life.
“Risk does not exist ‘out there,’ independent of our minds and cultures, waiting to be measured.” — Slovic and Weber
In practical terms, I like to simplify the definition of risk as surprise and risk management to mean “no surprises.” That means a rare event is a really big surprise.
Rare events are usually marked by colloquial comments like “I have only experienced this once in my life” or “No one could have expected this to happen.”
Was the Trump Election a Rare Event?
The only thing that does not make the Trump election a rare event is that every four years a person form one of the two major political parties will be elected President. All of the other indicators-the probabilities related to Donald Trump, the classic rare-event human impacts, and the shifting of the event into crisis mode make it a rare event.
How much of a rare event was the election of Trump. It depends on where you sit. After all, the perception of risk and a rare event is subjective.
JD Solomon is the founder of JD Solomon, Inc., the creator of the FINESSE fishbone diagram®, and the co-creator of the SOAP criticality method©. He is the author of Communicating Reliability, Risk & Resiliency to Decision Makers: How to Get Your Boss’s Boss to Understand and Facilitating with FINESSE: A Guide to Successful Business Solutions.
