2016 Election Night

International trade has been an enormously contentious issue in this election. Trump has lambasted trade deals like NAFTA — and countries like China — as hurting U.S. workers, particularly in manufacturing. Overall, voters were evenly split on the issue in exit polls: 41 percent responded that trade with other countries “takes away U.S. jobs” while 39 percent said it “creates more U.S. jobs” (another 11 percent were undecided). But Trump and Clinton voters are a mirror image on the issue, with 63 percent of Trump voters saying trade took jobs away while 60 percent of Clinton voters thought it created them.

Among the wide-array of topics covered by California’s 17 propositions on the ballot there today is prescription drug prices. The bill, Prop 61, is based on a wonky law and formula that allows the Veteran’s Administration to receive discounts on drug prices, basically 24 percent off what the rest of the country pays, on average. Californians are voting on whether or not to require that some state health programs not pay more for drugs than the VA does. Supporters of the bill argue that it passing in bellwether California is an important first step in starting a national conversation about drug pricing. The record-breaking $100 million raised to fight the legislation, money that mostly came from pharmaceutical companies, suggests that the industry also sees the law’s potential ripple effects. Pharma-backed opponents claim the bill will create red tape that will slow down or prevent people from getting necessary drugs. They also note that since the drug industry won’t legally be required to abide by the discounts, the state would have to negotiate on each drug, which could make it impossible for some people to get certain medications. It’s also unclear how the law would be enforced, since the VA doesn’t make public the price that it ultimately pays for drugs. But there’s another camp of No voters that’s a little more complicated, people who are in favor of government controlled pricing of drugs but are against this particular law. From their view, pharmaceutical companies will be unlikely to take a profit hit, and will find a way to make up the revenue elsewhere. Since it’s unclear who would end up footing the bill, they are wary of the law of unintended consequences. As Health News Review points out, a lot of the media coverage about Prop 61 has fallen short of helping California voters understand the effects of the bill. That’s likely because the tangled web that is our health care system makes it difficult to know what the effects would be.

Preliminary exit polls show that many voters were motivated by dislike of one of the candidates more than by support for the person they voted for. One in five Clinton voters said they chiefly oppose the other candidate, and 27 percent of Trump supporters said the same; those figures were just 8 percent for Obama voters in 2012 and 10 percent for Romney voters. Asked about Trump’s treatment of women, 70 percent of all voters said they were bothered some or a lot; 62 percent said the same about Clinton’s emails while secretary of state.