Ideological Accommodation in Electoral Discourse: How Liberalism and Populism Reconciled in American Elections 2024?

Abstract

The study investigates the use of accommodation strategies that candidates use in electoral discourse to approximate and converge to the Other’s ideology. The context is the American elections in 2024, held between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The two candidates represent the two prominent ideologies that predominate the American political context—Populism and Liberalism. The analysis focused on the topics of freedom, abortion and sexual identities.  The analysis of the accommodation strategies in the discourse of the two candidates showed salient evidence that the two candidates employed approximation strategies to adjust their ideologies to appeal to the largest section of voters either by evading extreme ideological views or adopting some counter-ideology views.