Louis Dor
Nov 14, 2016
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It's the question on everyone's lips: Is Donald Trump actually going to do everything he promised during his campaign?
If you look at trends - he'll probably do about two thirds of them.
In recent years PolitiFact examined more than 500 promises President Obama made during his two presidential campaigns, finding that he kept or reached a compromise on 70 per cent of them.
Is Obama an exception? Not really - Republican leaders made 53 promises before taking over congress in 2010 and 68 per cent of these have been kept to some degree.
So is it down to greater scrutiny and transparency in modern times?
No - FiveThirtyEight looked at the literature and found that studies which monitored politicians fidelity to pledges documented that they kept their word around two thirds of the time.
If Donald Trump were to abandon all his pledges to the voters, it would be a turn up for the books... but when has Trump in politics ever been anything but this?
He already appears to have climbed down on his previous grievances with the same-sex marriage laws passed by the Supreme Court.
It's law. It was settled in the Supreme Court.
It's done. ... These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They've been settled, and I'm fine with that.
We wonder which two thirds of his promises he won't row back on.
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