Everyone in the United States has heard about the 2016 presidential election and its candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. With this election, as it always does in politics, comes along many different conflicting opinions which can be hard to keep track of. We now live in the age of social media, where thoughts are shared faster than ever. However, it has also become easier to get caught up in what other people are saying rather than forming our own opinions. It is hard to find cut-and-dry facts, especially with how much controversy is surrounding the current election. Filtering out biases and finding simply stated facts on the stances of each candidate can be very difficult sometimes, but hopefully this will help to clear up the confusion.

 In a recently taken poll by the Pew Research Center, it was shown that Americans believe the economy and terrorism to be the most important issues of the 2016 election. When it comes to Trump and Clinton, their stances on the economy vastly differ. Clinton has constantly said that she does not believe the economy is performing for working class citizens and wants to focus on raising wages. On the other hand, Trump has plans to make tax cuts in order to gain control of the US’s 19 trillion dollar debt. The one thing they agree on in this area is that they both want to put a priority on stopping businesses from outsourcing their jobs to other countries, therefore creating more jobs for Americans.

 Despite their different stances on the economy, both seem to agree on the issue of terrorism: it needs to be stopped. However, their approaches to this problem differ in a lot of ways. Trump wants to cut off the cash flow to terrorist cells by sending in ground troops to take the Middle Eastern oil rigs. Hillary Clinton takes on this issue from a different angle and wants to put an emphasis on maintaining good relations with Middle Eastern countries and using their support to eliminate terrorist cells like ISIS.

 By now, pretty much everyone has heard Trump talking about building a wall along the Mexican border in order to stop illegal immigration. However, he does plan to make becoming a legal citizen easier and more fair, which is something he and Hillary agree on. Clinton has put a strong emphasis on equality during her campaign, making it clear that racism, sexism, etc., will not be tolerated. For immigrants specifically, she wants to work harder at keeping families together and making healthcare more accessible.

 Education is obviously an important topic as well. Trump has expressed plans for ending common core, leaving it up to local governments to decide how they want their school systems to run. Hillary wants to focus more on our access to education by making community college completely free for students and also on making pre-school a top priority.

 There are a ton of other issues affecting this campaign, and even though most of us cannot vote yet, it is important to stay informed. Coach East agrees that students should be as active as possible in the election process and says that when it comes to getting the right information, “It is really important for a student to realize that the “truths” are sometimes slanted, depending which news organization you watch or website you go to.  Students should try to see both sides of an issue, understand the arguments, and then decide where they stand.” There are many ways to stay informed, try checking out the candidate’s website or other credible news sources.