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US President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign event at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport. (Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
The United States will go to the polls starting at 1:00 p.m. South African time on Tuesday, as millions of voters in one of the world’s oldest democracies will pass judgment on the government of President Donald Trump.
While millions of Americans have already cast their votes through a mailing system, millions more will face the onset of winter and the resurgence of Covid-19 in that country’s largest cities to decide whether Trump, a Republican, will be re-elected. or succeeded by former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee.
As Americans prepare to vote:
- There is uncertainty about whether Trump will accept an electoral defeat.
- Both Republicans and Democrats are preparing to challenge some results in court.
- Biden enters the election with a significant advantage in all the most respected polls.
- More than 90 million Americans have already voted, that’s more than half of 2016.
- All eyes will be on the states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Almost all authoritative national polls place Biden significantly ahead of Trump, including in all the states that are considered crucial for either candidate to win the presidency.
Under the US electoral system, candidates are assigned a number of electoral votes in the winning states. These votes are then cast at an electoral college, where the votes of all states are represented. The winning candidate needs 270 of the 534 electoral college votes.
Center
According to Nate Cohn, an election expert at the New York Times, if the polls hold up, “Biden could achieve the most decisive victory in a presidential election in three and a half decades, surpassing Bill Clinton’s victory in 1996.”
JL Demps Jr. awaits the arrival of former President Barack Obama for his push at a campaign rally in support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. (Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
That newspaper’s average of major polls in the United States, including independent and partisan polls, shows that Biden led Trump on the eve of the election by nine percentage points. That represents the largest deficit for any sitting president since 1980, when Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory over Jimmy Carter.
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Charlie Cook, a respected independent analyst who has been running the highly acclaimed Cook Political Report for decades, wrote last week that the question now is whether it will be a Reagan-like landslide for Biden, or just a “skinny victory” for Biden. the democrat.
Nate Silver, the analyst who rose to fame when he accurately predicted 48 states during Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, says his model shows that Biden has a 90% chance of winning, but this week added that polls are still fallible and that Trump still has numerous. ways to retain the presidency.
Favourite
Cohn, Cook and Silver agree that Biden is clearly the favorite to win, but they all say that the polls could still be inaccurate and that Trump’s dramatic 2016 victory shows he is capable of fabricating a victory.
Cohn says in the New York Times that if Trump wins, it will mean pollsters made even bigger mistakes than in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was the favorite to win.
“President Trump needs a very big voting error to have any hope of winning the White House. Joe Biden would win even if the polls were as off-track as in 2016,” Cohn says.
A supporter arrives for a rally on the eve of the election for President Donald Trump on November 2, 2020 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski / Getty Images)
Trump, a flamboyant New York businessman and former star of the television series The Apprentice, has been hit by the poor performance of the US economy since the coronavirus pandemic hit, with unemployment rising to record highs. His government has also been severely criticized for its handling of the virus, and critics have said there has been a lack of urgency and a coherent strategy to deal with the pandemic.
Criticized
His leadership, of late, has also been severely criticized by many close friends who served in his administration, including John Kelly, a former chief of staff, James Mattiss, a former defense secretary, and John Bolton, a former national security adviser.
Additionally, his presidency, seen by many as eventful and incoherent, has been marked by controversy and drama, as instability in government, an impeachment hearing, and further polarization of society have dominated the news landscape.
Biden, 77, is a seasoned senator who served as Obama’s deputy from 2009 to 2017. He was sidelined in favor of Clinton in 2016, who was later defeated by Trump.
He is considered a centrist and moderate, highly respected by Republicans. However, his critics fear that he will be too old if he wins, and that he will only be able to serve one term.
The Trump campaign has tried to paint him as a tool of the “radical left” and argue that he and Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic vice presidential candidate, will import socialism if they claim the White House.
Follow News24 updates and analysis starting today as election results begin to roll in.
