The Tribune

ACTIVTRADES WEEKLY

By RICARDO EVANGELISTA

www.activtrades.bs

ONE of the greatest political upsets of all times happened four years ago, when Donald Trump beat the expectations of many and proved pollsters wrong by snatching victory from the hands of the hot favourite Hilary Clinton.

Perhaps for that reason, but also due to other factors, polls that overwhelmingly predict a win by Joe Biden, uncertainty and even some anxiety persist over the result of tomorrow’s American Presidential election.

Contrary to what some think, American voters don’t directly elect the President. Tomorrow’s election decides the composition of the electoral college, with each state being allocated a set number of such representatives. For this reason, despite having had almost three million more votes in 2016 than Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton was defeated.

Trump ended up winning by small margins in all the so-called swing states, capturing the seats allocated to them in the electoral college.

And if the intricacies of the American electoral process make it difficult to accurately predict a winner - even when the polls consistently give one of the candidates the lead by a significant margin - this year’s forecasts are even more complicated by the substantial probability of a disputed result.

The election of 2000 is a good example of such a scenario, with George W Bush declared the winner more than a month after election day. The vote count in the swing state of Florida was very close and the final result was declared only after the Supreme Court decided by a margin of five to four to rule against a recount. The ruling meant that Mr Bush took the 25 electoral seats allocated to the state of Florida by a margin of only 537 votes and was proclaimed winner with 271 representatives in the electoral college against Al Gore’s 266, becoming the 43rd American President.

The run-up to this year’s election has been marked by unprecedented numbers of postal and early voting, with the incumbent President repeatedly mentioning supposed irregularities and stating that he only sees himself losing if the election is rigged, hinting that should that be the case he won’t concede and may refuse to hand over power.

It appears that unless the winner manages to hedge over his opponent by an undisputable margin, we may have to wait weeks or even months to know who the next President will be.

The US has become a socially divided country, with a culture war raging between partisan political views that are increasingly belligerent towards each other.

The economy has been battered by the first wave of the pandemic and the prospects for the winter ahead look bleak.

This is not a good time for a protracted dispute over the election result; it could trigger a constitutional crisis, delay the release of a much-needed economic stimulus package and generate potentially dangerous social unrest.

Therefore, we can only hope that this election is decided tomorrow, with a clear win by one of the two contestants. A disputed result would be the worst-case scenario for the United States, and for the rest of the world.