News24.com | Drama expected as US goes to the polls to deliver judgement on Trump's presidency


 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 from 13:00 South African time on Tuesday as millions of voters in one of the world's oldest democracies will deliver judgement on the government of President Donald Trump.

While millions of Americans have already cast their ballots through a mail-in system, millions more will brave early winter as well as a resurgence of Covid-19 in that country's biggest cities to decide whether Trump, a Republican, will be re-elected, or succeeded by former vice-president Joe Biden, the Democrats' candidate.

Almost every single authoritative national poll puts Biden significantly ahead of Trump, including in all the states which are considered crucial for either candidate to win the presidency.

According to the US election system, candidates are allocated a number of electoral votes in the states that they win. These votes are then cast in an electoral college, where all states' votes are represented. The winning candidate needs 270 out of 534 electoral college votes.

Polls

According to Nate Cohn, the New York Times' election expert, if the polls hold, "Biden could post the most decisive victory in a presidential election in three and a half decades, surpassing Bill Clinton's win in 1996".

That newspaper's average of the major polls in the US – including independent and partisan polling – shows that Biden led Trump on the eve of the election by nine percentage points. That represents the biggest deficit for any incumbent president since 1980, when Ronald Reagan won a landslide over Jimmy Carter.

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Charlie Cook, a respected independent analyst who has been running the vaunted Cook Political Report for decades, wrote last week that the question now is whether it will be a Reagan-like landslide for Biden, or merely a "skinny win" for the Democrat.

Nate Silver, the analyst who shot to fame when he accurately predicted 48 states during Barack Obama's 2008 win, says his modelling shows that Biden has a 90% chance of winning – but this week added that polling remains fallible, and that Trump still has numerous ways to retain the presidency.

Favourite

Cohn, Cook and Silver agree that Biden is clearly the favourite to win, but all say that polling could still be inaccurate and that Trump's dramatic 2016 victory shows he is able to manufacture a victory.

Writing in the New York Times, Cohn says, if Trump wins, it will mean that pollsters made even greater errors than in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was favoured to win.

"President Trump needs a very large polling error to have a hope of winning the White House. Joe Biden would win even if polls were off by as much as they were in 2016," says Cohn.

Trump – a flamboyant New York businessman and former star of the television series The Apprentice – has been battered by the US economy's poor performance since the coronavirus pandemic hit, with unemployment rising to record highs. His government has also been severely criticised for its handling of the virus, with critics saying there has been a lack of urgency and no coherent strategy for dealing with the pandemic.

Criticised

His leadership has, in recent times, also been severely criticised by many intimates who served in his government, including John Kelly, a former chief of staff, James Mattiss, a former secretary of defence, and John Bolton, a former national security advisor.

In addition, his presidency, considered by many as flailing and incoherent, has been pockmarked by controversy and drama as instability in government, an impeachment hearing and increased polarisation of society have dominated the newscape.

Biden, who is 77, is an experienced senator who served as deputy to Obama between 2009 and 2017. He was sidelined in favour of Clinton in 2016, who went on to be defeated by Trump.

He is considered a centrist and moderate, who is well respected by Republicans. His critics, however, fear he might be too old if he wins, and that he will only be able to serve one term.

The Trump campaign has attempted to paint him as a tool of the "radical left" and argue that he and Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic nominee for vice president, will import socialism if they claim the White House.

Follow News24's updates and analysis from today as election results start coming in.