After months of campaigns, debating, and electoral news, Americans will be making a decision as to who will lead the United States of America. Their choices are the incumbent and Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Joe Biden.
The central issues in this edition of the presidential election include the impact of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which has left more than 230,000 Americans dead. However, that’s not all. The racial profiling and police murders of George Floyd and a few other African Americans have started widespread protests around the country demanding the defunding of police, and a probe into the police brutalities. The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett in her place have created protests in the legal circles. Another important debate in regards to the policy would be the future of the Affordable Care Act, with Biden arguing for protecting and expanding the scope of the legislation, and Trump pushing for its repeal.
It is noted that millions of Americans started voting early and now it is up to the Election Day voters to finish the job. This will end a campaign that was reshaped by Covid-19. Interestingly, both candidates have declared the other as fundamentally unfit to lead the nation through this pandemic and both are facing questions about racial justice and economic fairness. Going into Election Day, Biden entered with multiple paths to victory; meanwhile, Trump has been playing catch-up in several battleground states. Trump still has a feasible but slender chance of clinching 270 Electoral College votes.
Despite the raging pandemic and the threat of being affected, voters braved long lines to cast ballots as they choose a leader that could lead the nation from the darkness for the next four years. The record-setting early vote, and legal skirmishing over how it will be counted, Trump has drawn unsupported allegations of fraud. He has refused to guarantee that he would honour the election’s result.
The winner of this election is scheduled to be in the office on January 20, 2021. This election will also be setting some new records in American political history. If elected as president, the 78-year-old Biden would become the oldest person to serve as president and the first candidate to defeat an incumbent president in 28 years since Bill Clinton defeated George H W Bush in 1992. Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris would become the first woman to serve as vice-president.
If Trump is re-elected, he would also be the oldest president to be inaugurated in US history, as he would be 74-years-old at the time of his inauguration in 2021. This is the first presidential election in which both the major candidates are over 70 years of age.
