WASHINGTON: Americans vote on Tuesday (today) to elect their 46th president, Joe Biden, or re-elect the 45th, Donald J. Trump.

Although almost 94 million people have already voted, political pundits are still reluctant to say who will win. Predictions vary from a clean sweep for Biden, a Democrat, to a clear victory for the incumbent, a Republican.

And this uncertainty has been caused by a single factor — the Covid-19 pandemic. In January, only a few Americans had heard of coronavirus. By Nov 2, the virus had killed more than 220,000 people and infected 9.2 million. As it starts spreading again, Americans, as many others around the globe, are focused on how to defeat this deadly virus.

“This is my commitment to you: we will make sure every American has access to a free and safe Covid-19 vaccine,” said Biden in his Election Day message.

Almost 94m voters have already cast their ballots

President Trump’s tweet, however, focused on his own personal charisma, which won him the 2016 election against all predictions, and he hopes it will work again.

In a sign of how volatile the election could be, buildings in several cities were boarded up, including along several blocks around the White House and in New York City.

In Los Angeles, the famed shopping destination of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills will be closed down on Tuesday, police said.

Whoever wins, the 2020 presidential election is already setting new records: the first under pandemic-related restrictions that prevented social contacts, door-to-door campaigns and political rallies — except a few led by Trump defying Covid-19 restrictions.

But despite these restrictions, or perhaps because of them, the election is already on track to have the highest voter turnout in more than a century.

Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who runs the US Elections Project, expects a 65 per cent or higher turnout, the highest since 1908.

His project reported that 93,131,017 people had already voted by Sunday evening — more than two-thirds of the total votes cast in 2016, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. About 136.5 million people voted in 2016 while 92 million chose not to.

There are 239,247,182 eligible voters in the United States in 2020 and more than 150 million are expected to vote “for the first time in history”, The New York Times reported on Monday.

“I’m going to vote like my life depends on it,” Marilyn Crowder, of Philadelphia told the Times, as various US media outlets noted that Democrats and independents were keener to vote than Republicans.

This is apparently because most liberal-minded Americans felt that Trump had tilted American “too much to the right” in his four years and if re-elected he could change their country beyond recognition.

“Perhaps no two candidates [have ever been] more at odds over the future of the country and the direction they want to take it in,” observed National Public Radio. “This election is fundamentally about what it means to be an American.”

Statistics released by a Washington think tank, Pew Research Centre, indicate that once again independent voters and the so-called swing states will play a decisive role in electing the next president. Out of 50, there are about 10 states that are neither solidly Republicans nor Democrats.

Pew’s statistics show that around a third of registered voters — 34 per cent — are independents, while 33pc are Democrats and 29pc are Republicans. And 49pc of all registered voters either identify as Democrats or lean to the party, while 44pc identify as Republicans or lean to the party.

Non-Hispanic White Americans make up the largest share of registered voters, at 69pc of the total. Hispanic and Black registered voters each account for 11pc of the total, while those from other racial or ethnic backgrounds account for the remainder 8pc.

White voters account for a diminished share of registered voters than in the past, declining from 85pc in 1996 to 69pc ahead of this year’s election.

Besides Covid-19, the two other issues that dominated the 2020 election season were healthcare and economy. And both were also related to Covid-19.

The pandemic made most Americans feel that their health system is not adequate to deal with such calamities and prevents the poor from going to a doctor even when infected.

The pandemic also caused widespread unemployment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 23 million Americans were out of a job by April this year. That’s an unemployment rate of 14.7pc, up from 3.5pc just two months earlier.

Most Americans showed no interest in foreign policy issues in this election. President Trump tried to bring China and Afghanistan into the discourse but failed.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2020