Unprecedentedly divisive US election
Voting in the US presidential election has ended, but the final result is still some way off. This is because of the huge number of mail-in votes, early voting, and the different rules in place in various states when to conduct the vote count and issue certified final results. However, risky as predictions are at the time of writing these lines, it seems inescapable that Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump by a margin of between 11 and 50 electoral college votes, with the most optimistic results still leaving Biden short by anything from six to 46 electoral college votes from the winning number 270. Results in some hotly contested swing states are still awaited though, therefore final pronouncement has to wait. This has not stopped Donald Trump, as he had threatened to do before and on election day, from claiming, in various messages, that he had won or that the election was being stolen from him through alleged ‘rigging’. With no credible evidence of any electoral fraud however, Mr Trump’s fulminations sound like the desperate bleatings of a sore loser, thereby living up to his pre-electoral image. Biden on the other hand has sounded mature and statesmanlike in stating that nobody, including Trump, could replace the American people in deciding who won or lost. While advocating patience to allow the complicated and in some instances diverse state-by-state tallying of all votes, in person or mail-in, Mr Biden’s campaign has geared up its legal team to meet Trump’s threat to take the issue of the conduct of the elections to the Supreme Court for adjudication, where the Republican judges’ majority, Trump hopes, will find for his cause. It should be understood, however, that the US Supreme Court cannot be approached directly since it has only appellate jurisdiction. Therefore if the electoral battle lands up in the courts, it will be a relatively lengthy process of county and state courts’ adjudication of any disputes, with appeal ultimately lying to the Supreme Court. Despite the pre-election day polls and now the interim results, the American people may have to wait to discover finally who their president for the next four years is to be.
Fortunately, widespread fears of violence on election day proved unfounded. Peaceful protests and celebratory rallies did punctuate the proceedings soon after results started rolling in, one could say prematurely, but there were few untoward incidents and only a smattering of arrests of participants. An unprecedentedly divided US with a nervous electorate saw a record breaking turnout of some 160 million people. This could be ascribed to the electorate’s perception of this as a make-or-break election as well as to the Democrats urging people to vote, based on the perception that their full electoral strength was not represented in 2016. The Democrats’ simple but effective message was: Donald Trump can only be stopped and removed if their voter showed up on the crucial day. And show up they certainly did. Apart from the swing states still in contention awaiting the final vote tally, there have been few upendings of states’ traditional political leanings towards one or the other of the two contending parties. That still leaves some margin of hope for the Trump camp that when the tally is completed, they may achieve a surprise upset of the trend so far. But, looking at the interim figures for both candidates, this seems increasingly a forlorn hope. This election has been watched with feverish intensity all over the world, an indicator of the power the US still commands in global affairs. In South Asia too, the election has received round-the-clock coverage and commentary. Pakistan shares some anxiety about who the next incumbent of the White House will be, since our vital national interests, domestically, regionally and globally, still rest so much on the relationship with Washington.
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