Coast to coast, and all over the world, the US presidential election will be the topic on everyone's lips this week, and yes, Donald Trump is going to be at the butt-end of innumerable small-talk comments between progressives, liberals and gent de bé over the next few days. But after you've agreed, in your own words, that "the man is crazy," you'll need a few topics up your sleeve to keep the conversation going, if you want to surprise your social media crush, your mask-clad co-worker, or a customer on a video conference. So, to prepare for Tuesday, November 3rd, when the United States of America chooses its next president - Donald Trump or Joe Biden - here's a proposal for some compelling conversational gambits.
1. A night that will last a week
The fact that many Americans have been voting in advance breaks the mould of election night as the be-all and end-all when the winner will be announced. Biden or Trump? It will be an Election Week instead of an Election Day. There will be no clear winner on the night of November 3rd.
To give you an idea: on the night, we'll have numbers for Florida in a matter of hours; Arizona and North Carolina will release figures very quickly, although the final results will have to wait till days later; Georgia and Texas should count most ballots on November 3rd but the full count in these states might not be known until Wednesday or Thursday; we're likely to know the winner in Wisconsin on Wednesday morning; while Michigan and Pennsylvania will likely take until the end of the week. The FiveThirtyEight poll analysis website, created by Nate Silver, has put together a magnificent election special in which the likely publication times of the results in the various states can be consulted.
The political chaos of the 2000 election is likely to be re-invoked: when Florida became the battleground between George W. Bush and Al Gore, a contest finally decided by the Supreme Court which legitimized Bush to take the 29 electoral votes at stake, and by extension, in extremis, the presidency.
In the state of Wisconsin, elections results should be known on Wednesday morning, local time.
2. Learn these key states by heart
While the US has 50 states, just under a dozen are key in every election. Trump and Biden will play out their fate in eight swing states, the territories that regularly change colour: Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The New York Times adds another state, traditionally Republican, that could tip the scales: Arizona.
In 2016, Trump won some of these by very narrow margins. In recent weeks, fundraising, rallies, advertising, social media campaigns... almost the entire agenda and media focus have been on the swing states. These eight states represent 80 million voters states and 125 electoral college votes, as we can see in the election special published by TrumpLandMedia (in Spanish).
3. The TikTok and Twitch elections
If the 2016 election was marked by the Cambridge Analytica controversy and the fraudulent uses of Facebook advertising by the Trump campaign, the 2020 election has one keyword: TikTok. The Chinese social platform has become another playing field where the propaganda machinery of Democrats and Republicans has been deployed to an extraordinarily extent. Twitter and Facebook are still dominant, though. The first because it is Trump’s favorite channel to exercise his Diplomacy 2.0; the second because it continues to be a platform for spreading electoral content including hate speech by groups such as QAnon, the extreme-right conspiracy-theory-based group that sees Trump as the saviour of the world.
TikTok, the social network created by the Chinese firm ByteDance, is playing a prominent role in getting political content out, for both conservative and liberal followers. Trump has also used it by opposing it - portraying it as an example of China's influence in the global information war. Trump forced ByteDance to partner with US software company Oracle to curb the social network's alleged collusion with the Chinese government, whom he accuses of harvesting the data of his fellow Americans.
Twitch, the social platform for gamers, is another space where political strategies are being put into practice. The pandemic has made TikTok the fastest growing platform, while the public have spent two million hours playing games on Twitch. Twitch "has been used to broadcast live rallies, such as the Republican Party convention in June 2020," recalls consultant Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí.
Meanwhile, AOC - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the congresswoman who many see as a future tenant of the White House, has broadened the Democratic base on social platforms and video games. Last May, she plugged in with Democratic voters for the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, one of the 2020 phenomena for gamers, and drew nearly half a million people to her first live on that platform while playing Among Us with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. The live show, to promote voting and also the Biden campaign, was watched by 5.4 million people.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has broadened the Democratic bases via social media and gamer platforms
4. The influence of QAnon
More than twenty Republican candidates explicitly support QAnon, a far-right movement that promotes conspiracies such as the 2016 Pizzagate and this year's Plandemic. QAnon was born on platforms like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit and has spread its hatred via Facebook and Twitter. Trump has repeatedly shared references to this radical movement, several turns of the screw beyond the former radical limits of the Republicans, in the Tea Party. QAnon has been a key name over the last four years.
5. Trump's mountain of lies
The Washington Post decided to fact-check Trump's most controversial statements from the first day of his term and the results are telling. The president exceeded 10,000 lies by April 2019. But by July of this year, he had told a total of more than 20,000 porkies - more in his third year of office than the first two together! From 12, to 23 a day. And the figure has skyrocketed in the run-up to the elections, with the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests.
The last stage of the election campaign has been marked by the leak published in the New York Post, a tabloid owned by pro-Trump tycoon Rupert Murdoch. According to the Post, material was found on a computer of Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic candidate, implicating him in influence peddling and political corruption. Although these stories were spread on social media, the truth is that neither has reliable evidence been provided by Murdoch's newspaper, nor have other media reported the story, due to its lack of substantiation. In the US, the term for these leaks that misinform and tarnish someone's reputation is hack-and-leak. A little like switching on the fan and spreading the manure.
Trump has attacked his rival quoting the name of Hunter at every recent rally. With stories linked to conspiracy theories, it's a tactic Trump has used in the past to attack Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, questioning whether Obama was really of American origin, while accusing Clinton of corruption, kidnapping and covering up crimes.
Joe Biden, Democratic candidate for the presidency of the USA 2020
6. Biden, better placed than Hillary
As the Coldplay lyrics go, "All that I know is there's nothing here to run from". William Saletan in a Slate piece that borrows that song's title - Don't Panic - asserts that Biden is better placed than Hillary Clinton was in 2016.
But the 2020 election campaign is coming to an end and millions of Americans are panicking. They fear Trump will resurface and win, as in 2016. Trump is a good fundraiser and his campaign finale is attention-grabbing. Probably not as impressive as in 2016, although it reaches the home straight at a good speed. The health, institutional, social and economic crisis should be too large a hurdle for re-election, but for now he is still in the ring and still standing.
However, there are good reasons to think a re-run of 2016 will not occur. Biden's poll results are consistent. Counting the safe blue states, Biden can already count on more than 200 electoral votes, probably around 230. To reach the 270 for victory, he only needs three states that Clinton narrowly lost: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If Biden loses any of those, he could still reach 270 with the electoral votes of Arizona, Florida, Georgia or North Carolina.
7. Trump won't disappear
Ever since Trump’s campaigns for 2016 began, both the primaries and the presidential elections, and then during his four years in office, the New York mogul has been an unprecedented focus for the media. His re-election is possible, but Biden’s victory can be sensed as the media leaves behind the headlines and stories focused on the current president. The so-called Trump Bump has been a moment of extraordinary profitability for the media in terms of audiences and revenue.
Noah Shachtman, director of the Daily Beast, believes that the "Trump show will not come to an end if he loses the election." First, because the transition to a new Democratic administration will not be easy. Second, because Trump’s propaganda machinery will not stop working. In recent times, the Trump family has been linked to the One America News Network (OANN), a cable channel that might be for Trumpism what Granma was for the Castro regime. With a defeat, there's no doubt that there will be a lot of talk about the Trump TV concept. The last Trump has yet to be played.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden, candidates for the presidency of the United States of America 2020
8. Biden, transitional president
Trump’s election campaign attacks Biden’s age, mental health, family relationships, and the influence of social democrats like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. But the Democratic candidate, vice president with Obama, has sought balance via running mate Kamala Harris, moderate, female, and has strengthened his figure through references like Obama himself, former first lady Michelle Obama and posthumous civil rights fighters like John Lewis or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Biden is the candidate cast as a tool to defeat Trump in the referendum which this year's US elections have become: Trump, yes or no. But this transitional role for Biden does not mean a lack of leadership. He recalls that after the assassination of John Kennedy, his vice president Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan, became the unlikely standard-bearer who signed the Civil Rights Act from the White House.
9. Debates that won't go down in history
The extreme polarization that the United States is undergoing has provided specific data on voting intentions. Thus, it is the election in which voters are clearest about their vote and in which the electoral debates have been least decisive. The two debates between Trump and Biden were forgettable. In the first, in Cleveland, insults, depreciations and interruptions marked a night which lacked civility, but which showed the state of the confrontation between the two. The second debate, in Nashville, shifted toward more traditional debating turf.
Both contests, despite the limitations imposed by the pandemic, show that the format is outdated in both form and substance. After more than 60 years since the first such televised contest, between Kennedy and Nixon, the debates are still following the same formula. There is a lack of interaction with the audience, no use of audiovisual materials or moderators able to employ more of a multi-platform approach.
10. And your POTUS sweepstake?
If you’ve exhausted the topics of conversation on the next POTUS (that's President Of The United States, of course), you still have one ace up your sleeve: make your own election prediction on the Electoral College vote with #POTUSPredictor, an interactive which allows you to guess the final result of the election. My pick: Joe Biden, 323 votes, Donald Trump, 215. Do you want to bet on that?