Under the clouds of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic and uncertainty, US citizens will go to the polls to formally end the voting process for the 2020 presidential election, where about two-thirds of the registered voters have already cast their ballots and were now waiting for the results of the hard-fought contest, not only for the presidency but also for Congress.
President Donald Trump has defined the election as a war to “keep America Great”, while his Democratic opponent has called it a “battle for the soul of the nation”.
Biden goes into the election with a 6.7 per cent lead over Trump, slightly down from 7.5 per cent a week ago, according to the RealClear Politics polling average, which aggregates major poll results.
The House of Representatives, which the Democrats captured in 2018, will be theirs in this election, but the Senate where the Republicans have a slender majority of six could be at play with the party’s fortunes tied to Trump’s.
A Biden victory will make history by bringing an Indian-American, Kamala Harris, a heartbeat away from the presidency. She would also be the first woman and the first person with a claim to African descent to become Vice President.
In an election process disrupted by the pandemic and the divisiveness it deepened, already an estimated 97.6 million of about 152 million registered voters had cast their ballots by Sunday, 62.1 million by post and 35.5 million at in-person early voting polling sites, according to the the US Elections Project.