DID AMERICA’S WOMEN COUNT IN THE US ELECTION?

By Pauline Lewis

Legal challenges aside, Joe Biden has clinched it for the Democrats and Donald Trump has been defeated.

The feud between the two contenders was highly publicised and often highly contentious, dominating the discourse between a highly divided American electorate. It was, therefore, easy to overlook the important historic milestone that this election has ushered in; Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s running mate, has become the first woman in US history to become Vice-President. 

This is no mean feat. Hilary Clinton is probably the highest-ranking US female politician to date, having served as both First Lady to Bill Clinton, and then as US Secretary of State under the Obama administration. Previously, only Geraldine Ferraro had managed to reach these heights after becoming the running mate to Walter Mondale for the Democrats during the 1984 election. When she is sworn in at the January inauguration, Kamala will have surpassed both. 

The first female US Vice-President is milestone enough to write about, but the beautiful reality that accompanies this milestone is that Kamala Harris is a woman of colour whose cultural background reads like a cultural diversity dream.  Kamala’s late mother was from Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India, whilst her father is from Jamaica.  She has kept ties with her family in India since childhood and experienced racism as child growing up in the US, with children being told not to play with her simply because she was ‘black’. This cultural background brings many ‘firsts’ with it, as it gives her the simultaneous status of being the first African-American, first Asian-American, and first Caribbean-American to hold the position of Vice-President. Celebrations have already begun taking place in her maternal grandfather’s village of Thulasendrapuram in India.  

But there have been other significant gains for women in this election too. Candidates for Congress appear on the same ballot as the Presidential nominees, and this election has seen the record number of 318 women running for a seat in Congress, exceeding almost 50% of all the combined nominees. In addition to this, 117 of these women also happen to be women of colour. Regardless of the final result, this record number of women standing should be seen as a success in itself.   

This increase in numbers has improved the overall percentage of seats held by women in the US, which went up from 23.7% in the last election to 25.2% in 2020. Not all who stood won, but the increase has again led to several firsts.

Cynthia Lummis will be the first ever woman that the US state of Wyoming has sent to the Senate, whilst Cori Bush becomes the first Black member of Congress from Missouri.

Similarly, as Marilyn Strickland becomes the first Black woman to be sent to Congress by Washington state, New Mexico has become the first US state in history to simultaneously send three women of colour to represent the state in Congress. 

There is no question that there is a lot to celebrate here, but we should never forget the road that has been navigated to get to this point; a road where once there were no women in politics at all, where women were not entitled to vote, and where Black people had no vote at all. As Marilyn Strickland says, “It is exciting to see so many women of colour step up. I think the more that we see folks running for office, the more that we see people holding office, the more encouraged people are.”  The 2020 US Election should be testament to this.


THE US ELECTION – WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

By Bethan Laughlin

It is safe to say that 2020 has been quite a year for the United States.

Joe Biden has been announced as the projected winner of the 2020 US Presidential election. The final votes continue to be counted, but with the highest voter turnout in 120 years and the incumbent President Trump claiming the race to be fraudulent, without substantive evidence of any kind, this election is showing itself to be one of the most significant in living memory.

This election has shown the highest voter turnout since the election of 1900, with an estimated 160 million people voting and a turnout rate of 66.9%, up from the 56% in 2016. This high turnout has resulted in Biden receiving the highest numbers of votes in US history, with over 76 million votes and counting. An incumbent President losing re-election has only happened ten times since the creation of the Office of the Presidency in 1789. This fact, along with the scale of turn out, Biden swinging Pennsylvania back to blue, and the first female Vice President who is also from a minority background, makes it clear that both this election and the ticket that won it is a truly historic moment.  

Naturally, much of the coverage of the election has been focused on Biden’s steady gains towards victory through a commitment to a hopeful future, one that aims to undo the harm created by Trump. Vitally however, it is imperative to remember that President Trump received the second highest number of votes in history, currently standing at over 71 million. This is 8 million more than voted for him in the 2016 election. All of this amid a pandemic that continues to ravage the USA with over 10 million cases recorded so far.

image.jpg

The last four years have been home to a Presidency filled with legal cases, Twitter storms, conspiracy theories, extreme partisanship, allegations of Russian interference, over 200,000 Covid-19 deaths and a racial reckoning following the death of George Floyd that swept the nation. Tumultuous to say the least.

From a UK perspective, it was thought sensible to assume that Biden, with his message of reconciliation, hope and a ‘united’ less divisive United States would lead to an obvious victory. The scale of voter turnout in support of President Trump paints a different picture to this idea and what was projected in the Polls.  

Throughout his campaign Biden has strived to be seen as a moderate counterweight to the extremism in language, tone and policy that has defined Trumps term. Consequently, he became the anti-Trump vote. Was this unexpected? No, and fundamentally it was successful. However, the importance of the scale of the Trump turnout should not be minimised. With over 71 million people turning out to not only support the continued Presidency of Trump, but a Republican party that has seen a gradual but vivid shift towards policies that align with Trump’s vision for America, those labelled as ‘fringe’ voters for supporting Trump in 2016 have shown themselves to be anything but.

Moving forward, the grievances and political beliefs of Trump voters should not be overlooked by a victorious Democratic Party in the coming years. Any future success from a Democratic candidate rests on those Americans who identify as Republicans feeling that their lives, hopes, fears and grievances are being respected by the President across policy formulation and debate.

The reality remains that for tens of millions of Americans, the arguable chaos of the last four years was not enough to vote for Biden. This makes one thing perfectly clear, ‘Trumpism’ and the politics it champions is by no means defeated or going anywhere fast. In fact, it shows the immense task at hand for Biden in trying to bind and unify a country that has seen itself fracture over political divides more than ever in the last four years. It almost goes without saying that this will be a difficult task. It is highly likely that the Senate will be majority Republican - although the votes are still being counted - and with a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, President Elect Biden will have a fight on his hands in his quest for reconciliation.