Four years after standing on stage at his own inauguration and painting a dire picture of “American carnage”, Trump departs the office twice impeached, with millions more out of work and 400,000 dead from the coronavirus. Republicans under his watch lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress. He will be forever remembered for the final major act of his presidency: inciting an insurrection at the Capitol that left five dead — including a Capitol Police officer — and horrified the nation.

Trump will be the first president in modern history to boycott his successor’s inauguration as he continues to stew about his loss and privately maintains the election that President-elect Joe Biden fairly won was stolen from him. Republican officials in several critical states, members of his own administration and a wide swath of judges, including those appointed by Trump, have rejected those arguments.

Still, Trump has refused to participate in any of the symbolic passing-of-the-torch traditions surrounding the peaceful transition of power, including inviting the Bidens over for a get-to-know-you visit.

By the time Biden is sworn in, Trump will already have landed at his private Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, Florida, to face an uncertain future — but not before giving himself a grand military sendoff, complete with a red carpet, military band and 21-gun salute.

Guests have been invited, but it is unclear how many will attend. Even Vice President Mike Pence plans to skip the event, citing the logistical challenges of getting from the air base to the inauguration ceremonies. Washington has been transformed into a security fortress, with thousands of National Guard troops, fencing and checkpoints to try to stave off further violence.

Aides had urged Trump to spend his final days in office trying to salvage his legacy by highlighting his administration’s achievements — passing tax cuts, scaling back federal regulations, normalising relations in the Middle East. But Trump largely refused, taking a single trip to the Texas border and releasing a video in which he pledged to his supporters that "the movement we started is only just beginning".

Trump will retire to Florida with a small group of former White House aides as he charts a political future that looks very different now than just two weeks ago.

Before the Capitol riot, Trump had been expected to remain his party’s de facto leader, wielding enormous power as he served as a kingmaker and mulled a 2024 presidential run. But now he appears more powerless than ever — shunned by so many in his party, impeached twice, denied the Twitter bullhorn he had intended to use as his weapon and even facing the prospect that, if he is convicted in his Senate trial, he could be barred from seeking a second term.

For now, Trump remains angry and embarrassed, consumed with rage and grievance. He spent the week after the election sinking deeper and deeper into a world of conspiracy, and those who have spoken with him say he continues to believe he won in November. He continues to lash out at Republicans for perceived disloyalty and has threatened, both publicly and privately, to spend the coming years backing primary challenges against those he feel betrayed him.

Some expect him to eventually turn completely on the Republican Party, perhaps by flirting with a run as a third-party candidate as an act of revenge.

For all the chaos and drama and bending the world to his will, Trump ended his term as he began it: largely alone. The Republican Party he co-opted finally appeared to have had enough after Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol, hunting for lawmakers who refused to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional efforts to overturn the results of a democratic election.

But although Washington may have had enough, Trump retains his grip on the Republican base, with the support of millions of loyal voters, along with allies still helming the Republican National Committee and many state party organisations.

The city he leaves will not miss him. Trump rarely left the confines of the White House, except to visit his own hotel. He and his wife never once ate dinner at any other local restaurant; never ventured out to shop in its stores or see the sites. When he did leave, it was almost always to one of his properties: his golf course in Virginia, his golf course in New Jersey, his private club and nearby golf course in Palm Beach, Florida.

The city overwhelmingly supported Biden, with 93 per cent of the vote. Trump received just 5.4pc of the vote — or fewer than 18,600 ballots — not enough to fill the Washington Capitals hockey arena.

As the violent mob encroached the building, the nation's elected representatives crouched under desks and donned gas masks, while police futilely tried to barricade the building, one of the most jarring scenes ever to unfold in a seat of American political power.

One woman died inside the building after being shot while three more died from medical emergencies, police said.

Header image: A protester is seen hanging from the balcony in the Senate Chamber on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. — AFP

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump talked with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about pardoning him as recently as last week, citing two people briefed on the matter.

The Times also said Trump has asked advisers about the possibility of “preemptively” pardoning his three eldest children.

In 2018, Trump even said he had the “absolute right” to pardon himself — a claim many constitutional law scholars dispute.

Here is an overview of Trump’s pardon power, which is sweeping but not absolute.

Can a pardon be pre-emptive?

While pardons are typically given to people who have been prosecuted, they can cover conduct that has not resulted in legal proceedings.

A pardon cannot apply to conduct that has not yet occurred.

The US Supreme Court clarified this in a 1866 case, saying the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment".

Most pardons are issued to people who have been prosecuted and sentenced.

But in 1977, president Jimmy Carter pardoned hundreds of thousands of “draft dodgers” who avoided a government-imposed obligation to serve in the Vietnam War.

Are there limits on a president's pardon power?

The pardon power, which comes from the US constitution, is one of the broadest available to a president.

The nation’s founders saw the pardon power as a way to show mercy and serve the public good.

A pardon is not reviewable by other branches of government and the president does not have to give a reason for issuing one.

But the pardon power is not absolute. Crucially, a pardon only applies to federal crimes.

Could Trump pardon his children and inner circle?

Yes. It is legal for Trump to pardon his inner circle, including members of his family.

In 2001, former US president Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger, who was convicted for cocaine possession in Arkansas.

Clinton pardoned about 450 people, including a Democratic Party donor, Marc Rich, who fled the country because of tax evasion charges.

How broadly worded can a pardon be?

This is unclear.

The pardon former US president Richard Nixon received from his successor Gerald Ford was very broad, absolving Nixon for all criminal offenses he committed or may have taken part in during his presidency.

But the US Supreme Court has never ruled on whether such a broad pardon is lawful. Some scholars have argued the nation’s founders intended for pardons to be specific, and that there is an implied limit on their scope.

What would Trump pardon his children or Giuliani for?

Trump’s children have not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, and it is unclear what Trump would pardon them for.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who enforces New York state laws, has been conducting a criminal investigation into Trump and his family company, the Trump Organisation.

Vance, a Democrat, has suggested in court filings that his probe could focus on bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records.

It is unclear what stage the investigation is at. No one has been charged with wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James has an active tax fraud investigation into Trump and the Trump Organisation.

The inquiry by James, a Democrat, began after Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress the president inflated asset values to save money on loans and insurance and deflated them to reduce real estate taxes.

Trump’s son, Eric Trump, an executive vice president for the firm, was deposed in October because of what the attorney general described as his close involvement in one or more transactions being reviewed.

Republican Trump has called the Vance and James’ probes politically motivated harassment.

A presidential pardon, which can only be granted for federal crimes, would not apply to either of these state probes.

Giuliani’s potential criminal exposure is unclear. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating his business dealings in Ukraine. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing.

Giuliani also denied that he spoke to Trump about a pardon.

“Never had the discussion they falsely attribute to an anonymous source,” Giuliani said on Twitter on December 1.

Can Trump pardon himself?

There is not a definitive answer to this question. No president has tried it before, so the courts have not weighed in.

“When people ask me if a president can pardon himself, my answer is always, ‘Well, he can try,’” said Brian Kalt, a constitutional law professor at Michigan State University. “The US constitution does not provide a clear answer on this.”

Many legal experts have said a self-pardon would be unconstitutional because it violates the basic principle that nobody should be the judge in his or her own case.

Trump could try to pardon himself preemptively to cover the possibility of prosecution after he leaves office.

For a court to rule on the pardon’s validity, a federal prosecutor would have to charge Trump with a crime and Trump would have to raise the pardon as a defence, Kalt said.

Among other last-ditch tactics: personally calling local election officials who are trying to rescind their certification votes in Michigan, suggesting in a legal challenge that Pennsylvania set aside the popular vote there and pressuring county officials in Arizona to delay certifying vote tallies.

Election law experts see it as the last, dying gasps of the Trump campaign and say Biden is certain to walk into the Oval Office come January. But there is great concern that Trump’s effort is doing real damage to public faith in the integrity of US elections.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, one of Trumps most vocal GOP critics, accused Trump of resorting to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. Romney added, it is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.

Trump’s own election security agency has declared the 2020 presidential election to have been the most secure in history. Days after that statement was issued, Trump fired the agency’s leader.

The increasingly desperate and erratic moves have no reasonable chance of changing the outcome of the 2020 election, in which Biden has now received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history and has clinched the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win.

But the Republican president’s constant barrage of baseless claims, his work to personally sway local officials who certify votes and his allies’ refusal to admit he lost is likely to have a lasting negative impact on the country. Legions of his supporters don’t believe he lost.

Its about trying to set up the conditions where half of the country believes that there are only two possibilities, either they win or the election was stolen, said Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and professor at Loyola Law School. And that’s not a democracy.

The two GOP canvassers in Michigan’s Wayne County said in a statement late Wednesday they lacked confidence that the election was fair and impartial. “There has been a distinct lack of transparency throughout the process, they said. But there has been no evidence of impropriety or fraud in Michigan, election officials have said.

Trump’s allies have homed in on the way that the president’s early lead in Michigan and some other states on election night slipped away as later votes came, casting it as evidence of something nefarious.

But a massive influx of mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic leaned largely to Biden, who encouraged his supporters to vote by mail, and those votes were the last to be counted. So it appeared Trump had an edge when he really didn’t.

In fact, Biden crushed Trump in Wayne County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Detroit, by a more than 2-1 ratio on his way to winning Michigan by 154,000 votes, according to unofficial results.

Earlier this week, the county’s two Republicans canvassers blocked the certification of votes there. They later relented and the results were certified. But a person familiar with the matter said Trump reached out to the canvassers, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, on Tuesday evening after the revised vote to express gratitude for their support. Then, on Wednesday, Palmer and Hartmann signed affidavits saying they believed the county vote should not be certified.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2020

Ostensibly, Trump is exercising his right to complain that the count showing Democrat Joe Biden with a solid if close win was wrong. “Rigged Election!” he tweeted in his latest broadside on Thursday.

But the president is not making much sense.

Plenty of US elections have been as close as his Nov 3 loss — or closer — and no incumbent ever alleged that his victory was stolen or refused to concede. US elections just don’t have those kinds of problems.

More than a week after election day, not a single piece of credible, significant evidence of fraud has been provided.

So what’s really going on? For some, Trump is finally showing his true authoritarian colours.

This is a president who openly admires the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the king of warping democratic institutions to award himself power. Now, the theory goes, he’s following suit.

But what if Donald Trump is more slipshod showman than Machiavellian mastermind? If his team’s embarrassing courtroom failures and a bizarre press conference by his fixer Rudy Giuliani at a Philadelphia gardening centre called Four Seasons Total Landscaping are anything to go by, that may be the more logical answer.

The coup theory

Still, when Trump fired his relatively independent-minded defence secretary Mark Esper on Monday, and then several other high-ranking officials, blood pressure levels shot up among those already on edge.

“In the last 24 hours, the Secretary of Defence, the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, and the Under Secretary of Defence for Intelligence have been sacked.... Why?” tweeted Alexander Vindman, a retired army officer turned White House staffer who was fired after testifying against Trump during his impeachment last year.

Alarm bells also went off when Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, authorised federal prosecutors to join Trump’s quest for election irregularities.

The Justice Department’s chief election crimes official, Richard Pilger, resigned in protest.

Barr is “permitting the department to be weaponised to try to overturn the results of this election”, wrote former Pentagon lawyer Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann, who was part of the special counsel’s team investigating Trump’s Russia links, in The Washington Post.

In the most extreme scenario, some warn of a coup within the electoral college.

This is a mostly symbolic body comprising representatives sent from each state to elect presidents on the basis of the popular vote.

What if Republican state legislatures managed to send hand-picked electors who would ignore the vote and choose Trump instead? The doomsday scenario is being widely discussed in the media, but appears far-fetched in real life.

“To begin with, even talk of doing so would trigger massive unrest and put legislators under unprecedented pressure,” wrote Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California.

But given the high stakes, nerves are jangled.

And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s odd comment on Tuesday that the government is preparing for “a second Trump term” didn’t help.

Circuses and careers

The other theory is that Trump is just being Trump — the perpetual performer who can’t stand being out of the limelight and will leave the stage only after putting on the show of his life.

Even though he came second, Trump got more than 72 million votes and that huge fan base is famously loyal.

According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll, an amazing 70 per cent of Republicans don’t think the election was free and fair — testimony to the power of Trump’s persuasion.

So it would make sense for a man whose brand rests heavily on macho concepts about “fighting” and “winning” to go down in the way his followers expect.

Beyond putting on a political circus, Trump may have more personal goals: his financial and career future.

At an energetic 74 and in possession of a gigantic database of voter information, Trump clearly has options beyond quietly curating a presidential library.

One clue lies in his frantic appeals for money.

Read the fine print in Trump’s “Official election defense fund” mass emails and it becomes apparent that donations won’t only go to fighting the “left-wing MOB”.

A hefty portion is being directed to paying off Trump’s election campaign debt and more is going to a newly formed political action committee, or PAC, which will help him back chosen candidates in the future or even launch a possible new presidential bid in 2024.

Whether or not Trump pursues electoral politics, he is widely expected to dive into broadcasting, with a reported mission to punish Fox News for what he sees as insufficient loyalty.

Fox “forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the golden goose,” he said on Thursday in a burst of tweets attacking Rupert Murdoch’s network and boosting the conspiracy theory peddling right-wing channels Newsmax and OANN.

Could Trump’s post-election chaos in fact be the pilot episode for the former reality TV star’s next series?

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2020

The nail-biting contest only goes to show that Trumpian populism has taken much deeper roots in four years of maverick rule. The heavy turnout of voters illustrated the existing polarisation in American society that is likely to intensify despite electoral setbacks for the right wing. The 2020 presidential election has reinforced the view that American populism is there to stay and may even take a more aggressive turn.

That should come as a wake-up call for those who have predicted the ‘end-of-life cycle’ for nationalist populism in the United States and beyond. Notwithstanding its failure to deliver, the phenomenon is far from over. It is true not only for the United States but also other countries swept by rising ultranationalist movements.

Surely, the rise of the current phase of national populism predates Trump, but his holding sway in the world’s greatest power had given impetus to such movements that have swept across a number of European and other countries. The Brexit vote in Britain is a glaring example of the ascendancy of nationalism. It has become synonymous with the nationalist isolationism and anti-globalisation wave that brought Trump to power.

There are a number of other countries that are now ruled by right-wing nationalist populist regimes with authoritarian tendencies. National populism often combines right-wing politics and populist rhetoric. Hungary, Brazil, the Philippines, India and Turkey may be the most prominent examples of nations ruled by populist leaders. But there are many other countries that are witnessing the rise of this phenomenon in different shades and forms.

The surge in right-wing nationalism in France, Germany, Italy and some Eastern European countries points to this. The economic downturn, rising unemployment and a fear of growing immigrant populations are major factors reinforcing right-wing nationalist sentiments in these countries. The ultranationalist groups in Europe are generally associated with ideologies similar to Trump’s, such as anti-environmentalism, anti-globalisation, nativism and protectionism. They are all known for their strong opposition to immigration from Muslim countries.

In recent years, European countries have witnessed growing support for nationalist populist movements, such as the National Rally (formerly the National Front) in France, the League in Italy, the Party for Freedom and the Forum for Democracy in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party of Austria, and the UK Independence Party.

There are some strong indications that extreme right-wing nationalist groups could be swept into power in some of these countries. Some recent incidents of violence involving Islamist extremists come in handy for the right-wing groups to whip up nationalist sentiments in France close to the elections. Most of these groups have drawn encouragement from the rise of Trumpism in America. For national populist leaders around the globe, Trump became a source of inspiration, and many of them imitated his style too.

The rise of neo-Nazism in some Western countries is a symptom of their racist politics and populism. Most worrisome is the prospect of Trumpian populism prevailing in other countries. Over the past years, there has been a notable rise of more virulent nationalism. Anti-immigration sentiments have strengthened right-wing extremist nationalism.

Populist leaders often use anti-elitist and anti-establishment rhetoric, and claim to be speaking for the ‘common people’, but their politics mostly strengthen elitism. National populist regimes, though coming into power through democratic processes, invariably become authoritarian and suppress democratic rights. Democracy has suffered in almost all the countries ruled by nationalist populist leaders, as is the case of India and Turkey.

Muscular nationalism, majoritarianism and populism are the most definite manifestations of the fascistic ideology that now seems to be on the rise in various parts of the world. The ascendancy of authoritarian strongmen is causing the rollback of liberal democratic values. The most dangerous fascist trait is the new virulent nationalism that seeks to assert racist, political and cultural hegemony, thus threatening not only democratic processes within states but also regional security.

India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been losing its secular character and establishing oppressive majoritarian rule. The Indian action to annex the occupied territory of Kashmir and attempt to destroy Kashmiri identity is also a part of muscular nationalism under a Hindu majoritarian regime. It is not just a matter of territorial occupation but also a move to turn a religious community into a minority. Driven by RSS ideology, Modi is trying to turn India into a Hindu rashtra and marginalise other religious communities.

Trump had developed excellent personal relations with muscular nationalist leaders like Modi. Trump’s friendly ties with the India leader were well-known. The American president expressed his solidarity with Modi at a massive rally in Houston last year at a time when the Indian leader was being castigated for a law discriminating against Muslims. Earlier this year, Trump praised the Hindu nationalist leader, saying, “He wants people to have religious freedom and very strongly.”

It is not surprising that Indian and other right-wing nationalist leaders had bet on Trump’s victory. With Trump’s exit, the right-wing autocrats and nationalistic movements across the globe have lost their ideological patron. But it is not an end to global Trumpism that has gained ground in many European and Asia countries.

Trump’s strong showing in the election keeps alive his radical nationalist ideology that has not only divided America but has also impacted the world. His narrow defeat may embolden the global arch conservative and nationalist populist movements. The new American leadership faces a massive challenge not only to bridge the divide in America intensified by Trumpism but also to change the country’s foreign policy course. It is certainly not going to be easy to unite an extremely polarised nation and a disrupted global order.

The writer is an author and journalist.

zhussain100@yahoo.com

Twitter: @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2020

Biden's victory — projected by TV networks on Saturday in a cliffhanger election with the United States in crisis — turns the page on Donald Trump's most divisive of presidencies, and rewards his appeal to the better angels of a deeply-riven country.

But can the man who has cast himself as healer-in-chief make headway in a nation where Trump's ideology, regardless of the president's defeat, shows little sign of diminishing? Rarely have presidential rivals differed so sharply as in the 2020 race, which pitted the empathetic Democrat against the brawling Trump, the billionaire businessman who ran as the outsider despite his four years in the Oval Office.

As the sun rose on Washington's National Mall, the morning after a fraught Election Night, the razor-tight contest looked as if it could go either way.

But as the quietly confident Democrat picked up state after state in the ensuing days, his victory slowly but inexorably took shape.

By Saturday, US networks projected he won the pivotal state of Pennsylvania — and the White House. “The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans,” the 46th US president-in-waiting said shortly after networks made the call.

Now, all of his work is ahead of him.

He inherits a coronavirus pandemic that shows no signs of abating and an office he believes has had its credibility shattered by the “liar” Trump.

Biden ran for the White House twice before, in 1987 and 2008.

A loss to the deeply polarising Trump, Biden said in the election's final stretch, would mean he had been a “lousy” candidate, lowering the curtain on a prolific but ultimately unfulfilled political career.

But “Middle Class Joe” had made it his life's crowning mission to unseat the Republican and, in his words, restore the “soul” of America.

And despite a campaign muted beyond recognition by Covid-19 — conducted largely from home while his high-octane rival charged around the country — Biden ultimately showed Trump the door.

Enduring compassion

When he takes the oath of office on January 20, at age 78, Biden will be the oldest US head of state ever inaugurated.

He hit the national stage at just 29, with a surprise US Senate win in Delaware in 1972.

One month later tragedy struck: his wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash as they were Christmas shopping.

Biden's two sons were severely injured but survived, only for the eldest, Beau, to succumb to cancer four decades later, in 2015.

Throughout his life Biden has spoken poignantly of his personal encounters with tragedy, seen as having nourished a capacity for genuine empathy — something Trump failed to demonstrate even as the toll from Covid-19 climbed towards a quarter million.

His retail politicking skills are peerless: he can flash his million-watt smile at college students, commiserate with unemployed Rust Belt machinists, or deliver a fiery admonishment of rivals.

That personable, gregarious quality was curtailed by the pandemic, which brought in-person campaigning to a halt in March and prompted a more cautious Biden on the trail.

Somewhat diminished from the figure he presented during his eight years as Barack Obama's vice president, the dazzling smile remained. But Biden's gait was more delicate and his fine white hair had thinned.

Opponents, and even some Democrats, wondered whether Biden, garrulous and gaffe-prone, would stumble in his long campaign against Trump.

The 74-year-old president nicknamed him “Sleepy Joe” and accused him of diminished mental acuity. In a flash of frustration with Trump's interruptions during their first debate, he at one point told the president to “shut up”. But mostly Biden shrugged off the attacks.

'They are the future'

America's oldest president-elect started his Capitol Hill career as one of the youngest senators ever, and would spend more than three decades in the upper chamber before becoming Obama's deputy.

Biden's campaign message was built largely on his association with the still-popular Obama and on his ability to do business with the many world leaders his former boss sent him to meet (“I know these guys,” he would remind people).

His offer of moderate politics in a divisive time was a salve to an electorate exhausted by four years of scandal and chaos in the Trump White House.

But Biden balanced his mainstream appeal with a pledge to take genuinely progressive action as president, on climate change, racial injustice and student debt relief.

Come January, Americans may already be asking whether the elder statesman will seek to extend his role as US president beyond a first term, given his own words on the transitional nature of his candidacy.

“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden told a crowd at a rally in Detroit, Michigan back in March.

He gestured to younger Democrats who had joined him on stage — including the woman who would become his running mate, 56-year-old Senator Kamala Harris.

“There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me,” he said. “They are the future of this country.”

Historic comeback

Biden was anything but assured of becoming his party's flagbearer. Despite being the favorite of the Democratic establishment, he was deemed by some too old or too centrist.

His campaign looked headed for disaster after disappointing primary losses to the fiery Bernie Sanders early this year.

But Biden came roaring back in South Carolina's primary on the strength of overwhelming backing from African-American voters, a crucial base of Democratic support.

Clinching the nomination marked a sharp contrast to his 1988 flameout, when he quit in disgrace after being caught plagiarising a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock.

In 2008 he hardly fared better, dropping out after mustering less than one per cent of the vote in Iowa's caucuses.

That year he was ultimately picked as running mate by Obama, who dubbed him “America's happy warrior”. As a senator for more than 30 years, Biden was known to forge unlikely alliances — and, like Trump, he developed a lack of fidelity to script.

He faced a reckoning among Democrats — including Harris, America's next vice president — for working with known segregationists in the Senate and for opposing “busing” policies in the 1970s aimed at transporting Black children to predominantly white schools.

He also caught flak for helping draft a 1994 crime bill which many Democrats believe drove up incarcerations, disproportionately affecting African Americans. Biden recently called the push a “mistake”.

Other Senate episodes also threatened to spoil his presidential campaign: his 2003 vote for the Iraq war, and his chairmanship of controversial hearings in 1991 in which Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

Last year he faced a storm over his own notoriously tactile approach with female voters that could suggest a man out of step with his modernising party.

He apologised, and promised to be more “mindful” of women's personal space.

'Get back up'

Biden relays the heart-wrenching details of his family stories so often that, despite his obvious grief, they have become part of a political brand.

The 1972 accident left his sons Beau, four, and Hunter, two, badly injured, and the 30-year-old Biden was sworn in beside their hospital beds.

Biden met his second wife, teacher Jill Jacobs, in 1975 and they married two years later. They have a daughter, Ashley.

Both boys recovered from their injuries and Beau followed his father into politics, becoming attorney general of Delaware — but the Democratic rising star died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.

Lawyer and lobbyist Hunter Biden has had a different trajectory.

He received a lucrative salary serving on the board of a Ukrainian gas company accused of corruption while his father was vice president.

Trump's push for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens led to the president's impeachment last December by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, but he was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.

Hunter was not personally accused of any criminal wrongdoing, but Trump wouldn't let the issue die. He repeatedly insisted the Bidens were a “crime family” getting rich off of corruption, but the accusations were of dubious origin and did not stick with American voters more concerned about bread and butter campaign issues, not to mention a once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was born November 20, 1942 and raised in the Rust Belt town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in an Irish-Catholic family.

His father was a car salesman, but when the city went through tough times in the 1950s and he lost his job, he moved the family to neighbouring Delaware when Joe Biden was 10.

“My dad always said, 'Champ, when you get knocked down, you get back up,'” Biden says.

He made Delaware his political domain. As a young man he served as a lifeguard in a majority-Black neighbourhood, an experience he said sharpened his awareness of systemic inequalities and strengthened his political interest.

Biden studied at the University of Delaware and the Syracuse University law school, and has expressed pride that he is not a product of the elite Ivy League.

He touts his working-class roots and recalls being hampered as a child by a stutter so bad he was cruelly nicknamed “Dash”. But he overcame the condition, and on the campaign trail spoke about how he still counsels youngsters who stutter.

Biden would often point to Jill, 69, as a powerful asset for his campaign, and recalled how she took over as mother to her husband's two boys.

“She put us back together,” Biden has said.

'Proud of me?'

“It never goes away,” Biden said of the pain that lives within him since losing Beau. The tragedy prevented him from launching a presidential bid in 2016.

Even today, he often stops to greet firefighters, recalling that it was they who saved his boys.

They saved Biden too. In 1988 firefighters rushed him to hospital after an aneurysm. Biden's condition was so dire that a priest was called to give him last rites.

Nearly every Sunday Biden prays at St. Joseph on the Brandywine, a Catholic church in his affluent Wilmington neighbourhood.

There in the cemetery rest his parents, his first wife and daughter — and his son Beau, under a tombstone decorated with small American flags.

In January, Biden confided about Beau and his undeniable influence: “Every morning I get up ... and I think to myself, 'Is he proud of me?'”

Across the world, many were scratching their heads Friday — especially in countries that have long been advised by Washington on how to run elections — wondering if those assertions could truly be coming from the president of the United States, the nation considered one of the world’s most emblematic democracies.

“Who’s the banana republic now?” Colombian daily newspaper Publimetro chided on the front page with a photo of a man in a US flag print mask.

The irony of seeing US President Donald Trump cut off by major media networks on Thursday as he launched unsubstantiated claims lambasting the US electoral system was not lost on many. The US has long been a vocal critic of strongman tactics around the world. Now, some of those same targets are turning around the finger.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro laughed as the vote dragged on past Tuesday, briefly breaking into the hymn of his nation’s annual beauty contest on state TV, singing, “On a night like tonight, any of them could win.”

In Africa — long the target of US election guidance — one Kenyan commentator spun out satiric tweets, drawing freely from clichés that long have described troubled elections and questioning the strength of democracy in the US.

Kenyan cartoonist Patrick Gathara tweeted that Trump “has barricaded himself inside the presidential palace vowing not to leave unless he is declared the winner,” with a mediator “currently trying to coax him out with promises of fast food”.

Along with the mockery comes dismay. Many people in Africa see the US as a bellwether for democracy and, after troubled votes in Tanzania and Ivory Coast in recent days, they looked to what Washington might say.

“We are asking ourselves, why is the US democratic process appearing so fragile when it is meant to be held up to us in the rest of the world as a beacon of perfect democracy?” said Samir Kiango, a Tanzanian out in his country’s commercial capital Friday.

For decades, the US has been an advocate for democracy abroad, using diplomatic pressure and even direct military intervention in the name of spreading the principles of a pluralistic system with a free and fair vote for political leaders. These tactics have generated both allies and enemies, and this year’s presidential vote perhaps more than any other is testing the strength of the values it promotes around the world.

And the world is paying close attention.

Few places on Earth have been on the receiving end of US election advice as the African continent, where the US has encouraged nations to have independent electoral commissions, a uniform voters’ roll and other standards aimed at ensuring an equitable vote.

“The US electoral system has none of these. Not a single one,” Sithembile Mbete, a commentator and senior lecturer on political science at the University of Pretoria, said at an online event last month.

“Some African elections are actually better-run,” added Nic Cheeseman, professor and author of a book on democracy in Africa.

Denis Kadima, executive director of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, said he sees Trump’s approach to democracy as an exception, but “we should not use that as a way of allowing our own governments to do bad things.”

In Mexico, some commentators called on the media to follow the lead of US colleagues in cutting off transmissions when their own country’s president begins spreading falsehoods.

Yet there also was concern that a region where many democracies are still on fragile ground — or in the throes of outright autocratic rule — that Trump’s behavior could set a bad precedent.

“If we resort to violence or loud demonstrations or political leaders trying to do their best to skew the results before it’s finalised, that will provide a different example for countries in Latin America, “ said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a New York-based organisation promoting business in the region.

Still, despite all the ruckus in the US, many said they see it as a blip, unlikely to damage the country’s reputation as a champion of democracy.

Kadima, in the Ivory Coast, said he sees Washington as retaining its ideals, though he admitted confusion over the persistence of the electoral college system.

“I’m not very impressed by the college system, which I don’t find terribly democratic,” he said.

His colleague, Grant Masterson, noted that the US election system has “50 different ways in 50 different states,” something he said works for the American people but “certainly not the system that other countries are charging toward to embrace”.

What he finds “fantastic for American democracy,” however, is the ritual of the concession speech after a bitterly fought vote, signaling that it’s time to “take off your partisan hats and put on your national hat” and move on.

“That’s really been an exceptionally good example for the rest of the world to emulate,” he said — though he has doubts about such a speech this time.

As restless Americans awaited voting results from the few remaining states not yet coloured red or blue, millions across the world joined them. And however it turns out, many hoped that ultimately America’s humbled democracy comes out stronger.

Gathara, the Kenyan cartoonist and commentator, said he is optimistic there will be a more honest discussion about democracy as a result.

“I really don’t know how it ends,” he said of his running commentary. “We’re all trying to figure this democratic thing out.”

But overall their measures still didn’t really address the problems exposed by the 2020 US presidential contest, critics of the social platforms contend.

“We’re seeing exactly what we expected, which is not enough, especially in the case of Facebook,” said Shannon McGregor, an assistant professor of journalism and media at the University of North Carolina.

One big test emerged early Wednesday morning as vote-counting continued in battleground states including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. President Donald Trump made a White House appearance before cheering supporters, declaring he would challenge the poll results. He also posted misleading statements about the election on Facebook and Twitter, following months of signalling his unfounded doubts about expanded mail-in voting and his desire for final election results when polls closed on November 3.

See: Twitter, Facebook push back on Trump's election posts

So what did tech companies do about it? For the most part, what they said they would, which primarily meant labelling false or misleading election posts in order to point users to reliable information. In Twitter’s case, that sometimes meant obscuring the offending posts, forcing readers to click through warnings to see them and limiting the ability to share them.

The video-sharing app TikTok, popular with young people, said it pulled down some videos on Wednesday from high-profile accounts that were making election fraud allegations, saying they violated the app’s policies on misleading information. For Facebook and YouTube, it mostly meant attaching authoritative information to election-related posts.

For instance, Google-owned YouTube showed video of Trump’s White House remarks suggesting fraud and premature victories, just as some traditional news channels did. But Google placed an “information panel” beneath the videos noting that election results may not be final and linking to Google’s election results page with additional information.

“They’re just appending this little label to the president’s posts, but they’re appending those to any politician talking about the election,” said McGregor, who blamed both the tech giants and traditional media outlets for shirking their responsibility to curb the spread of misinformation about the election results instead of amplifying a falsehood just because the president said it.

“Allowing any false claim to spread can lead more people to accept it once it’s there,” she said.

Trump wasn’t alone in attracting such labels. Republican US Senator Thom Tillis got a label on Twitter for declaring a premature reelection victory in North Carolina. The same thing happened to a Democratic official claiming that former vice president Joe Biden had won Wisconsin.

The flurry of Trump claims that began early Wednesday morning continued after the sun rose over Washington. By late morning, Trump was tweeting an unfounded complaint that his early lead in some states seemed to “magically disappear” as the night went on and more ballots were counted.

Twitter quickly slapped that with a warning that said, “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” It was among a series of such warnings Twitter applied to Trump tweets on Wednesday, which make it harder for viewers to see the posts without first reading the warning.

Much of the slowdown in the tabulation of results had been widely forecasted for months, because the coronavirus pandemic led many states to make it easier to vote by mail, and millions chose to do so rather than venturing out to cast ballots in person. Mail ballots can take longer to process than ballots cast at polling places.

In a September 3 post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that if a candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the results are in, the social network would label their post to note that official results are not yet in and directing people to the official results.

But Facebook limited that policy to official candidates and campaigns declaring premature victory in the overall election. Posts that declared premature victory in specific states were flagged with a general notification about where to find election information but not warnings that the information was false or misleading.

Facebook also issued a blanket statement on the top of Facebook and Instagram feeds on Wednesday noting that the votes for the US presidential election are still being counted.

Twitter was a bit more proactive. Based on its “civic integrity policy”, implemented last month, Twitter said it would label and reduce the visibility of tweets containing “false or misleading information about civic processes” in order to provide more context. It labelled Trump’s tweets declaring premature victory as well as claims from Trump and others about premature victory in specific states.

The Twitter and Facebook actions were a step in the right direction, but not that effective — particularly in Twitter’s case, said Jennifer Grygiel, a professor at Syracuse University and social media expert.

That’s because tweets from major figures can get almost instant traction, Grygiel said. So even though Twitter labelled Trump’s tweets about “being up big”, and votes being cast after polls closed and others, by the time the label appeared, several minutes after the tweet, the misinformation had already spread. One Wednesday Trump tweet falsely complaining that vote counters were “working hard” to make his lead in the Pennsylvania count “disappear” wasn’t labelled for more than 15 minutes, and was not obscured.

“Twitter can’t really enforce policies if they don’t do it before it happens, in the case of the president,” Grygiel said. “When a tweet hits the wire, essentially, it goes public. It already brings this full force of impact of market reaction.”

Grygiel suggested that for prominent figures like Trump, Twitter could pre-moderate posts by delaying publication until a human moderator can decide whether it needs a label. That means flagged tweets would publish with a label, making it more difficult to spread unlabeled misinformation, especially during important events like the election.

This is less of an issue on Facebook or YouTube, where people are less likely to interact with posts in real time. YouTube could become more of an issue over the next few days, Grygiel suggested, if Trump’s false claims are adopted by YouTubers who are analysing the election.

“Generally, platforms have policies in place that are an attempt to do something, but at the end of the day it proved to be pretty ineffective,” Grygiel said. “The president felt empowered to make claims.”

US President Donald Trump’s false declaration of victory in the early hours of Wednesday, as ballot counting continued in several pivotal states, roiled supporters of Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Biden supporters expressed heightened fears the Republican incumbent might not accept the election result if he were to lose.

Read: Trump sues in 3 states, laying ground for contesting election outcome

Many in Trump’s voter base, meanwhile, echoed his unsubstantiated allegations of widespread electoral tampering.

“Election fraud is running rampant,” said Trump voter Jimmie Boyd, 48, a North Carolina gun rights activist with ties to local militia groups.

Boyd said he worries “left wingers” could “destroy entire cities” while protesters on the right will be demonised as “racist, phobic freaks of nature”.

Anna Drallios, a Biden voter who immigrated to the United States from Albania in 1967, said Trump’s questioning of the legitimacy of the normal election process while demanding a halt to the vote count had a familiar ring.

“I come from a communist country, and I know what it is like not to have the vote, not to have the voice,” said Drallios, one of a few hundred protesters who rallied in Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital, chanting, “Count our votes”.

“If we allow our votes to be stolen from us, we are heading toward dictatorship, toward oppression,” she said.

In Detroit, about 30 observers, mostly Republicans, were barred from entering a vote-counting hall by election officials who cited indoor capacity restrictions imposed to prevent spread of the coronavirus. Police were called to enforce the decision.

Many of those excluded stood outside the hall voicing their protest and singing “God Bless America” while a second group of Republican observers who were denied entry held a prayer circle nearby.

They also broke into chants of “stop the vote” and “stop the count.” CNN and Edison Research later declared Biden the winner in Michigan.

The post-Election Day tension proved hard for many to bear. Some turned to caffeine or sought solace in chores and other distractions.

“It’s like the twilight zone,” said Tanya Wojciak, 39, who reckoned she had downed 17 cups of coffee and found herself pacing the floors of her home in Cortland, Ohio, as she watched results trickle in from battleground states deluged by record-breaking numbers of early mail-in ballots.

“Trump’s scary, premature declaration of victory has me unnerved,” said Wojciak, who said she voted for Biden even though she is a Republican.

Legal experts have said the election outcome could become bogged down in state-by-state litigation over a host of issues, including whether late-arriving ballots can be counted.

Protests brewing

Activists demanding that vote counts proceed unimpeded rallied in several cities, including Oakland, California, Atlanta, Detroit and New York City.

Hundreds of protesters waving American flags and signs that read, “Count every vote, every vote counts,” demonstrated peacefully at Washington Square Park after marching through midtown Manhattan.

Read: Police arrest 10 in Portland, 50 in New York on night after US vote

“It’s very important that we make sure that our democracy is maintained,” said Meira Harris, 26, a social work student. “This election has provoked so much anxiety.”

City police posted pictures on social media of debris fires in lower Manhattan that they said were set by protesters. They said at least 20 people were arrested, accused of blocking traffic, disorderly conduct and similar offenses.

The Protect the Results coalition, encompassing dozens of groups from Planned Parenthood to Republicans for the Rule of Law, had said it was organising a day of mass protests in 500 cities. But those plans were put on hold late in the day.

US officials said they have kept a wary eye on right-wing militias, worried that Trump’s allegations of ballot fraud could bring heavily armed groups out onto the streets. So far, they appeared to be keeping a low profile.

Enrique Tarrio, leader of the far-right men’s group Proud Boys, said he and three others were stabbed early on Wednesday blocks away from the White House.

One of his alleged assailants wore a “Black Lives Matter” mask, he told Reuters.

Local police said they could not confirm that account and no arrests were immediately made. The Washington chapter of the anti-racism movement said on Twitter it had nothing to do with the alleged attack.

Retreat from the frenzy

In Gibsonburg, Ohio, Tom Younker distracted himself from televised election coverage by tending to his tomato garden.

A 74-year-old painting contractor who has served on the local board of elections for 34 years, Younker said he caught just a few hours of sleep after a late night tallying votes.

“It’s like an up-and-down see-saw,” said Younker, a Biden voter. “You think you’re going to win pretty big, then you see it tightening.”

In McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania, Stanley Kerlin, 66, a lawyer who voted for Trump, questioned the integrity of those tabulating many of the ballots in his state.

“Most of them are down in Philadelphia and you can’t trust those people any further than you can throw ‘em,” said Kerlin, a Pennsylvania Republican Party committee member.

Still, he said Trump spoke too soon in claiming victory early on Wednesday.

Judy Mowery, 60, a Biden voter from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, said she worried about violence between opposing political blocs regardless of the outcome.

“Even if Biden wins, which I think he may, we as a country have lost,” Mowery said. “We are even more divided than I thought.”

Header image: People take part in a rally demanding a fair count of the votes of the 2020 US presidential election, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 4. — Reuters

No matter if he wins or loses, Trumpism looks set to live on.

Republican political pundit Sophia A. Nelson summed it up quickly: "The Trump movement is real. And it's here to stay."

Despite being repeatedly — and wrongly — described as only older, white and rural, Trump's base will help deliver the third highest vote total in American political history — behind only Joe Biden, and Barack Obama in 2008.

Hispanic voters, often expected to lean left, turned to Trump this time around — their turnout in Florida helped him easily defeat Biden in the Sunshine State in Tuesday's nail-biter of an election.

Read: Trump showing new strength with Latinos, losing some older voters, exit polls show

"Ahead of the election, a lot of pundits talked about how Trump wasn't bringing new voters to his camp," said Abraham Gutman, who is on the editorial board at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

But he will have, at a minimum, won about five million more votes this time around then he did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.

"Regardless of the eventual outcome — in the state contests for electors or in the popular vote margin — the media needs a serious post mortem to explore how, despite so much ink spilled on Trump voters, the story of the growth of the Trump movement was totally missed," Gutman said.

Trump staged dozens of campaign rallies in the run-up to Tuesday's showdown at the polls with the Democratic former vice president. He was regularly greeted by sizeable crowds.

Truck parades for the Republican incumbent rolled through town after American town, as did boat processions in waterfront communities. All were evidence of a wide base of support.

"His supporters love him. They love him for this fact that he keeps America first and Americans first," Jim Worthington, the founder of People4Trump, told AFP in a phone interview.

"They realise that he's fighting for them. We broadened our coalition," added Worthington, who owns two gyms.

'Real affection'

Trump's controversial handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 233,000 Americans, his tough immigration policies and his brash style of speaking have not dissuaded his fans.

The real estate mogul turned world leader is still one of the most popular Republicans in recent memory since Ronald Reagan.

His supporters "have a real affection for this guy despite all of his flaws or maybe because of his flaws," said John Feehery, a lobbyist with EFB Advocacy who has worked with several Republican lawmakers.

"That's a strange thing. I think part of it is because he's so authentic [...] he says what's on his mind. And people like seeing what's on his mind."

He also strikes a chord with voters who have a "desire for nationalism," Feehery said.

"If Trump hadn't existed, someone would have had to invent him."

Another Trump run in 2024?

If Trump eventually wins the election, his future and political legacy won't be clear for another few years.

If he loses, "I don't think the movement goes away," said Worthington. "I think everybody regroups. He'll decide what pathway for all of us that we would take and I think we would galvanise together."

As for his overall influence on the Republican Party, which has massively rallied behind him over the past four years, many think a loss in 2020 would likely not adversely affect it.

Even with a narrow White House defeat, the Republicans are on course to maintain their Senate majority and did not lose in spectacular fashion in the House of Representatives.

"Things worked ok for a party that he led and that will presumably continue to influence the direction that things go once he's not on television so often," said Daniel Schlozman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University.

"These are the circumstances under which parties are more likely to stay the course than say, 'We need to do something very, very different'."

For David Hopkins, an associate professor of political science at Boston College, Trump "has had and will continue to have a major influence on the Republican Party" for at least the next four years, even if he loses.

Feehery said that if Trump loses this time, "I wouldn't be surprised if he ran again."

Worthington said he believed the billionaire businessman would have "a ton of support" if he ran again in four years.

When asked about a possible new wave of Trump politicians, Worthington said he saw daughter Ivanka, not eldest son Don Jr., as the "heir apparent".

"She is just a very impressive person," he said, noting that he worked with her on the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.

But Hopkins cautioned: "It's clear that part of Trump's appeal is his own personality, which might not be able to transfer to other figures once he himself is gone from the scene."

They said it was doubtful that courts would entertain a bid by Trump to stop the counting of ballots that were received before or on Election Day, or that any dispute a court might handle would change the trajectory of the race in closely fought states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.

With ballots still being counted in many states in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Trump made an appearance at the White House and falsely declared victory against Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Trump railed against voting by mail during the election campaign, saying without providing evidence that it led to fraud, which is rare in US elections. Sticking to that theme, Trump said: “This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”

Trump did not provide any evidence to back up his claim of fraud or detail what litigation he would pursue at the Supreme Court. Later in the day, his campaign filed to intervene in a case already pending at the Supreme Court seeking to block late-arriving mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

The Trump campaign and other Republicans have also filed various complaints in other states, including an attempt to stop votes being counted in Michigan.

As of Wednesday evening, the election still hung in the balance. A handful of closely contested states could decide the outcome in the coming hours or days, as a large number of mail-in ballots cast amid the coronavirus pandemic appears to have drawn out the process.

However, legal experts said that while there could be objections to particular ballots or voting and counting procedures, it was unclear if such disputes would determine the final outcome.

Ned Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University, said the current election does not have the ingredients that would create a situation like in the 2000 presidential race, when the Supreme Court ended a recount in George W Bush’s favor against Democrat Al Gore.

“It’s extremely early on but at the moment it doesn’t seem apparent how this would end up where the US Supreme Court would be decisive,” Foley said.

Both Republicans and Democrats have amassed armies of lawyers ready to go to the mat in a close race. Biden’s team includes Marc Elias, a top election attorney at the firm Perkins Coie, and former Solicitors General Donald Verrilli and Walter Dellinger. Trump’s lawyers include Matt Morgan, the president’s campaign general counsel, Supreme Court litigator William Consovoy, and Justin Clark, senior counsel to the campaign.

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis on Wednesday defended Trump’s bid to challenge the vote count and evaluate his legal options. “If we have to go through these legal challenges, that’s not unprecedented,” Ellis told Fox Business Network in an interview. “He wants to make sure that the election is not stolen.”

The case closest to being resolved by the Supreme Court is the Pennsylvania dispute in which Republicans are challenging a September ruling by Pennsylvania’s top court allowing mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later to be counted.

The Supreme Court previously declined to fast-track an appeal by Republicans. But three conservative justices left open the possibility of taking up the case again after Election Day.

Even if the court were to take up the case and rule for Republicans, it may not determine the final vote in Pennsylvania, as the case only concerns mail-in ballots received after Nov 3.

David Boies, who represented Gore in 2000, said it is unlikely that the Trump campaign would succeed in a possible third effort to block the extended deadline.

“I think that it’s more posturing and hope than anything else,” Boies said, adding that the Pennsylvania outcome could even become irrelevant given the result in Michigan and Wisconsin.

In a separate Pennsylvania case filed in federal court in Philadelphia, Republicans have accused officials in suburban Montgomery County of illegally counting mail-in ballots early and also giving voters who submitted defective ballots a chance to re-vote.

If Biden secures 270 electoral votes without needing Pennsylvania, the likelihood of a legal fight in that state diminishes in any case, legal experts said.

And any challenge would also need to make its way through the usual court hierarchy.

“I think the court would summarily turn away any effort by the President or his campaign to short-circuit the ordinary legal process,” said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

“Even Bush v Gore went through the Florida state courts first.”

It’s not about the 270 whales stranded this fall on Australia’s island state of Tasmania. It’s not about congestion on Interstate 270 feeding commuters into Washington, DC. It’s about who’s going to sit in the White House for the next four years.

It's the electoral college

Nearly 2.9 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but she still lost.

US President Donald Trump won because he took the Electoral College, under a system set up in the US Constitution and refined through the centuries.

This is where the magic number comes into play. To win the White House, a candidate must win at least 270 electoral votes.

Read: Here's everything you need to know about the US voting process

That’s a majority of the 538 that are up for grabs in the 50 states.

The numbers

Each state is allotted a different number of electoral votes, based on how many representatives it has in the House, plus its two senators.

California has the most electoral votes with 55. Texas is next with 38 electoral votes. The candidate who wins New York or Florida can pocket 29 electoral votes toward the race to get 270.

Illinois and Pennsylvania each have 20. Rounding out the top 10 list of states with the most electoral votes is Ohio with 18, Georgia and Michigan with 16 and North Carolina with 15.

Trump's best path

Trump has several paths to 270, but his best route hinges on winning Florida and Pennsylvania. If he wins both states and holds onto North Carolina and Arizona, which he narrowly carried in 2016, and also Georgia and Ohio, which he won in 2016 but is now competitive, he will win.

With 29 electoral votes, Florida is arguably the most crucial state for Trump. A loss there would make it nearly impossible for him to retain the White House.

What Biden needs

Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign is laser-focused on the states in the Midwest and close by that Trump flipped in 2016 — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

He’s also making a big play for Arizona, a state that hasn’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.

Biden is also redoubling his focus on Florida, the biggest prize among the perennial battlegrounds and a state that would virtually block Trump’s reelection if it swings Democratic.

Given this trend, the Pew Research Centre estimates much of the voting will already have happened before November 3.

And indeed, by Oct 28, with six days still left till polling, more than 70 million Americans – out of a total 150 million eligible voters – had cast ballots, a record-breaking pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in over a century, according to data from the US Elections Project.

Recent data also suggests Democrats hold roughly a two-to-one advantage in early voting numbers but Republicans in recent weeks have narrowed the gap using early, in-person voting.

But does simply getting more votes guarantee an election victory? We explain.

Popular vote does not decide who wins

By law, election day has to be the first Tuesday of November in an election year. Surprisingly, however, as many found out in the last election, getting more votes does not mean a candidate has won the race.

And this is where the ever-elusive concept of the Electoral College comes into play.

To make it very clear, the Electoral College is a process – not an actual place.

To become president, what really counts is winning a majority of electoral votes. Each state has been allotted electoral votes based on the size of its population and whoever wins a particular state is expected to bag all the electoral votes allotted to that state.

There are 538 electoral votes in total which means that a candidate needs to secure 270 to win.

To put it simply, when the US public votes in the election, they are not voting for the president. Instead, they are voting for a group of people who will then choose the president and vice president.

The word “college” here simply refers to a group of people with a shared task, BBC says. The Electoral College meets every four years, a few weeks after election day, to carry out that task.

According to the Centre for American Progress, Washington’s leading liberal think tank, Hillary Clinton won the majority of the national popular vote in 2016. However, Trump carried 30 states and won the Electoral College vote with 304 in his favour, making him president for the next four years.

But just because a candidate wins a state, does not mean that the electors are bound to vote for him/her. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there is no federal law or constitutional provision requiring electors to vote for the party that nominated them.

Some states are more important than others

While most of the states in the US can be divided along political lines, there are a select few that “swing” between voting for Democrats or Republicans. These states are called swing states or battleground states since it is not clear, given recent history and perception polls, whether these states will vote blue or red this time around, which is why what happens in these states can heavily sway the outcome of the presidential race.

Naturally, candidates pour money and focus the entirety of their campaign on vying for votes in these crucial battlegrounds.

There are six “big” states that could make or break — depending on which side you are rooting for — the 2020 US presidential race; Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. Together, all six states account for 101 electoral votes.

In September, NPR reported that the Biden campaign and supporting groups spent almost 90 per cent of their money in these states while Trump and Republican organisations spent 78 cents of every dollar across the six.

“These states are getting the lion’s share of the TV advertising money from the campaigns and outside groups supporting them,” the report says.

But why do these states matter so much? Well that’s because they are all medium to big — remember that electoral votes are assigned according to the population — and are an even mix when it comes to politics. A win, even by a small margin, can decide the end result.

Drawing another example from the 2016 US election, Trump bagged three of the six states mentioned above, namely Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The consensus is that to secure his re-election, Trump will have to maintain his hold on swing states.

Is the election just about choosing a new president and VP?

The November election is not just about choosing a new president and vice president. It is also about choosing new members of Congress, the country’s legislative branch which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Congressional elections take place once every two years; mid-term elections occur halfway between presidential elections. During these elections, the public votes for every member of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate seats.

It is worth mentioning that the popular vote decides the winner of the congressional elections. The race is particularly important this year as the Democrats are gunning to regain control of the Senate, where the Republicans currently have a majority.

But why is this important to the US presidency?

That’s because the Senate plays a huge role in passing federal laws and shapes the presidency through its “advice and consent” role as some of the president’s decisions need Senate’s approval, Al Jazeera explains.

A recent example of this is the appointment of a Supreme Court justice when a vacancy falls. After liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last month, Trump rushed for Amy Barrett – a conservative – to replace her on the top court and with the Republicans holding a majority in Senate, which has the power to approve her appointment, it was merely a formality.

Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has called himself the “grim reaper” of socialist schemes and subsequently blocked legislation passed by the House Democrats. In February this year, he admitted that 395 bills sitting in the Senate were not going to be passed because of their “left-wing” solutions, according to Newsweek.

Therefore, both the Democrats and Republicans are vying not just for the presidency but also to take control of the Congress which will make it easier for them to implement their agendas.

What happens after the election?

Once the polls close, the arduous process of counting begins which is carried out by the states. Once the votes have been counted and the states have finalised their electors, the latter can cast their ballots for president.

In January, the new Congress is sworn in which then proceeds to count the electoral votes in order to formally announce a winner.

However, if neither candidate manages to secure a majority, the decision falls upon the House of Representatives while the Senate votes for the vice president.

The reason for laying out the entire process is that Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the November election. He has also said that the matter of the winner could end up in the Supreme Court, highlighting his doubt over mail-in voting, which has been more popular than ever due to the pandemic.

Whatever the end result is, Americans and the world will have to wait longer than November 3 to see what happens.

Compiled by Sana Chaudhry

Header illustration by Murtaza Ali

“He specifically told me, ‘You are no longer my mother, because you are voting for Trump’,” Gomez, 41, a personal care worker in Milwaukee, told Reuters. Their last conversation was so bitter that she is not sure they can reconcile, even if Trump loses his re-election bid.

“The damage is done. In people’s minds, Trump is a monster. It’s sad. There are people not talking to me anymore, and I’m not sure that will change,” said Gomez, who is a fan of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants and handling of the economy.

Gomez is not alone in thinking the bitter splits within families and among friends over Trump’s tumultuous presidency will be difficult, if not impossible, to repair, even after he leaves office — whenever that is.

In interviews with 10 voters — five Trump supporters and five backing Democratic candidate Joe Biden — few could see the wrecked personal relationships caused by Trump’s tenure fully healing, and most believed them destroyed forever.

Throughout his nearly four-year norm-smashing presidency, Trump has stirred strong emotions among both supporters and opponents. Many of his backers admire his moves to overhaul immigration, his appointment of conservative judges, his willingness to throw convention to the wind and his harsh rhetoric, which they call straight talk.

Democrats and other critics see the former real estate developer and reality show personality as a threat to American democracy, a serial liar and a racist who mismanaged the novel coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 people in the United States so far. Trump dismisses those characterisations as “fake news.”

Now, with Trump trailing Biden in opinion polls, people are beginning to ask whether the fractures caused by one of the most polarising presidencies in US history could be healed if Trump loses the election.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think national healing is as easy as changing the president,” said Jaime Saal, a psychotherapist at the Rochester Center for Behavioral Medicine in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

“It takes time and it takes effort, and it takes both parties — no pun intended — being willing to let go and move forward,” she said.

Saal said tensions in people’s personal relationships have spiked given the political, health and social dynamics facing the United States. Most often she sees clients who have political rifts with siblings, parents or in-laws, as opposed to spouses.

Neighbour vs neighbour

Trump’s election in 2016 divided families, tore up friendships and turned neighbor against neighbour. Many have turned to Facebook and Twitter to deliver no-holds-barred posts bashing both Trump and his many critics, while the president’s own freewheeling tweets have also inflamed tensions.

A September report by the non-partisan Pew Research Center found that nearly 80 per cent of Trump and Biden supporters said they had few or no friends who supported the other candidate.

A study by the Gallup polling organisation in January found that Trump’s third year in office set a new record for party polarisation. While 89pc of Republicans approved of Trump’s performance in office in 2019, only 7pc of Democrats thought he was doing a good job.

Gayle McCormick, 77, who separated from her husband William, 81, after he voted for Trump in 2016, said, “I think the legacy of Trump is going to take a long time to recover from.”

The two still spend time together, although she is now based in Vancouver, he in Alaska. Two of her grandchildren no longer speak to her because of her support for Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago. She has also become estranged from other relatives and friends who are Trump supporters.

She is not sure those rifts with friends and family will ever mend, because each believes the other to have a totally alien value system.

Democratic voter Rosanna Guadagno, 49, said her brother disowned her after she refused to support Trump four years ago. Last year her mother suffered a stroke, but her brother — who lived in the same California city as her mother — did not let her know when their mother died six months later. She was told the news after three days in an email from her sister-in-law.

“I was excluded from everything that had to do with her death, and it was devastating,” said Guadagno, a social psychologist who works at Stanford University, California.

Whoever wins the election, Guadagno is pessimistic that she can reconcile with her brother, although she says she still loves him.

Uncertain post-Trump world

Sarah Guth, 39, a Spanish interpreter from Denver, Colorado, said she has cut several Trump-supporting friends out of her life. She could not reconcile herself to their support for issues such as separating immigrant children from parents at the southern border, or for Trump himself after he was caught on tape bragging about groping women.

Guth and her Trump-voting father did not speak to each other for several months after the 2016 election. The two now do speak, but avoid politics.

Guth says some of her friends cannot accept her support for a candidate — Joe Biden — who is pro-choice on the question of abortion.

“We had such fundamental disagreements about such basic stuff. It showed both sides that we really don’t have anything in common. I don’t believe that will change in the post-Trump era.”

Fervent Trump supporter Dave Wallace, 65, a retired oil industry sales manager in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is more optimistic about feuding families in a post-Trump world.

Wallace says his support for Trump has caused tensions with his son and daughter-in-law.

“The hatred for Trump among Democrats, it’s just amazing to me,” Wallace said. “I think it’s just Trump, the way he makes people feel. I do think the angst will decrease when we’re back to a normal politician who doesn’t piss people off.”

Jay J. Van Bavel, a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, said this “political sectarianism” has become not only tribal, but moral.

“Because Trump has been one of the most polarising figures in American history around core values and issues, people are unwilling to compromise and that is not something you can make go away,” Van Bavel said.

Jacquelyn Hammond, 47, a bartender in Asheville, North Carolina, no longer speaks to her Trump-supporting mother Carol, and is also discouraging her son from speaking to her.

She said she would like to heal the relationship, but believes that will be difficult, even if Trump loses the election.

“Trump is like the catalyst of an earthquake that just divided two continents of thought. Once the Earth divides like that, there’s no going back. This is a marked time in our history where people had to jump from one side to the other. And depending on what side you choose, that is going to be the trajectory for the rest of your life,” she said.

Hammond said she first realised her relationship with her mother was in trouble shortly after the 2016 election when she defended Clinton while driving with her mother.

“She stopped the car and told me not to disrespect her politics. And if I don’t want to respect her politics, I can get out of the car.”

Bonnie Coughlin, 65, has voted mostly Republican all her life, except in 2016 when she backed a third party candidate. This time she is all in for Biden, even holding a small rally for him on the side of a highway near Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania.

Raised in a Republican, religiously conservative family in Missouri, she says her relationships with her sister, father and some cousins — all ardent Trump supporters — have soured.

Coughlin says she still loves them, but “I look at them differently. It’s because they have willingly embraced someone who is so heartless and just shows no empathy to anyone in any circumstances.”

She added: “And if Biden wins, I don’t think they will go quietly into the night and accept it.”

Like most other nations that are upset with the United States for acting unilaterally over the past four years, Pakistanis want the future leader of the powerful nation to be more compassionate in the current trying times of the pandemic-induced global recession.

Under President Trump, the United States scrapped the Iran nuclear deal, abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, walked out of the Paris agreement, pulled out of the Human Rights Council and the UN Education and Scientific and Cultural Organisation. He chopped the funding for the World Trade Organisation, threatened to pull out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) and started the process to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He initiated a tariff war with China and administered visa restrictions and cancellations for overseas professionals working there. President Trump’s rigid attitude irked even close US allies. It was hard for Pakistan to put up with the tougher stance of the United States and multilateral institutions in its influence. The drift of the sole superpower towards India when China was investing liberally in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) tested Pakistan’s skills of diplomacy.

Geopolitics apart, Pakistan desperately needs the resumption of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan programme — which was suspended in February — on palatable terms, easing of the Western pressure to scale down the CPEC, clearance by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), progress on a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) conceived decades back and access to cheap Iranian oil and gas to put the economy back on the rails. It is hard to imagine a more accommodating attitude towards Pakistan if the current US administration secures another term.

‘Republicans were assumed to be friendlier to Pakistan, but now the deep chasm between the United States and China dictates Washington’s South Asia policy’

The harsh stabilisation policies mandated by the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) signed in early 2019 already weakened growth drivers with people bearing the crippling burden of adjustments. The management of the grave health crisis entailed a huge economic cost that was partially compensated by dollar inflows from friendly countries and institutions.

For the first time in recent history, Pakistan’s GDP recorded a contraction of 0.4 per cent in 2019-20 (the IMF estimated it to be -1.5pc in real terms). This was despite $3.7 billion received collectively in loans and grants to support the pandemic management efforts. The debts were rescheduled, Saudi Arabia deferred oil payments for three months, China permitted the use of $1bn deposited in the SBP and the IMF disbursed $1.3bn under its Rapid Financing Instrument. The World Bank gave a grant of $500 million, Asian Development Bank (ADB) $350m, Islamic Development Bank $70m, Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund (Opec) $50m and France’s AFG $51m to protect lives and livelihoods and contain the spread of the deadly virus.

The background conversation in diplomatic circles revealed a departure and greater goodwill for the Democratic duo vis-a-vis the Republican Trump team. In Islamabad, Republicans are generally assumed to be warmer towards Pakistan.

Read: Why pinning hopes on US election is wrong

The local intelligentsia did not have a firm preference, but has mostly been in favour of the Democrats. This time around though, it’s hard to find a supporter of President Trump in Islamabad. There was support for the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in most unexpected quarters.

Donald Trump is perceived to be a nationalist by commoners in Pakistan, but his rival Joe Biden is little known to the masses. The mild-mannered Democratic candidate lacks the force of charisma like President Barack Hussein Obama who captured the public attention from a faraway land. Hussein is a Muslim middle name and his affinity with college friends of Pakistani origin probably played a role in his public perception here.

The elite who send their children to study in the United States and the relatives of Pakistani-Americans back home detest President Trump for what they call “his racial and anti-immigrant bias”.

Some executives, who lost US-funded projects as the country scaled back its funding, fondly mentioned Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential candidate.

“The US elections are less of an event back here. People of Pakistan are busy surviving, politicians are consumed in confrontation, business community is occupied adjusting to the Covid-19–infected business world to care about the US elections and their outcome,” commented an analyst.

Amin Hashwani, a business leader, does not see the situation easing for Pakistan irrespective of the US election results. “I don’t foresee any tangible change for Pakistan post-November. Traditionally, Republicans were assumed to be friendlier, but currently the deep chasm between the United States and China dictates Washington’s South Asia policy. The United States seems bent upon arming India with defence technology and equipment to counterbalance and contain China’s ascent. Prime Minister Imran Khan has succeeded in striking a balance in the country’s diplomatic relations with both which, in my view, is not a mean achievement.”

The foreign secretary and officers of the US desk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were understandably reluctant to comment on the internal matters of the United States.

Despite the burden of history, the United States is the closest trade ally with the bilateral annual trade volume of over $6.5bn and the top destination for Pakistan’s exports. Top five products imported from the United States are cotton, scrap iron, steel, soya bean, LNG, defence-related equipment. Export items include bed, bath and kitchen linens, ladies’ garments, men’s wear and woollen sweaters. Pakistan enjoys a favourable trade balance with a gap of over a billion dollars.

The US investment in the country is second only to China. There are over three dozen top US companies active in the Pakistani market, including familiar brands like P&G, Pepsi, Coke, Facebook, Google, Uber, ExxonMobil, TRG, Citi, Bayer and Abbott. The operator of a major trade company told Dawn that Pakistan entered the US chemical market this year as tariffs were revised up for some other nations in the wake of the pandemic.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, November 2nd, 2020

Longtime alliances have been strained, agreements wiped away, tariffs erected, funding withdrawn. Some nations have been the objects of presidential derision. Others, like North Korea, have been on the receiving end of diplomatic overtures once considered unthinkable.

For countries around the planet, the presidency of Donald Trump in its first term has been, it is safe to say, a singular experience to watch. Now that an inflection point in Trump’s time in office is at hand with Tuesday’s US election, what’s at stake if his presidency ends — or if it continues? Nation by nation, how is Election Day in the United States being watched, considered, assessed?

ISRAEL

On the eve of the US presidential election, leaders of Israeli settlers in the West Bank gathered in the biblical city of Hebron to pray for victory for President Donald Trump.

It was a highly symbolic move by the settlers, who have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the president’s Mideast policies.

Monday’s gathering took place in front of a holy site revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of the biblical patriarch Abraham, a gesture to the Trump-brokered deals between Israel and Arab countries known as the “Abraham Accords”.

“We are grateful for his first term, and we pray that he may be elected for another four years of blessed endeavours,” said Rabbi Hillel Horowitz, mayor of Hebron’s ultranationalist Jewish community.

It was almost certainly the first time settler leaders, long ostracised by the US, have publicly prayed for victory for a sitting American president.

But Trump is unlike any of his predecessors. He has embraced Israel’s religious and nationalist right wing and showered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a string of diplomatic gifts: withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, offering a Mideast plan that would allow Israel to annex large swathes of the West Bank, including all of its settlements.

Netanyahu, while careful not to openly take sides, made little secret of his preference when he said this week he hopes Trump’s policies “will continue in the coming years”. The Palestinians, sidelined and humiliated by Trump, have been even clearer that they are pulling for Joe Biden.

The Democratic challenger has already signalled he will scrap Trump’s approach toward Iran and the Palestinians. That has raised concerns in Israel, especially on the right.

Elie Pieprz, an American-Israeli consultant who lives in the Karnei Shomron settlement, said Trump has been a “tremendous success” by rejecting policies of the past. He said if Biden wins, he hopes he will “learn the proper lessons”.

IRAN

In Iran, everything feels up in the air ahead of the US election.

Currency markets have frozen awaiting the vote, though the damage has been done already by President Trump’s maximum pressure sanctions campaign. For $1, you can get 276,500 rials.

When Trump was inaugurated in 2017, it was around 37,000 rials to $1.

While the currency collapse has pressured Iran’s government, it’s also destroyed people’s life savings. Goods like medicine, diapers and car parts are difficult to come by — and very expensive when found.

Iran also cannot sell crude oil openly abroad because of sanctions, and jobs remain scarce for its youth. The economic problems have led to nationwide protests in recent years.

Meanwhile, Iran faces what appears to be the Mideast’s worst outbreak of the coronavirus. It has reported some 35,000 deaths, and officials acknowledge the true toll is likely far higher.

Hossein Kanani Moghadam, a former commander in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who now works as an analyst, insists America will “continue its hostile behaviour” no matter who is elected.

But he acknowledged that he thought Democratic challenger Joe Biden would try to come back to the negotiation table if elected — and that prospect is keeping Iranians glued to the results of the vote.

A music video by an Iranian band called “Dasandaz” ricocheted around the internet in recent days.

“Know that who you vote for changes our lives,” the band sings. “Hey, Joseph, Thomas, Laura, we don’t know why this affects us more than it does you.”

INDIA

For many Indians, the American election is personal.

The prospect that vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris — who has Indian origins — could occupy the second-highest political office in the US has caught the imagination of millions of ordinary people in the world’s largest democracy.

But for their government, the election is all about the recent military and diplomatic convergence between the two countries to counter their shared rival China.

Despite some friction over trade issues, the India-US relationship has steadily strengthened in security and defence cooperation in the last four years. It has largely been defined by public displays of bonhomie between President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both seen as populists.

Modi’s second term has been marked by many convulsions at home: widening social strife, policies that discriminate against Muslims and the rising intolerance against minorities. Trump has mostly chosen to ignore them, partly as an effort to woo Indian American voters.

By contrast, Democratic challenger Biden and running mate Harris have been vocal about Modi’s hardline Hindu-nationalist policies, including his administration’s decision to revoke Indian-occupied Kashmir’s semiautonomous powers. Should they win, India might expect to come under more pressure internationally for such policies.

But India might not see as big a difference between the candidates as other countries do.

“No matter who wins the election, the trajectory of the US-India relationship will remain favourable,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Programme at the Washington-based Wilson Centre. “There’s not much that Trump and Biden agree on, but India policy is one of the rare convergences.”

KOREAN PENINSULA

For both North and South Korea, the fate of nuclear negotiations is top of mind as the two countries look at the US election.

With the talks in disarray, the election could have serious implications for North Korea’s relentless pursuit of an arsenal capable of targeting US allies and the American homeland.

Trump’s three summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un since 2018 — which South Korea helped set up — brought a temporary lull to tensions.

But negotiations — which seek to exchange an easing of crippling US-led sanctions for disarmament steps by the North — have now stalled.

If Trump is reelected, some experts say the North would try to resume the summits. North Korea prefers a summit-driven process, which gives it a better shot at winning instant concessions, such as Trump’s surprise agreement to cease major US military exercises with South Korea after his first meeting with Kim.

Democratic candidate Biden, whom North Korea’s state media has called a “rabid dog” after he accused Trump of cosying up to dictators, has endorsed an approach that starts with meetings between lower-level officials. He has also demanded that the North show genuine willingness to abandon its nuclear weapons and missiles.

Some analysts say the North could try to pressure a Biden administration by resuming tests of nuclear warheads and long-range missiles it halted during its diplomacy with Trump. In a recent military parade in Pyongyang, Kim revealed a slew of new weapons, including what appeared to be North Korea’s biggest intercontinental ballistic missile yet.

South Korea, meanwhile, has struggled to deal with Trump, who has been less wedded to historic alliances than his predecessors. Trump has constantly complained about the cost of having 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea. A cost-sharing agreement expired in 2019, and the two sides have failed to agree on a replacement.

In an op-ed to South Korea’s Yonhap News last week, Biden vowed to strengthen the alliance.

But Biden would also be much more willing than Trump to strengthen sanctions and pressure North Korea.

“This could possibly force Seoul to choose between denuclearisation and inter-Korean relations,” said Moon Seong Mook, an analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.

CHINA

It’s all about trade for China — and trade is about hitting economic growth targets at home and being a technology leader abroad.

The stormy commercial relationship between the world’s two biggest economies since President Trump took office is front and centre in China’s view of the US election. While a win for Democratic challenger Biden offers no guarantee of relief, Beijing hopes to avoid a further deterioration and see negotiations put on an even keel.

“People are concerned. They want to know what their future is to be,” said investor and prominent blogger Ding Chenling. “Whoever is the US president has no choice: They will have to do business with China.”

Trump seized on longstanding concerns about Chinese commercial espionage, the forced handover of technology, and state subsidies for Chinese companies. He elevated them into a high-stakes tariff war launched in 2018, and last year tightened controls on Chinese purchases of computer chips and other high-tech components.

That could place a drag on China’s ambitions to be a global leader in cutting-edge technologies and build, as it calls it, a “moderately prosperous society” at home, although the loss of access to US technology is also motivating a drive for self-sufficiency.

Meanwhile, Trump’s vow that China would pay for allegedly cheating the US consumer has yet to yield more balanced trade.

September exports to the US rose 20.5 per cent over a year ago to $44 billion as China’s factories continued to assemble most of the world’s smartphones, personal computers and consumer electronics, along with much of the clothing, housewares and toys sold in the US.

That means that, despite disruptions from trade tension and the pandemic, the ruling Communist Party is likely to hit its economic targets for the time being. Still, calming the stormy seas of trade could provide the long-term assurance Beijing’s leaders seek.

“I believe Joe Biden would ease relations,” said Qu Zhan, a Beijing health care worker.

THE PHILIPPINES

The next US president could reshape the country’s relationship with President Rodrigo Duterte, who leads a key American treaty ally in Asia — but presents a dilemma.

Duterte has been regarded by international watchdogs as a human rights calamity for his notorious anti-drug crackdown that has left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead. He has been accused of undermining one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies — an American legacy.

Known for his expletive-laced outbursts, the 75-year-old leader is hypersensitive to criticism of his so-called war on drugs. He once told then-president Barack Obama in a speech to “go to hell”.

Unlike his predecessor, President Trump has not publicly raised red flags over Duterte’s brutal campaign. Trump’s gambit won him cosier ties with Duterte, who called on Filipino Americans in March to vote Republican, saying, “You are getting the best deal with Trump.”

But the Filipino leader has pressed on with his anti-US broadsides while nurturing ties with China and Russia. In February, his government notified Washington of its intent to terminate a key security pact, although he later delayed the effect of that decision.

“Do we need America to survive as a nation?” he asked. He essentially said, no.

While a Trump reelection would likely mean business as usual for Duterte, a Biden presidency carries the prospect of a stronger US pushback against Duterte at the risk of further alienating the leader of a crucial ally with less than two years left in office.

Header image: In this Oct 31, 2020, file photo, a billboard erected by supporters of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence stands at a city square in Kochi, in the southern Indian state of Kerala. — AP

The day after the presidential election, the United States formally leaves the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change. A year ago, President Donald Trump’s administration notified the United Nations that America is exiting the climate agreement. And because of technicalities in the international pact, November 4 is the earliest a country can withdraw.

The US, the world’s second biggest carbon polluter, will be the first country to quit the 189-nation agreement, which has countries make voluntary, ever-tighter goals to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases. The only mandatory parts of the agreement cover tracking and reporting of carbon pollution, say US officials who were part of the Paris negotiations.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has pledged to put the country immediately back in the Paris agreement, which doesn’t require congressional approval. Experts say three months — from November to the January inauguration — with the US out of the climate pact will not change the world, but four years will.

If America pulls back from Paris and stronger carbon cutting efforts, some nations are less likely to cut back too, so the withdrawal’s impact will be magnified, said scientists and climate negotiators.

Because the world is so close to feared climate tipping points and on a trajectory to pass a temperature limit goal, climate scientists said the US pullout will have noticeable effects.

“Losing most of the world’s coral reefs is something that would be hard to avoid if the US remains out of the Paris process,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, California. “At the margins, we would see a world of more extreme heatwaves.”

If the US remains out of the climate pact, today’s children are “going to see big changes that you and I don’t see for ice, coral and weather disasters”, said Stanford University’s Rob Jackson.

Because the two presidential candidates have starkly different positions on climate change policy, the election could have profound repercussions for the world’s approach to the problem, according to more than a dozen experts.

“That election could be a make or break point for international climate policy,” said Niklas Hohne, a climate scientist at Wageningen University in Germany.

In pulling out of the agreement, Trump has questioned climate science and has rolled back environmental initiatives that he called too restrictive in cutting future carbon pollution from power plants and cars.

American carbon emissions dropped by less than one per cent a year from 2016 to 2019, until plunging probably temporarily during the pandemic slowdown, according to the US Department of Energy. More than 60 countries cut emissions by higher percentages than the US in that time period, according to international data.

“Other countries around the world are obsessed with the Paris Climate Accord, which shackles economies and has done nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email. “President Trump understands economic growth and environmental protection do not need to conflict.”

“We’ve also done our fair share” to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday in the Maldives, a climate-vulnerable country. “We stand amongst industrialised nations as a beacon, and we did it not through state-driven, forced rulesets, but rather through creativity and innovation and good governance.”

In the last debate and on his website, Biden pledged to set a goal of zero net carbon emissions from the US by 2050, meaning the country would not put more greenhouse gases into the air than it takes out through trees and other natural and technological sources. Dozens of nations, including top polluting China, have already made similar pledges.

Eleven years ago, the world was on pace to add about another 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming. But with emission cut pledges from Paris and afterward, the world is facing only about another 1.2 degrees Celsius of warming if countries do what they promise, said Wageningen University’s Hohne.

“If Biden wins, the whole world is going to start reorienting toward stepping up its action,” said climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the University of Michigan’s environment programme.

If the US remains out of Paris, countries trying to cut emissions drastically at potentially high costs to local industry may put “border adjustment” fees on climate laggards like America to even the playing field, said Nigel Purvis, a climate negotiator in the Clinton and second Bush administrations. The European Union is already talking about such fees, Purvis said.

Trevor Houser, a climate modeler for the independent Rhodium Group, and the computer simulation research group Climate Action Tracker ran calculations comparing a continuation of the Trump administration’s current emission trends to what would happen if Biden worked toward net zero emissions. Houser, who worked briefly in the Obama State Department, found that in the next 10 years a Trump scenario, which includes a moderate economic bounce-back from the pandemic, would emit six billion tonnes more greenhouse gases than the Biden scenario — an 11 per cent difference.

Climate Action Tracker calculated that from reduced US emissions alone in a Biden scenario, the world would be one-tenth of a degree Celsius cooler.

“Every tenth of a degree counts,” said Hohne, a Climate Action Tracker team member. “We are running into a catastrophe if we don’t do anything.”

Other nations will do more to limit carbon pollution if the US is doing so and less if America isn’t, said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald. “In terms of leadership, it will make an immense difference,” she said.

In Paris, the US was crucial in getting the agreement finished. The rest of the world ended up pledging to reduce roughly five tonnes of carbon pollution for every tonne the US promised to cut, according to Houser and Breakthrough’s Hausfather.

Nations also adopted a goal to limit future warming to just a few more tenths of a degree from now. A UN panel of scientists in 2018 said there was only a slim chance of reaching the goal, but said it would likely make a huge difference in helping avert more loss of corals, extreme weather and extinctions.

A second Trump win “could remove whatever vanishingly small chance we have of” not shooting past that stringent temperature goal, Hausfather said.

Despite its recent bounce against a basket of currencies, the dollar index is still down about nine per cent from its March highs and on track for its worst year since 2017, weighed down by expectations that US rates will remain near historic lows for years to come.

Many market participants believe that a victory by Joe Biden — currently the front-runner in polls — and a potential Democratic sweep would likely weigh on the US currency further, as the former vice president is expected to open the door to policies that investors view as dollar-negative, including robust fiscal stimulus.

Four more years of a Donald Trump presidency may offer a less clear path for the dollar. Although a continuation of Trump's belligerent approach toward China would likely boost the dollar's allure as a haven asset, those gains may be outweighed by factors such as continued negative US real yields, analysts said.

A Reuters poll last month showed analysts median forecast looking for the euro to rise to $1.21 in a year, up about four per cent from current levels.

Here are some of the main factors expected to influence the dollar over the long term.

Rate differentials

For years, comparatively high US interest rates relative to other developed countries supported the dollar by making it more attractive to investors seeking yield.

That yield advantage shrank in 2020, when the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to combat the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and pledged to keep them at historic lows for years.

“The biggest FX trends [...] will be the Covid-induced downward convergence of interest rates,” said Kit Juckes of Societe Generale, in a note to clients. This “is unambiguously negative for the dollar, and far from priced-in”.

Real yields

Real, or inflation-adjusted, yields on US 10-year Treasuries plunged below zero in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. That has diminished the dollar's attractiveness and fueled rallies in everything from stocks to gold.

A Reuters poll in September showed analysts expected the yield to rise to 0.93pc in 12 months, about half the expected average inflation rate, suggesting negative real returns over the coming year.

“We do not see a scenario which would derail a resumption of the (dollars) current broad downtrend, as US real yields are likely to remain negative, analysts at BNP Paribas wrote.

Short squeeze?

Net bets against the dollar stood at $26.46 billion in the futures market last week after hitting a more than nine-year high of $34.07 billion in August.

While that short position reflects the negative sentiment swirling around the dollar, it could also fuel gains if a change in the narrative forced investors to unwind those bets all at once.

The uncertainty surrounding a contested election could be one such event. Some analysts believe a Trump win or divided government — which could result in a smaller or delayed fiscal stimulus package — may be another.

Because the market consensus appears to lean heavily on a Biden win, a Trump victory is hugely bullish for the (dollar), analysts at TD securities wrote. The market is not priced for a return of fresh geopolitical uncertainty and zero-sum, tit-for-tat trade battles.

Reserve status

Trump has railed against a strong dollar throughout most of his term, complaining that it gives other nations an unfair competitive advantage in trade.

Although the accelerated fiscal spending expected in a potential Biden presidency may weigh on the dollar, some believe the Democrats less confrontational approach to foreign policy may bolster the dollars appeal as a reserve currency.

Biden "will not talk the (dollar) down; and he will embrace multilateralism, including the framework that has built and supported the (dollars) reserve currency status,” wrote Alan Ruskin of Deutsche Bank.

On Tuesday, the world will witness a country more divided and angry than at any time since the Vietnam War era of the 1970s.

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 including the iconic Macy's flagship.

Tuesday is formally Election Day but in reality it marks only the culmination of a drawn-out election month. With a huge expansion in mail-in voting to safeguard against the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 95 million people are estimated to have already cast ballots, highlighting the raw passion in what is turning into a referendum on the norm-shattering Republican's first term.

Header image: Supporters of President Donald Trump scream at supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden queueing in their cars before attending a campaign event with Democratic US vice presidential nominee Sen Kamala Harris on the eve of the general election in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. — AFP