Wale Elegbede 
Unlike the Nigerian electoral system, the United States democratic system operates the Electoral College process to elect a president. In this report, WALE ELEGBEDE, who is part of the Elections 2020 Virtual Reporting Tour of the Foreign Press Centre for the November 3 Presidential Election, writes on the various subject matters on the election shared at the inaugural week of the tour
When the United States (U.S.) government through its Foreign Press Centre (FPC) and in partnership with the Meridian International Center, decided to bring the world closer to its presidential election in November through the selection of over 225 top foreign journalists, the primary motive was to count on media reports to give insights about the poll to their people and countries.
The foreign journalists, selected by the U.S. government through its Embassies and Consulates had the privilege of taking part in the first virtual reporting tour of the FPC to remotely cover the 2020 U.S. election from September 21 to November 13.
The eight-week virtual programme was necessitated by the global health conditions brought by COVID-19 that reduced travels. The tour will feature a series of experts and themes that will give journalists important insights into the processes and stages of the U.S. election and exclusive access to specially create content for them to use in reporting on the talked-about event. The 2020 presidential election is 34 days away, and the U.S. President, Donald Trump, who is also the Republican candidate, is expected to slug it out with Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.
Opening the lid of the tour on September 21, when Day One ses-sion commenced, a renowned expert on U.S. Federal Government system, the presidency, politics and elections, Dr. Mark J. Rozell, started the tour on a strong footing, when he gave a solid overview of the U.S. electoral system and aspects that impact on American elections. Dr. Rozell is the author of “Federalism: A Very Short Introduction” (Oxford University Press, 2019) and eight other books on U.S. government and politics, including the Presidency, Religion and Politics, Media and Politics, and The Impact of Interest Groups in Elections. He has lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad – Austria, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Vietnam. He is the Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “We don’t have as you know a national popular vote for the presidency.
We have a national popular vote total that says that Hillary Clinton got three million more votes than Donald Trump or in the year 2000 that Al Gore got a half-million more votes than George W Bush.
“But we have what is called a state-by-state, a winner-takes-all system where each state is assigned a number of electors to our electoral college and a candidate who wins the popular vote within each state takes 100pc of electors to the electoral college,” Rozell said.
Giving an overview of how the American presidential election system works, Rozell said: “The presidential election is a multi-stage pro-cess, multiple candidates compete for each party’s nomination over a several months period of time in a series of primaries that are held in various states, and then the two major parties hold nominating conventions to formally ratify their choice for president.
“It is at the convention which was done virtually this year, by the way, some of you perhaps had the opportunity to watch that. When the political parties formally ratify the nomination of their candidates for president and then ultimately vice-president, the presidential nominee picks his or her choice but that has to be formally ratified at the convention, and then eligible adult citizens can vote in the general election and what’s called the Electoral College ultimately ratifies the outcome of the popular vote in the states. So we can go to the next one and I’ll explain a little bit more how that works.”
Stating that the Electoral College has 538 votes and a candidate must get 270 votes in order to win the election, he stressed that electors are part of a larger national body called the Electoral College and they are chosen by the parties but the process differs from state to state. “There are 538 electors at the Electoral College, 270 is the magic number, the candidate who gets 270 or more becomes president of the U.S.,” he further explained, adding that the number of electors for each state is the total of the number of representatives in the House of Representatives, the lower house, plus the two senators in the upper house.
He also explained the rationale behind the election of House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate every two years and why the President is elected once every four years, adding that in this 2020 election cycle, the President, members the House of Representatives and one-third of members of the Senate will be elected. Speaking on the impact of the Latino votes on the outcome of the election, he said: “Only about one-half of the nation’s 60 million Latinos are eligible to vote and among them, only about 60 per cent are actually registered to vote, compared to 70 per cent of blacks and 74 percent of Whites. Latinos comprise about 18 per cent of the U.S. population, yet they make up merely 13.3 percent of the electorate.
In the latest presidential election cycle (2016), Latinos comprised 11.9 percent of the U.S. electorate.” Fielding questions on the impact of COVID-19 on the voting procedure and turn out of the upcoming election and whether the Democrats will benefit from how President Trump had handled the pandemic, Rozell said: “There is evidence in polls that the president has seen a drop in support among senior citizens – people who are the most medically at risk for COVID-19. Since his support among senior citizens was strong for him in 2016; that is a real concern to his campaign.”
On the Day 2 of the tour, Dr. Jeffrey Stonecash of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, spoke extensively on political parties and issues. Stonecash discussed major differences between today’s Republican and Democratic parties, stating that these two parties have an interesting conflict according to race and cultural matters. According to him, there are three main basic conflicts between Republicans and Democrats; economic individualism and the role of government, race and cultural matters and immigration.
He said: “Republican Party is more conservative; Democratic Party is more liberal,” explaining that conservatives don’t want government to tell them what to do. He mentioned the unwillingness of Republicans to wearing masks during pandemic to drive his point home. “There’s just a profound difference between the way a lot of whites see minorities and the way liberals see them. I might say not all whites are Republican. There’s about 60 per cent, 40 per cent stuck with the Democratic Party. “Some people will look at an immigrant and they will automatically assume that they’re not American.
They just can’t possibly be American. There have been cycles of this, first the Irish came and then the Italians came and then the Polish. And they were all treated as if they could be Americans. Now they’re considered as white Americans and they are very often complaining.” For the Day 3 session, which took place on September 23, it was hosted by Dr. Bradley Jones, a Research Associate at Pew Research Center, where he primarily works on U.S. public opinion about politics, and he shared on Demographics of the U.S. electorate. Pew Research Center is a leading, nonpartisan “fact tank” informing the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis, and other empirical social science research.
In his briefing, he provided an overview of demographic statistics and trends of the U.S. electorate factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, generational divides, and regional differences that may shape the U.S. presidential and congressional election outcomes in 2020. “One of the most important factors in American Politics is race and here we can see that within racial groups.
Again, we see a lot of stability with the possible exception of Asians, which have a little bit of copy on that we could talk about. “So, among white voters, the distribution of partisanship actually has been very stable over the last 25 years.
About half of White voters identify with or lean towards the Republican Party and about 40 per cent do the same towards the Democratic Party. “Black voters overwhelmingly have associated with the Democratic Party and only small minorities say they feel closer to the Republican Party. Hispanics are about somewhere in between, where about 60 per cent call themselves Democrats or lean towards the democratic party and 30 per cent about with the Republicans,” he said.
