By Luis Meiners
Againsta backdrop of uncertainty with a tight election to be decided in a handful of states that are still counting votes, Trump has said he won the election and accused a “group of sad people” of wanting to stop it. He argued that it is a “fraud against the American public” and “an embarrassment to the country.” In a highly polarized and judicialized election, Trump maintained that he will take the case to the Supreme Court. There is growing political uncertainty.
An election maneuvered in the courts
The development of the elections in the context of the pandemic meant a substantial increase in the number of votes by mail and also in votes cast before the day of the election. Although both are commonly used in elections in the US, the current context implied that some states expanded these possibilities. A large part of the votes that remain to be counted correspond to those cast under these modalities. These are presumed to favor the Democratic Party candidate by a wide margin, which could prove decisive in several states where margins are tight.
In this framework, the Republican Party has concentrated a large part of its efforts in recent weeks towards a legal battle for these votes. According to a study carried out by Stanford – MIT, at least 380 lawsuits related to the electoral process were registered, linked to the changes introduced by the pandemic. The strategy of the Trump campaign aimed at reducing the impact of measures that expanded the possibility of voting by mail. At the same time, during the electoral campaign, Trump publicly criticized this way of voting, arguing that it led to fraud and refusing to assert that he would recognize the electoral result. This led to the count of votes-by-mail being reserved for last in some states.
Trump and the Republican Party have been preparing for a scenario like the current one, which the Democrats sought to avoid with a landslide victory that did not materialize.
What comes next?
The uncertainty about the electoral result will be prolonged. Results from key states such as Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada are still coming in as of Wednesday morning. In some of them, the trend seems to favor Biden although by very low margins. Everything seems to indicate that strong disputes will come in the courts.
All this unfolds in a scenario of marked polarization, in a year where there has been a historical rebellion. In the early hours of Wednesday, there were some mobilizations in cities such as Portland and Washington. In the run-up to the electoral process, some unions had declared that they would resist any attempt by Trump to undermine the results of the elections and claim a premature victory. The memory of the 2000 elections, in which it all came down to Florida and the Democrats ended up conceding the defeat of Al Gore to Bush without a fight, shows that despite the rhetoric of “defense of democracy” , the Democratic Party would rather lose than question an undemocratic regime.
At this moment, the most likely scenario seems to be one of increasing polarization, with legal battles, mobilizations in the streets and a still uncertain outcome.