How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

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Source: Datastream from Refinitiv

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Leaders 7

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abor day

marks the beginning of the home straight in a presi-

dential election. This one threatens to be ugly. The president’s

supporters are clashing with Black Lives Matter protesters in

Portland, Oregon. Donald Trump flew to Kenosha, Wisconsin,

for a photo-op in front of burned-out buildings, a week after po-

lice shot and paralysed an unarmed African-American man and

one of the president’s supporters shot and killed two demonstra-

tors, possibly in self-defence. Having adopted a strategy built

around profiting from fears about unrest, the president has an

interest in stoking it. Many Americans worry that November

could herald not a smooth exercise of democracy but violent dis-

cord and a constitutional crisis. 

Is this all hyperbole? America has had violent, contested elec-

tions in the past. In 1968 one of the candidates, Bobby Kennedy,

was assassinated. In 1912 Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest

while making a speech in Wisconsin. (He finished the speech be-

fore heading to hospital, and survived.) Historians are still argu-

ing about who really won the election of 1876. Yet the country has

always managed to gain the consent of the losers in its presiden-

tial elections—even in the midst of the civil war. That long un-

broken streak suggests that doomsayers need to keep things in

proportion. However, there is a real risk that things could go

wrong in November.

To ensure the peaceful handover of power,

democracies need the losing candidates and

most of their followers to admit defeat. A clear

result on polling day helps a lot: the losers may

hate it, but they accept it and start preparing for

the next election. When the result is unclear, a

backup system is needed. Contested election re-

sults are rare in mature Western democracies,

but they happen. In 2006 Silvio Berlusconi nar-

rowly lost an election in Italy and claimed, without evidence,

that there had been widespread fraud. The country’s Supreme

Court ruled in favour of his opponent, and Mr Berlusconi grudg-

ingly surrendered. In 2000 America’s presidential election was

settled in the Supreme Court after contested recounts in Florida.

In both cases, decrees from judges were just about enough to end

the squabbling and let the country move on.

In the case of a landslide win for Mr Trump or Joe Biden, about

half of America will be miserable. Many Democrats view Mr

Trump as a threat to democracy itself. If he wins again millions of

them will be distraught. Among Republicans, by contrast, Mr

Trump still enjoys an 87% approval rating. If he loses, many will

grouse that the other side cheated. But that need not stop a

smooth transfer of power if the margin of victory is big enough. If

Mr Trump were to lose by eight points, as polls currently suggest

he will, there will be no way to challenge the result plausibly—

though he may try anyway, possibly fomenting further unrest.

If the election is much closer, things could get even uglier.

America is unusual in the degree of power it gives to Republican

and Democratic partisans to administer elections. Decisions

over who is removed from lists of eligible voters when they are

updated, the design of ballot papers, where polling stations are

situated, whether early voting is allowed and how many people

have to witness a postal vote—things which in other mature de-

mocracies are in the hands of non-partisan commissions—are

all taken by people with a 

d

or an 

r

by their name. If the election

is close then all this will be litigated over, and ultimately end up

in courts presided over by judges who have also been appointed

by Republican or Democratic governors and presidents.

As if that were not worrying enough, covid-19 could add to the

legal slugfest. Already more than 200 covid-related lawsuits

have been filed by the campaigns (see Briefing). The evidence

from party primaries suggests that though some states, such as

Wisconsin, conducted a relatively orderly election despite the

virus, others did not. Postal ballots were still being counted

weeks after election day in New York’s primary. In November

some swing states, including Michigan, will experiment with

widespread voting by mail for the first time.

If the election is close and there are delays in counting ballots

on election night, it could well appear that Mr Trump is winning

in some key states. He might then claim victory before the re-

sults were in, as he did in Florida’s 2018 mid-terms. As more post-

al votes are counted, the result could then shift in Mr Biden’s fa-

vour. America would have two candidates claiming victory.

Electoral cases in multiple states might have to be heard in the

courts. Protests would surely erupt, some of them armed. The

president might call out the national guard, as

he threatened to do this summer, or send federal

agents into Democratic cities to police restive

crowds, as happened in Portland. At this dis-

tance, it is easy to forget quite how wrenching a

disputed presidential election was in 2000. And

that dispute took place at a time of maximum

American self-confidence, before 9/11, before

the rise of China, before elections were fought

on social media, and when the choice was between two men who

would be considered moderate centrists by current standards.

Now imagine something like the Florida recount taking place

in several states, after an epidemic has killed 200,000 Ameri-

cans, and at a moment when the incumbent is viewed as both il-

legitimate and odious by a very large number of voters, while on

the other side millions are convinced, regardless of the evidence,

that their man would have won clearly but for widespread elec-

toral fraud. 

Were Mr Trump to lose the popular vote but win in the elector-

al college, as happened in 2016, then almost 40% of Democrats

say that the election ought to be re-run. It should not. Were he to

lose the presidency, then almost 30% of Republicans think that it

would be appropriate for Mr Trump to refuse to leave office if

there were claims of widespread illegal voting—claims he has al-

ready made in relation to postal voting. It would not.

There is so much riding on this election—for America and for

the rest of the world—that state officials must do everything they

can to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible, remembering

that they owe loyalty to the constitution, not their party. Even a

landslide election win will be fraught. In the event of a narrow

one, America might not be able to generate losers’ consent. And

without that, democracies are in big trouble.

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