On the 3rd of November 2020, the United States will witness the presidential elections, which are expected by the whole world, and not only by the American people. Because of its implications reach all parts of the world.
The American elections are distinguished by their unparalleled presence in any other country in the world, whether in terms of their long period of time, or the hustle and bustle that surrounds them, in addition to their rapid repetition, as they take place every 4 years.
The elections are traditionally divided into 5 stages as follows:
First: The exploration
stage is an initial stage whose features appeared at the beginning of 2019, where candidates and those interested in running for elections form an exploratory committee (feasibility study) to study the possibility of mobilizing support among themselves in the party, and discussing the possibility of obtaining guarantees from donors to support the electoral campaign financially.
Dozens of Democrats and a limited number of Republicans believed that they enjoyed enough support to contest the elections this year. In reality, however, most of these candidates realize that they do not have any chances of winning the party's card in the presidential elections, and they aim to announce their intention to run for media coverage that raises their shares at the national level, and among the party's masses in other issues or congressional elections.
Second: The primary elections stage
Each party runs its primary elections in isolation from the other party, although in most cases they agree on the election schedule for each state.
The aim of these elections is to choose a candidate holding the party’s banner in the presidential elections, where each party’s candidates compete with each other to win the largest number of states that enable them to obtain the majority of the party’s delegates ’votes at the national conference in August.
The Democratic Party elections began with a competition between more than 20 candidates, and reached a two-way contest between the left-wing candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden, former Vice President, and Biden succeeded in resolving the race, which led to the withdrawal of Sanders.
The Republican Party did not know primaries in the actual sense, as there was no serious competition in the face of President Trump's re-nomination on the party card.
Before the third stage, the candidate shall choose the name of the vice president who shares the party card.
President Trump has not changed the identity of Vice President Mike Pence, who will remain a candidate with him, while Biden is expected to name a woman as vice president for the next few days.
Third: National conferences for the two parties National conferences
represent a basic tradition in the electoral process, where party delegates from all American states gather to announce their support for Joe Biden's candidacy in the democratic state, and Donald Trump in the Republican case.
After a procedural process in which delegates from each state choose their candidate to run for the presidential race, each party can formally know the candidate and his deputy who will stand behind him in the remaining stages of the election campaign as his representative.
Because of the recent outbreak of the Corona epidemic, the 2020 elections will not witness the traditional national conferences of the two parties, and will be replaced by a virtual conference (online), although each of the candidates will participate with a few party leaders in some events.
The Democrats will hold their party general conference from August 17th, and it will end on the 20th of the same month with a letter from Joe Biden in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Republicans will hold their party convention from August 24-27, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Fourth: the electoral campaign, the
two candidates will not wait for the party's general congress to end in order to start their electoral campaign. President Trump began his re-election campaign in mid-June 2019, just as Joe Biden began his campaign to win the Democratic nomination.
The Corona virus prompted campaigns to launch in an unconventional way, especially with outbreaks of infection during some of the events that President Trump participated in, and most of the events were transmitted for remote activities and direct video interviews.
The electoral campaign extends until the night of the poll, and among the most important stages are 3 presidential debates and one for the two vice-presidents, and will take place from September 29 and end October 15.
In the last days and weeks, the two candidates will focus their campaigns on swing states that have a great influence in determining the identity of the next president of the United States.
Fifth: Election Day is
expected to vote more than 120 million Americans on November 3, and election experts estimate that 70% of Americans can vote in the upcoming elections, and that represents a significant jump from the 40% that witnessed the 2016 elections or its equivalent With 57.2 million voters.
This, in turn, represents a significant increase in the percentage of mailed voters in the 2004 elections, which did not exceed 20% or 24.9 million voters.
The candidate who won the majority of the electoral college votes, or at least 270 votes, wins the presidency of the United States.