After a long build-up, the USA has finally reached election day.
US election: A wild three-year campaign in three minutes – BBC News
Billions of dollars spent, dozens of candidates, two nominees, one pandemic. What started with a little-known congressman in the summer of 2017 ended as the most expensive US presidential election of all time. It featured 26 candidates for the Democratic Party nomination, the first black and Asian-American woman vice-presidential nominee, and some other historic firsts.
Now we just have to wait.
You’re waiting for election results. It’s agony. Here’s what to do. – The New York Times
All elections elicit this feeling to some degree. But the 2020 contest has raised the stakes, adding looming threats of disinformation and interference, contested results and a president who has repeatedly antagonized a deeply polarized electorate. It is an extremely stressful moment. The best description I’ve seen of our collective anxiety was from Mother Jones editor in chief Clara Jeffery: “The entire country is awaiting a biopsy result.”
For posterity, here’s the latest forecast from The Economist.
Forecasting the US 2020 elections – The Economist
Our final pre-election forecast is that Joe Biden is very likely to beat Donald Trump in the electoral college.
We’ll have to wait and see. Are you staying up?
US election 2020 guide: what time results are expected – and what to watch for – The Guardian
Just like that, things get exciting. The 7pm hour [midnight GMT] sees most polls close in the titanically important state of Florida, which counts votes quickly – except when it doesn’t. As results begin to come in, look for election wonks (here’s a Twitter list) to begin raising their eyebrows significantly at whether Trump is matching his 2016 margins in this county or that. This is when election night can really start to feel one way or the other, so, expect emotions.
I think I might stay away from the TV till it’s all over.
‘It’s not up to him’: how media outlets plan to sidestep any Trump ‘victory’ news – The Guardian
The president’s reported intention to make a premature – and potentially false – victory speech by the end of Tuesday night, with large numbers of mail-in ballots yet to be counted, has provoked intense journalistic debate. TV channels would be under pressure to air such an event on grounds that it is “news”, while aware that it amounted to dangerous misinformation that could stir violence across the nation and undermine the democratic process.
And I don’t expect social media to be any better either.
What to expect from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on election day – The New York Times
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were misused by Russians to inflame American voters with divisive messages before the 2016 presidential election. The companies have spent the past four years trying to ensure that this November isn’t a repeat. They have spent billions of dollars improving their sites’ security, policies and processes. In recent months, with fears rising that violence may break out after the election, the companies have taken numerous steps to clamp down on falsehoods and highlight accurate and verified information.
But will it be enough?
What social media companies have fixed since the 2016 election – OneZero
Over the past four years, the major social platforms have reluctantly acknowledged that they have a role to play in preventing blatant abuse and exploitation of their platform by obviously bad-faith actors, and they’ve taken real steps toward addressing that. Halting, often confusing, and in many ways unsatisfying steps, but real steps nonetheless. … But reining in the most obvious and clear-cut abuses does very little to change the overall impact of social media on political discourse.
Whoever wins, things are different now.
How Donald Trump changed the internet – The Atlantic
But even though online life has changed for the better in at least a few tangible ways, it still feels bad—and Trump has made sure of that. We know how to describe a deluge of disinformation, but generally we can’t personally stamp it out. We can recognize the absurdity of the president tweeting over and over, in all caps, from a hospital, but we can’t do anything but gesture at it with a weak “???” We expect to see politicians making gross jokes about one another now, which are usually not even funny. We’ll continue to live this way whether Trump wins or loses.
Photo Ashley L Conti
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