Президентские выборы 2020 г.: первый этап

Abstract

The first phase of party caucuses and primaries of the 2020 presidential кcampaign, which started on February 3 this year in Iowa, is analyzed. It is indicated that the phase of party caucuses and primaries will last 4 months and will end in early June this year. After that, the parties will hold party congresses: the Democratic party in July in Milwaukee (Wisconsin), and the Republican party in August in Charlotte (North Carolina). It is noted that in the Republican party the current president D. Trump is an uncontested candidate who will be definitely nominated by the Republican party for run for U.S. President. The most interesting are caucuses and primaries in the Democratic party, which so far have put forward two main candidates – the former U.S. Vice President in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017 J. Biden and Senator from Vermont B. Sanders. From the very beginning of the presidential race the leadership of the Democratic Party embarked on the path of the maximum possible opposition to the candidacy of B. Sanders and providing of all kinds of support, including using the administrative resource, for J. Biden. The general concept of opposition to B. Sanders is that by the opening of the Democratic Party Congress in July 2020 he would not get the necessary 1991 votes of the pledged delegates needed to nominate him in the first round of кelections, and thus decide the fate of the Democratic party candidate within so called “Contractual congress”, when the main role will be played by the behind-the-scenes agreements of the party’s leadership and its main sponsors, which most likely, would approve the candidacy of J. Biden. In this scenario, the presidential race in the Democratic party would кbe very similar to the 2016 presidential campaign, when H. Clinton and B. Sanders fought for the presidency, but if during the last Presidential election a large split in the ranks of the Democrats was avoided, then during the current campaign the likelihood of a split between the center and the left, populist flank is very high with all the possible consequences for the outcome of the general presidential election on November 3, 2020.