Президентские выборы 2020 г.: две страны, два президента

Abstract

The results of the 2020 presidential elections are analyzed in the article. It is emphasized that the acute nature of the confrontation between Donald Trump and his supporters and Joseph Biden and the forces supporting him is due to the tectonic demographic shifts in American society. The United States are gradually ceasing to be a white majority society and is turning into an agglomerate of racial and ethnic minorities. According to forecasts, the colorization of America in a couple of decades will lead to the situation when the United States will become a society of a white minority. The 2020 presidential election was a form of confrontation between the Republican Party, which represents white majority America, and the Democratic Party, which represents America of color. The fateful nature of the 2020 elections is also underscored by the unusually large number of Americans who took part in the elections and constituted 67.7% of the total number of registered voters, which was a record turnout rate after the 1900 presidential elections. The election outcome was decided by a complex combination of unfavorable epidemiological and socio-economic factors. The coronavirus pandemic that hit the United States in early 2020 triggered an economic crisis comparable in depth to the Great Depression of the 1930s; mortality rates among ethnic minorities, mainly Afro-Americans, sparked riots in major American cities and key states. Taken together, all these factors played on the side of the Democrats, who managed to enlist the support of over 51% of voters, i.e. the absolute majority of Americans who took part in the elections. The 2020 presidential election has further divided American society. An important element of the split was President Trump's non-recognition of their results, which happened for the first time in the political history of the United States. Donald Trump's refusal to recognize J. Biden's victory also predetermined the attitude of his supporters to their results, which for the most part began to consider J. Biden's victory a consequence of falsification of the voting results, and J. Biden himself as an illegitimate president. In fact, after the 2020 elections the United States were divided into red states and blue states, which also predetermined the formation of a political dual power system.