Trending Now
South Korean president ousted, election looms
South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Friday voted unanimously to oust impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol over his decision to declare martial law in December. Supporters of Yoon who gathered near the presidential residence in Seoul reportedly cried out in disappointment as the court’s 8-0 decision was announced. Others cheered the ruling. The center-right leader is now the second South Korean president to be ousted.
Reality hits on new tariffs, but Trump says it’s ‘going very well’
Stocks have plummeted, layoffs have begun, and confusion has metastasized about the bizarre method the United States used to calculate its tariff formula. But Donald Trump says it’s “going very well."
Budget clash puts South African government on brink of collapse
The second largest party in South Africa’s coalition, the business-friendly Democratic Alliance, launched a legal challenge on Thursday to block a 0.5% VAT increase in the country’s new budget, raising concerns that the fragile government could collapse.
Israel strikes Syria to warn Turkey
As we wrote in February, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has big plans for Syria. Erdogan’s government was a crucial backer of the HTS militia, an Islamist rebel group that ousted longtime Syrian strongman Bashar Assad in December, and it now wants Turkey’s military to take over some air bases on Syrian territory in exchange for Turkish training of Syria’s new army.
Trump's tariffs & the end of globalization
Overnight, the US moved to having the world’s highest tariffs by a long margin. Here is Ian Bremmer's Quick Take on the near and long-term fallout
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
2000-election
Why a disputed US election in 2020 would be so much worse than in 2000
The 2020 US presidential election is shaping up to be the most contentious in decades. But it might also produce the most bitterly contested result in American history.
Democrats are worried about Republican-orchestrated voter suppression and the post office's capacity to deliver an expected surge of ballots by mail before election day (November 3). President Trump, meanwhile, has cast doubt on some forms of mail-in voting himself and said that foul play is the only reason he'd lose. Add concerns about foreign meddling and there will be lots of grounds for both candidates – and their supporters – to contest an unwelcome result.
If so, we'll have been here before. In 2000, as Destiny's Child was topping charts in the US and Russell Crowe was lopping off heads in ancient Rome, the outcome of the US presidential election was disputed.
A razor-thin margin between Democratic nominee Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush in the decisive state of Florida led to legal challenges. A vote recount was begun. The country was bewildered and divided. The Supreme Court then ruled to stop the recount. Five weeks after election day, Gore conceded defeat.
The episode was a traumatic one for the country, but here are five reasons why a disputed result in 2020 could be immeasurably worse.
Polarization is higher. In 2000, Democrats and Republicans were already diverging culturally and politically, but since then partisan polarization has reached record highs in a quarter century of surveys by Pew. Each party's views on key issues like immigration, guns, healthcare, or the environment are not only more monolithic internally, but they are also more distant from those of the other party. Consider that in 1994, party member views on race relations differed by just 13 points – by 2017 that figure had risen to 50 points.
As a result, party affiliation is now a better predictor than age, race, or gender of a random American's policy views. What's more, personal animosity between the parties is growing. In 2016, more than two thirds of politically engaged Americans said they felt fear and anger about members of the other party – and that was before four years of deepening divisions under Trump. No wonder Democrats and Republicans increasingly live and love separately.
The stakes are more drastic. Al Gore and George W. Bush differed deeply on just about every key issue. But neither painted the other as an existential threat to American life or called for jailing members of the other party. Today, Joe Biden is campaigning to "save our democracy" while Trump has warned that Biden would "demolish our cherished destiny" and destroy the "American Way of Life." If candidates insist that losing the election means losing America as we know it, there's little incentive for anyone to concede.
Trust is lower. Americans' trust in institutions of government and media – Congress, the presidency, news organizations — has been dwindling for years. But to take one specific example that could be relevant this fall: the percentage of Americans who trust the Supreme Court "a great deal" or "quite a lot" has fallen 7 points since 2000, to 40 percent.
Social media makes it all worse. Back when Florida's election officials were (re)counting paper ballots, tweeting was still done only by birds, and no one had heard of a "Face Book". Today, more than half of all American adults log on to Facebook every day. That's tens of millions of people scanning political news that is tailored to their "likes" on a daily basis. Left-wing users see one set of news. Right-wing users see a completely different set of stories. This "filter bubble" deepens political divides on a daily basis —and will be a dangerous source of tensions in the wake of a disputed ballot.
Lastly, we are already in hell. Unlike in 2000, the election will take place amid the biggest social and economic upheavals that America has faced in generations, as protests and increasingly violent clashes over racial justice and policing continue while the pandemic smolders its way through the country.