US elections 2020

When Sandy Orth reads 2 Timothy 3 in the Bible, which advises good Christians to steer clear of “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, [the] boastful, proud, abusive”, the first person she is reminded of is the US president.Orth, an evangelical Christian from the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa, voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but will be voting for his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in 2020.“As a lifelong Republican I was willing to give him a chance and was hoping he would be humbled by the position, but that didn’t happen,” Orth told the Guardian.The 77-year-old could help fuel what is expected to be the largest gender gap in any presidential election in US history. White women in particular appear to be moving away from Trump, while men seem to be sticking by him.Orth’s vote will also have an outsized importance because she is in a state which Trump flipped in 2016 after it twice elected Barack Obama. It was assumed Trump would carry Iowa again this time around, but recent polls have showed a much closer race than anticipated.Trump is specifically struggling with Iowa’s women. In a CBS News/YouGov poll of 1,048 Iowa voters conducted on 6-9 October, Biden had an 11-percentage-point advantage among women compared with Trump. In a Quinnipiac University poll of 1,205 Iowa voters conducted on 1-5 October Biden had a 26-point advantage among women compared with Trump – one of the biggest differences found in any state.The president, meanwhile, has responded to the polls by both bullying and begging suburban women to support him.Nationally, CNN’s Harry Enten said Biden was up by 25 points among female voters based on an analysis last week of five live interview polls. That is the largest lead a candidate has ever had among women voters in the polling era.In Pennsylvania on 13 October, Trump asked: “Suburban women, will you please like me?” On 17 October in Michigan, he implored: “I saved your suburbs – women – suburban women, you’re supposed to love Trump.” And the next day in Nevada, Trump begged: “Suburban women, please vote for me. I’m saving your house. I’m saving your community. I’m keeping your crime way down.”These half-hearted pleas are about three years too late for voters like Becky, who lives in a suburb of Des Moines and asked for her last name not to be used because she was worried about being targeted for her opinions.It didn’t take the 63-year-old long to regret her vote for Donald Trump, who she wanted out of office within weeks of him becoming president.As a lifelong Republican I was willing to give him a chance and was hoping he would be humbled by the position, but that didn’t happen“I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, what did I do? What did we all do? What would’ve been so bad about Hillary?’” Becky said. “He’s so good with his lies. He made you believe she was hiding her emails, doing all these things she shouldn’t be doing.”At this point, Becky can’t stand the president and laughed before calling him the antichrist.“That’s how badly I feel about him,” she said. “If we don’t get him out, we’re in a load of trouble here.”Becky, who is registered independent but usually votes Democrat, is not a huge Joe Biden fan either though she likes his vice-president nominee, Kamala Harris. A yard sign tucked away in her garage out of fear it will make her family the target of harassment or violence spells out her position for this election: “Anyone but Trump.”“Five years ago, you wouldn’t be afraid to say who you support,” she said. “It didn’t mean that you could get hurt or have your family hurt, but the divisiveness that he’s created, it’s crazy.”She has seen the divisiveness in her own family, where people have stopped speaking to each other because their support, or lack of, for Trump. Though one close female relative is also changing their vote from Trump to Biden.For Orth, it didn’t take long for her to make her decision about 2020. She reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016, deciding he was narrowly preferable to his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton.But Orth was soon upset with his behavior, which she said reminded her of a school bully. “It wasn’t just one thing that happened one day, it was kind of almost from the beginning that things weren’t looking good,” Orth said.Her list of problems with the president has since grown to include his disregard for the country’s relationship with its allies and the high number of his associates who are convicted criminals.A few months ago, she and a couple of friends tried to determine one good thing the president had done for the country – she still doesn’t have an answer.Her friends who do support Trump point to his unprecedented number of conservative judicial appointments, which could have the longest and most far-reaching impacts on people’s daily lives of any of his policies. “The fact that he appoints conservative judges doesn’t give him a pass in my mind for all the negative things,” Orth said.But Trump is not the only subject of Orth’s ire – she also feels betrayed by the Republican party she has supported for decades.“I am very upset and angry at how they have enabled Donald Trump to be such a bad president,” Orth said. “I blame them for a lot of things that are happening in this country too.”That’s another frustration she will be channeling at the ballot box. Orth plans to vote for the Democratic challenger in Iowa’s Senate race – one of the most closely contested Senate elections in the country in an election year that could see the chamber flip from red to blue.The incumbent Republican senator Joni Ernst’s run for re-election in Iowa is now considered a bellwether to see if Democrats can take the Senate despite Trump’s unpopularity. In the final weeks before the election, Republicans fearful of polling in Biden’s favor are trying to master the balance between keeping Trump supporters close while reeling back in the moderates drifting away.Ernst, the first woman Iowa sent to Congress, has largely stood by Trump through his first term and is in a closely contested race. Ernst polled one percentage point ahead of her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield, in a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Wednesday. But in the month before, Ernst trailed Greenfield in every poll.As Ernst’s predicament shows, no matter the result of the presidential election, Trump’s unpopularity presents a bigger question for the future of the Republican party.Biotech consultant Leslie Dow usually votes Republican and travels in conservative circles but she is so frustrated with the party for enabling Trump that she is also now the Democratic precinct chair in LeClaire, a small town on the Mississippi River.I want solutions that have a chance of doing somethingDow, 63, has always been engaged with specific issues, as a teenager fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, which would change the US constitution to ban discrimination on the basis of sex, and in support of Planned Parenthood. But it was the sexist treatment of Clinton in the 2016 election which galvanized her participation in electoral politics.“I don’t think I ever felt so alone as when I watched her go through that stuff,” Dow said. “I lost friends over it because they thought I was just being silly.”She doesn’t plan on sticking with the party, but is proud to support Biden.“I want solutions that have a chance of doing something,” Dow said. “And I feel like Biden has those because he’s a moderate and I am a moderate.”If the Democrats take the presidency and the Senate, Dow may remain involved with local party politics in the hopes of moderating some of their more liberal positions, but ultimately she hopes to be a part of rebuilding the Republican party.“I don’t think that’s the Republican party any more,” Dow said. “It’s the party of Trump.” More

Trump tried to show he’s learned a few thingsIn the days leading up to the debate, Donald Trump’s advisers urged the president to stay calmer than he was at the first presidential debate in Cleveland last month, when he was widely criticized for repeatedly and aggressively interrupting his Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden.The president, who trails his rival in national polls, accomplished that, though it was a low bar. He interrupted the former vice-president less and he didn’t feud with the moderator, the NBC journalist Kristen Welker, as much. He even followed the debate rules of letting Biden talk when it was Biden’s turn – for the most part.Much of the credit for that control went to Welker herself. Trump, who has been attempting to appeal to female voters who have been turning away from his campaign, praised Welker’s moderation (saying “thank you” and “I appreciate that”) despite spending the days leading up to the debate disparaging her.Trump also wanted to appeal to voters by applying his own experience contracting Covid-19 after the first debate, but with mixed results. He said he “learned a lot” about the disease when he contracted it, said – without evidence and contrary to the statements of public health experts – that a vaccine should be available in the coming weeks.“I take full responsibility. It’s not my fault that it came here, it’s China’s fault,” Trump said. More than 220,000 people have died in the US during the pandemic, and more than 8 million people have been affected – far more than any other country in the world.Foreign policy dominated the debateWhen Welker announced the debate topics, both Biden and Trump wanted to weigh in on foreign policy. But that’s where the common ground ended. Trump wanted to highlight unverified reports that Biden’s son Hunter was using his father’s influence to benefit himself and the Biden family. Biden was eager to talk about a secret bank account the president has kept in China.The attacks at moments mirrored each other.“You were getting a lot of money from Russia. They were paying you a lot of money and they probably still are,” Trump said at one point, without evidence.“What are you hiding? Why are you hiding?” Biden said at another point. “The foreign countries are paying you a lot.”Biden also wanted to frame Trump as a crony of strongmen dictators such as the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.BidencareFor most of the 2020 presidential campaign Biden has portrayed himself as a defender of his former boss’s signature legislation – Obamacare. But during Thursday night’s debate that changed. Biden advocated Obamacare “with a public option” – offering an expansion of existing public programs. “Call it ‘Bidencare’,” he said.Trump meanwhile refrained from offering what his own healthcare replacement plan would be, simply repeating that “Obamacare is no good”. Trump’s main argument on healthcare was to suggest – without evidence – that any alternative to gutting Obamacare, including anything Biden proposed, would “destroy” Medicare and social security, two wildly popular programs.Biden accuses Trump of fueling racismThe most heated exchanges of the night came when Welker steered the discussion toward racism in the US, which has become a key voting issue following the police killing of George Floyd, which sparked mass protests over the summer.Trump, as he often does, claimed that his record on race relations tops almost any other politician’s in American history, except for Abraham Lincoln. He ticked off his favorite points on how the Trump administration passed a criminal justice reform bill, increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and how African American unemployment had dipped under his leadership.But he said all of that in response to a question from Welker on racism in America, without directly answering the question. He also conspicuously never used the phrase “institutional racism” or pulled back from his previous criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.He was eager to attack Biden on the former vice-president’s support for a crime bill from two decades ago.Biden meanwhile went on the attack, mocking Trump by sarcastically calling him “Abraham Lincoln” before saying he’s “one of the most racist presidents in American history. He pours fuel on every single racist fire.”Family separationsTrump was most defensive when Welker asked both candidates about recent reports on family separations of undocumented immigrants. Specifically, Welker asked the candidates about more than 500 children who had been separated from their parents as part of the Trump administration’s push to deter immigration along the southern border. The United States has been unable to reunite those children with their parents.Trump didn’t offer a direct answer. Instead he claimed – wrongly – that many of the children were illegally brought into the country through cartels. He also said the Obama-Biden administration was to blame.“They built cages. They used to say I built the cages,” Trump said. He went on to say “we’re trying very hard” to reunite the children with their parents.Biden, on the other hand, called the practice “criminal” and said “they separated them at the border to make it a disincentive to come to begin with”.The former vice-president added: “It makes us a laughing stock and violates every notion of who we are as a nation.”Moving the dial?Trump’s response to the pandemic and its economic fallout has seen his poll numbers drop, and the president needed to reset his appeal with the coalition of supporters who propelled him to the White House in 2016. But, despite his slightly calmer demeanor, it’s unclear whether he achieved that.Biden was perceived as the winner of the final debate, according to a quick CNN poll of debate viewers and a panel of undecided North Carolina voters. More

As the two US presidential candidates left the stage in Tennessee after the final debate of the campaign, Jonathan Freedland and Richard Wolffe talk through the biggest moments of the night

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Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off for the final time before the US presidential election, in a debate where the mute button was very much the deciding factor. The stage was set in Nashville, Tennessee, and many wondered, hoped, and maybe prayed that we would see a kinder, more civilised approach to debating in comparison with the chaos-fest many of us endured first time around three weeks ago … but did we get it? With Jonathan Freedland to talk through it all, once again, is fellow Guardian columnist from across the Atlantic, Richard Wolffe. Let us know what you think of the podcast. Send your feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More