Foreign Press Centers

  With the United States in the midst of presidential elections, there has been a global interest in how the results will in any way influence the rest of the world, but has foreign policy been anything important to address for the two parties’ campaigns?

  According to the Pew Research Center, nearly eight-in-ten registered voters (79%) consider the economy to be the top important issue for them to decide about who to vote for in the 2020 presidential elections. The economy has always been a very important subject, but what is different this year is the coronavirus pandemic with more than 230 000 deaths in the country. 

As the country continues to struggle with Covid-19, foreign policy has fallen to the bottom of the issues Americans worry about. In a survey by the Pew Research center published in August 2020, the top priorities for Trump supporters are:

_The economy (88%) 

_Violent crime (74%)

_Immigration (61%), 

_Gun policy (60%) 

_Foreign policy (57%) 

On the other hand, the largest shares of Biden supporters highly rate 

_Health care (84%) 

_The coronavirus outbreak (82%) 

A sizable majority also view racial and ethnic inequality as important to their vote (76%).

People usually care more about the policies that affect their lives the most. There is no wonder that healthcare, covid-19, crimes and economy are overhead, especially in these unprecedented times. Either way, Foreign immigrants in the US still rate high foreign policy because relevant political decisions related to that topic can affect their lives directly.

US Ambassador Charles Shapiro said during in the Foreign Press Centers program:

“Probably the one exception on foreign policy is that recent immigrant groups, of course, care about relations between the United States and their country of origin. The Indian Americans care tremendously about US-India relations and the same is true of Greek Americans, Turkish Americans, so there are groups that care way more about foreign policy, but they are a small percentage of the total voting population.”

Author: Abdelwahab Ait Tayeb.

Have you ever heard about the terms electoral battlegrounds, battleground states or swing states, and then you wondered what that means?

Before every presidential election in the united states, presidential candidates often start the elections with some states that are already in their favor. We usually hear the terms “Red States” and “Blue States”, in which “Red” stands for a majority of Republicans vote, while “Blue” stands for a majority of Democrats vote.

_New York state for example hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1984 (Blue State).

_Alabama hasn’t voted for a Democratic nominee since 1976 (Red State).

“Battleground” states or “Swing” states are the “undecided states”, the sort of states where there is uncertainty upon the result of the vote, they are called battleground because they are usually where candidates compete for their support.

How do we define a battleground state?

It is usually done through looking at the polls within the margin of error and decide which party is getting more support based on the numbers that are received, or through the historical records based on what the respective state usually votes for.

According to the Vice President of North Star Opinion Research Jon McHenry, a battleground state is any state that flipped between the parties in 2016 such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida,  and Iowa. Adding to that, any state that was decided by five points or fewer in 2016 (Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, and North Carolina)

Author: Abdelwahab Ait Tayeb.

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President Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced each other yesterday for the second and final debate at Nashville before the US elections 2020 on Tuesday, November 3rd. Unlike the first debate, the second one was far soberer and controlled.

Both candidates had their microphones muted right after they use their two minutes to respond. The advantage of this is as the moderator Kristen Welker referred to when, viewers will the chance to listen to what each candidate has to say.

First and probably the most controversial subject that NBC Kristen Welker asked was about Covid-19, and what each side would do about this global pandemic if they take over the lead of the unites states, especially since around 60,000 new coronavirus cases a day are being reported across the US, up from around 50,000 a day at the start of October, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Amid this lethal pandemic, watching the candidates accusing each other of incompetency is not going to make any progress as everyone is desperately waiting for a solution between closing down everything to avoid the spread of the virus or opening up everything so that people can put food on their table, and businesses don’t crash.

When asked about what he will do, president Trump broadly said that the mortality rate has decreased and there is a vaccine coming “soon”. The former vice president Joe Biden said that President Trump can not be trusted because in the early months of 2020, he had said that the virus will be gone by the summer and 200 000 Americans died so far because he is not competent, to which President Trump replied by saying that the way Joe Biden ran H1N1 in the Obama administration was a total disaster, and that if he was in office 700 000 would be dead.

Author: Abdelwahab Ait Tayeb.

Since the second American presidential debate of last Thursday was cancelled as President Trump refused to participate in a virtual debate which the commission on Presidential debates intended to organize as a response to the president’s positive coronavirus diagnosis this month, the final debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will take place Tomorrow Thursday 22 october 2020 in Nashville as the Commission has announced.

The debate will start at 9:00 p.m Eastern Time (2:00 am 23 October in Algeria) covering the following subjects “Fighting COVID-19, American Families, Race in America, Climate Change, National Security, and Leadership”. The American Television Journalist from NBC Kristen Welker will be the moderator of this debate. She will open 15 minutes segment with each question, in which the candidates will have two minutes to respond, and the rest of the time will be used to facilitate the discussion on each subject. Notably, The commission on presidential debates announced on Monday that both candidates will have their microphones muted in order to avoid the chaos that occurred in the first place including crosstalk and interruption. President Trump commented on when was asked by reporters “I’ll participate. I just think it’s very unfair”

Author: Abdelwahab Ait Tayeb.

The way campaign advertisements work has changed over the years, especially due to an increase in Social Media users. However, when we look back at the past campaigns of the presidential elections in the US, the content is pretty much still the same, especially when we consider the fact that those ads are always made to provoke certain emotions.

Social Media provides more tools to target audience in comparison with TV, let alone the fact that it’s also cheaper. Campaigners today make use of those tools to target a particular audience with “A call to action” messages in form of slogans to show up at the poll cites and vote for their candidate, but are those messages designed randomly?

According to “Psychology Today”, peer-reviewed research shows that conservatives are generally more sensitive to threat and danger. In August 2020, the Trump’s campaign released a video titled “Don’t let them ruin America” and exhibiting riots breaking out in the street while Biden and the Democrats calling the latter “Peaceful Protest”. This ad provokes fear and sends a clear message to the view that the radical left ideology is taking over America to hell, and that people should vote for Trump in order to save the country from falling apart.

In a similar fashion, campaigners often select music and images very carefully to invoke multiple emotions in certain demographics. Fear is not the only emotion that advertisers use to promote their cause, Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign in 1984 released an ad called “Morning America” using images that depict family and economical prosperity to provoke positive feeling which sends a message that “Everything is going well under the leadership of Ronald Reagan”, even though neither the economy nor the poll numbers that he had were as good as the ad suggested. Either way, the strategy of the campaign ad is to send a message of “Hope”.

Given that advertising has become more sophisticated over years, it’s worth noting that there are no limits to how much money one can spend on advertising to reach more people, and whether someone is running for town council or running for president, advertising is always paid for by the candidates or third groups. Neither TV nor Social Media companies provide free space for ads. As the editor-in-chief of Experience, Joanna Weiss said

“There is no state TV that provides any free space for ads. Some ads are paid for by the campaigns themselves. Some ads are paid for by third-party groups, that includes these political action committees known as super packs, they are set up to support a candidate or a cause, but they’re not run by the campaign, they’re not supposed to coordinate with the campaign, they don’t have the same fundraising restrictions as a campaign, and they pour a lot of money into advertising as well.”

Author: Abdelwahab Ait Tayeb.

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