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.”
