2020 an election year like no other
Nation saw record ballots cast despite pandemic challenges
Dan Smith of Niskayuna had never really been involved in politics until this year, when volunteering for Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign became a 40-hour-aweek endeavor.
Smith, who is gay, said President Donald J. Trump reminded him of the “bullies” he had known in childhood. When the election rolled around, the 61-yearold decided he could not sit idly by. Stuck in his house during the pandemic, Smith started to devote all his time
to phone-banking for Biden. In the final weeks of the campaign, he ran phone banks every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., leaving only to perform dialysis on his 90-year-old father.
Although he was ecstatic when Biden won, “It is a little bit of a letdown, actually, now that there is no more campaign,” Smith said.
In the lives of so many Capital Region voters, the 2020 election was unlike any other. It changed how millions of people voted as well as the way candidates campaigned, and brewed polarizing races that left a nation divided.
Up and down the ticket, 2020 fomented contentious contests, most notably the nail-biter between Trump and Biden, a race that the president still hasn’t conceded. Each candidate received more votes than any other person running for president in American history, with Biden topping Trump by more than 7 million.
The president continues to allege widespread voter fraud, without evidence, and his supporters have filed lawsuits challenging the election results in swing states — suits which have one after another fallen to judicial scrutiny. In the wake of these efforts, it seems likely Trump will leave behind him a polarized nation, divided and confused even as it struggles with the deadliest pandemic in a century.
“A large majority of the Republican party will believe the sitting president is not legitimate,” said Philip Klinkner, professor of government at Hamilton College. “That’s unprecedented at least for a very long time in American politics.”
Bernie Hisgen, 69, of Colonie, said she was a Democrat until Trump’s unusual style and different ideas captured her support in 2016. She called him the best president in her lifetime and said he’s the rightful winner of this election.
“I’m just sick to my stomach over the way I feel he got cheated out of this election,” Hisgen said. “He won that election and it was taken from him.”
Albany’s Aria Winter, a Biden supporter, described Trump’s post-election efforts as “a desperation gambit, but we all can’t help but feel like there may be a tiny chance that something really bad could happen.” The 33-year-old said this year’s election was historic, and she fears it could be a “destabilizing event” that reveals previously undetected fault lines in our democratic institutions.
Amid this fallout, the 2020 election will continue into the new year: Control of the U.S. Senate hinges on two Georgia runoff elections that will conclude on Jan. 5.
The coronavirus pandemic dealt a swift, upending blow to election administration around the country and quickly altered campaign messaging. Whether to wear a mask and how one chose to vote became as much as political statement as a public health choice.
When New York became the epicenter of COVID -19 in the spring, the state postponed its presidential primary from April to June, and then cited the health risk as officials attempted to cancel it outright, angering supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. A judge ordered it reinstated.
The execution of the June primary was a taste of what was to come in November. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had issued an executive order allowing all New Yorkers to vote by absentee ballot due to the pandemic, and he sent absentee ballot applications to every registered voter. So in June, New Yorkers cast ballots by mail en masse, placing stress on a largely unprepared election system and leaving some races unresolved for weeks.
Likewise in November, five times as many New Yorkers requested mail-in ballots in the general election than they did in the presidential election four years prior, according to the Democrat and Chronicle. More Democrats voted by absentee ballot than Republicans did. New Yorkers also voted early in-person for the first time in a presidential election since the state legalized the practice in 2019.
The tsunami of mailed ballots across the country slowed counting. In swing states, the presidential race was so close that it took four days for news outlets and nonpartisan election observers to confirm Biden’s victory. In New York, many counties took weeks to finish their counts, leaving more Congressional races undecided in New York than in an any other state two weeks after Nov. 3. New York’s 22nd Congressional District — where the latest tally shows Democratic Rep, Anthony Brindisi and Republican Claudia Tenney 19 votes apart — may start the year without federal representation as a lawsuit over the results continues. For candidates, the pandemic tossed out the campaign playbook and hallmarks of retails politics — no handshaking, no county fairs to visit — and many Democrats even ditched door-knocking in favor of virtual outreach methods.
Trump, however, opted to continue his signature mass campaign rallies amid the pandemic, causing as many as 30,000 virus cases and more than 700 deaths, Stanford University researchers found. In the month before the election, Trump, first lady Melania Trump and many White House officials tested positive for the virus as well. Biden held far fewer in-person events during his campaign.
Klinkner said there’s no evidence right now as to how campaign methods during the pandemic impacted political outcomes.
A polarizing figure through out his term, Trump campaigned on a message of restoring law and order to a nation beset by civil discord over racial injustice and policing, and promised a quick return to a booming America First economy despite the pandemic. Biden hammered Trump on his handling of the virus and portrayed himself as a candidate who could work across the aisle.
Though Biden carried the day, his political coattails did not seem to help Democrats in Congress, who lost seats but maintained a majority in the chamber. And more Republican women were elected to Congress than ever before this year.
One of those women, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a North Country Republican, seized the national spotlight earlier this year defending Trump during his impeachment, and she decisively defeated her Democratic challenger in a race that broke fundraising records in the district. Stefanik used her fundraising muscle to help elect at least 35 Republican women to Congress, and she signed an amicus brief in a widely derided lawsuit challenging the presidential election results.
Incumbents U.S. Reps. Paul Tonko, D -Amsterdam, and Antonio Delgado, D -Rhinebeck, also won re-election.
At the state level, Democrats seized a supermajority in the Senate, further empowering the party ’s power in the Legislature. Republicans held near-constant control of the state Senate from 1939 to 2009, and that was followed by another period of GOP control that relied on a group of breakaway Democrats who conferenced with them.
There as well, 2020 made things interesting: The drawn-out process initially led state Senate Republicans to trumpet gains in the chamber the day after the vote.
Several weeks later, their losses became apparent.