The US election perceived by French teenagers — Part 1
Monday 2nd November
First day at school since Emmanuel Macron announced a second national lockdown. We all sit down at a table, ready to eat our packed lunches, just as one of brings up the upcoming US election. “I hope Donald Trump loses”, one of us says. “He’s a bit of an idiot to be honest, and he doesn’t seem to be handling the coronavirus very well”.
That particular remark then sparked a few arguments — “The pandemic isn’t his fault”; “It’s a bit weird how he got elected — didn’t Clinton win the vote?”; “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wins again, Americans often seems to surprise the world with its choice of Presidents…”
France is a republic, and citizens aged 18 or over can vote for the President every 5 years (the next election is scheduled for May 2022). There are two rounds: in the first, all candidates receive votes from the public, and the two candidates with the most goes through to the second round, in which the people vote for either one. The candidate with the most votes gets elected. So, it is understandable as to why the American Electoral College is such an absurd idea to the French. “It’s not really that democratic”, one of us points out. “I mean, if half the votes don’t count then you might as well not bother”.
Another aspect of US elections that the French seem to struggle to understand is the fact that there’s basically only two parties to choose from. In France, parties are constantly changing, and new ones often emerge; in the past 20 years, 4 presidents have been elected, from 3 different parties: Chirac in 2002 from the UMP party (renamed “Les Républicains” later on), Sarkozy in 2007 from the same party, Hollande in 2012 from the Socialist Party, and Macron in 2017 from the LREM party, a party that was created only a few months before the election.
“We’ll see what happens tomorrow, I hope it goes well because America is quite an important country and whoever their President is, is a very powerful man”, we concluded just as the bell rang for afternoon lessons.
Tuesday 3rd November
Election Day in America. Only France is 6 hours ahead of New York, so we all knew that we wouldn’t know the results until the next day.
“Americans are voting today, it’s quite exciting in a way!” is how the conversation started at the table. “When will the results be in?” one said. “Probably tomorrow, because they’re 6 hours behind” I said.
Wednesday 4th November
6.00am: my alarm rings, and I get out of bed. “Oh, some results must be in by now!”. And some were. Biden was leading, and I was thinking “Just wait until the Trump votes come in and he’ll lose”.
“Hey, did you have a look at the results?” “Yeah, Trump’s behind at the moment!”. I sensed a heavy sigh of relief among my friends as I pronounced the sentence. “But I heard it might take a week or two to know the results” I said. “What?! How?! Why?!”. The French, just like many Europeans, often know the results to their elections the next morning at the earliest, and there’s usually a rather accurate Exit Poll that appears on the same night.
10.15am: Law Studies. “As we’re studying Constitutional Law this trimester, we’ll be talking about the US elections”, says the teacher. “When will we know the results, they’re taking absolute ages!” shout a couple of voices at the back of the classroom. The lesson starts with a lot of confusion: what’s an Electoral College? How does it work? What are the States for? What do they do? Why don’t they count votes at the same time? Many questions that are probably only answerable by an American. As more and more ballots are counted, Biden still retains a lead over Donald Trump.
As Donald Trump seems to be losing the election, most of us seem to be rather happy for the States, thinking it’s about time Trump get thrown out of the White House.
Donald Trump seems to be extremely unpopular among most Europeans, not only the French. But America is special, and a special country gets a special President.
