I have avoided the coronavirus topic on here so far as it is pretty much everywhere and you can be much more easily informed on it elsewhere. But I decided to do a post on it now as it has led to an effect on the US Primaries that I am closely following.
Photo: Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
So as some of you may well know by now it is clearly something we haven’t really experienced before in terms of shutdowns and containments and the disease is causing a real hit on the markets and global economy. Many places in lockdowns and as precautions are being closed from pubs to nightclubs, entertainment venues, schools and a number of major events have been postponed or cancelled – which has now included the postponing of both the Louisiana and Georgia Primary elections.
The Louisiana Primary was the first to be postponed which was originally meant to take place on 4th April alongside the Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming primaries but has now instead been moved to the 20th June. The Georgia Primary was scheduled to take place on the 24th March but has been postponed until the 19th May. Biden is strongly favoured to win the most delegates in both of these primaries, it could potentially give more time for the two main candidates to campaign for a changing in forecasts, but at the same time it probably won’t be such a good idea to do that during a pandemic – also considering both candidates are in the danger range due to their ages and even if they did I don’t really see much change happening in the polls within these two states anyways. The Ohio Primary was also later postponed and soon after that multiple other postponements of other primaries followed.
So it is really quite an extraordinary thing and so far it appears, at least at first, that the Trump administration wasn’t taking it too seriously until they suddenly did which could be a little too late now, time may tell, but it is quite widely expected that the US will end up having quite a bad outbreak, which is very unfortunate. It will be interesting to see further how this will affect more of the primaries that are still scheduled in their usual slots and how it will affect campaigning. Florida for example still had its primary and the state had confirmed a number of cases, so keeping on the election, they risked a high chance of spreading it further in the state. Wyoming hasn’t postponed its primary but it has restricted to just postal/drop-off ballots instead of in-person voting as a way to prevent any spread there. Some states are moving polling stations and changing up how they work as a way to distance people more to prevent spread.
Also, for how long this lasts… could we see an effect on the presidential election itself? So far, I would doubt it, but it remains to be seen how bad it will affect the US and when they reach their peak of cases, from what I am observing at the moment is is looking like things are going to get quite bad in the US. China was able to implement herculean efforts to bring the virus, seemingly at least, under control for now, but other countries, specifically the more liberal ones now being infected will find it more difficult to implement these kinds of measures that China used as there are more boxes to tick and more liberal systems tend to be slower, one of the few downsides. In the US as well, it is up to each state to implement what they believe or deem to be necessary so it isn’t exactly a cohesive response, although the federal government is implementing more efforts to help now.
In another major move as well, the government has postponed the UK Local and Mayoral elections (including the London Mayor election) for an entire year due to the coronavirus which is actually fairly unprecedented as the Electoral Commision itself had suggested that they be postponed to only Autumn of this year. I admit it is a good move nonetheless and is important that we focus on combating the disease instead of focusing on electoral planning and then risk further and increased spreading of the virus on voting day, although I also admit I am a little disappointed as I am an election freak and I was planning to cover them on this blog, but it is what it is.
I guess you can commend the government also on postponing for so long despite being still very ahead in the latest polls (polling just over 50%) and this will give Labour ample room to catch up as well in a year’s time, also considering they will have a new leader from April.
So yeah, it is all quite significant moves towards containing or slowing the spread of coronavirus and I assume we will possibly see further postponements of primaries in the US as well and further measures implemented in the UK. So just follow government advice and use common sense. Don’t panic buy, don’t put elders or the vulnerable at risk and make sure to keep up to date.
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