2020 United States general election (Archive)
 | This article is incomplete because it is pending further input from participants, or it is a work-in-progress by one author. Please comment on this article's talk page to share your input, comments and questions. Note: To contribute to this article, you may need to seek help from the author(s) of this page. |
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All 1998 seats to the United States Congress 1000 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turnout | 90.59% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Results by winning party by constituency for the U.S. Congress SDP SSD GRN FFA DRP FDP CCU NFP SOC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
_(cropped).jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
The 2020 United States general election was held on February 22, 2020 to elect members of the 53rd Congress of the United States. The election was called following the dissolution of the 52nd Congress elected at the 2015 general election. All 1998 seats of the Congress were up for election.
The second-term SDP-led government was able to enter a historic third-consecutive term by entering into a "Red-Green-Green" coalition with the Greens and Farmers Federation. Without the Farmers Federation, the SDP/SSD-Greens coalition would have been unable to form government as the collective coalition lost a net of 89 seats. Despite this, the SDP/SSD remained the largest parliamentary voting bloc, with a joint 783 seats between them. This was followed by the Democratic Republican Party which saw it's third consecutive election with losses, continuing a decade of losses.
The electoral system in the United States enforces compulsory voting, and uses full-preferential voting for single-member constituency seats with first-past-the-post voting to award at-Large balancing seats. The election was administered by the Federal Electoral Commission.
On election night the result was seen as an aberration as opinion polling had been unable to capture the strong increase in support for non-major parties. Polling had accurately predicted the SDP/SSD would remain the largest party, but had been unable to forecast the full scale of support gained and lost in various states. Opposition Leader Mitt Romney indicated his desire to fight to remain leader of the DRP, but within days a competitive race has emerged to decide the new leader of the DRP. Chancellor John Fetterman indicated he would attempt to form coalition with either the Free Democrats or Farmers, and was able to announce the formation of a coalition six weeks later.
Results
Coalition
Social Democratic Party (657)
Southern Social Democrats (126)
The Greens (145)
Farmers Federation (102)
Opposition (618)
Democratic Republican Party (618)
Crossbench (319)
Free Democratic Party (154)
Christian Conservative Union (137)
National Freedom Party (33)
Socialist Party (28)
| Party | Votes | % | Swing (pp) | Seats | Change (seats) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | A | T | ||||||||
| Social Democratic Union | ||||||||||
| Social Democratic Party | 73,779,189 | 31.48 | −5.26 | 424 | 233 | 657 |  105
| |||
| Southern Social Democrats | 13,939,199 | 5.95 | −0.16 | 81 | 45 | 126 | 3
| |||
| Union Total | 87,718,388 | 37.43 | −5.42 | 505 | 278 | 783 | 108
| |||
| Democratic Republican Party | 69,031,326 | 29.45 | −2.68 | 365 | 251 | 616 | 47
| |||
| Free Democratic Party | 17,899,640 | 7.64 | +2.30 | 9 | 145 | 154 |  49
| |||
| Christian Conservative Union | 17,210,894 | 7.34 | +1.55 | 51 | 86 | 137 | 31
| |||
| The Greens | 16,648,502 | 7.10 | +0.61 | 20 | 125 | 145 | 19
| |||
| Farmers Federation | 13,143,201 | 5.61 | +1.23 | 46 | 56 | 102 | 26
| |||
| Socialist Party | 6,764,540 | 2.89 | −0.13 | 1 | 27 | 28 | 3
| |||
| National Freedom Party | 5,952,839 | 2.54 | +2.54 | 2 | 31 | 33 | 33
| |||
| Turnout | 234,369,207 | 90.59 | +0.04 | – | – | – | – | |||
| Registered voters/turnout | 258,715,972 | – | – | – | – | – | – | |||
Background
Previous Election
At the 2015 United States general election, first-term Chancellor Barack Obama was able to form government for a second term by entering a coalition with the Greens. It had been apparent on election night the Social Democrats had lost their near-majority status and would need to enter formal coalition talks. Also at the 2015 election, independent MC for Manhattan West Michael Bloomberg was unseated by Cynthia Nixon who won the seat for the Greens. This constituted the first Congress since 1923, to have no non-partisan independent MCs. For the first time ever in U.S. history, two consecutive Congresses featured no independent MCs although independent candidate for Manhattan West, Donald Trump, was the closest independent candidate for a constituency seat.
Barack Obama announced a coalition with the Greens in early November, three weeks after the election.
Union Instability
Since the formation of the Southern Social Democrats in the early 1970s as a separate brand of Social Democratic candidates, the demarcation line had been strictly enforced. The line explicitly curtailed the national Social Democratic Party from attempting to coerce the affiliation of state, county or sub-branches of the Southern Social Democrats to defect and instead elect delegates and participate in the SDP ecosystem. This line was first eroded at the 1998 Conference, where a majority of delegates from Florida voted to amend the provisions required, and return the state branch of the Southern Social Democrats into the national Social Democratic Party. In 2004, efforts to draw away Texas, narrowly failed. In 2012, shortly into the Obama Chancellery, the Georgia branch of the SSD defected and in 2014, Oklahoma followed suit - though the two did so for wildly different reasons. In Georgia, an influx of urban Social Democrats, with opinions closer to the national median than the Southern median took control of the branch while in Oklahoma, the continued decline of the party saw cosmopolitan delegations outweigh conservative factions and in turn both branches were returned into the SDP proper by the 2015 general election.
At the 2015 general election, the Union was re-elected to a second term in coalition with the Greens. Then-Chancellor Barack Obama retired in 2017 and was succeeded by Obama-ally Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. McAuliffe had overseen the affiliation of the SSD-Virginia to the SDP ahead of the 2016 Social Democratic Union Convention. The continued decline of the SSD was met with strong demands from SSD MCs, hence McAuliffe who had been the subject of disapproval by SSD leadership and caucus members, was dismissed six months into his tenure. He would be succeeded by Bill Nelson (MC for Florida). Nelson was widely seen as a stand-in among the public due to his age and hence, the anticipation was that there would be a full party ballot for Union Leader in the 2018 convention. This proved inaccurate, as with no consensus candidate as an alternative, no ballot was ordered for the leadership of the party.
In 2019, the Nelson Government was dealt a serious defeat in the constituency of Zanuck at a by-election. SDP Incumbent Gaston Caperton had died of a heart attack and at the eventual by-election, the SDP experienced the largest single-seat swing for a political party since the adoption of full preferential voting. The result was seen as a wide rebuke of the collective SDP/SSD union brand and triggered calls for Nelson's resignation. At the ensuing leadership election, an upset was seen as backbencher John Fetterman, MC for Stern; was elected leader of the SDP/SSD.
Upon Fetterman's swearing-in, the Union vote experienced a fall in opinion polling to below 30%.
State of constituencies
| Marginal Government Constituencies | |||
| Webster (NH) | Donna Soucy | SDP | 50.06 |
| Homestead (FL) | Debbie Mucarsel-Powell | SDP | 50.09 |
| Garner (TX) | Julian Castro | SSD | 50.12 |
| Milwaukee (WI) | Mandela Barnes | SDP v. GRN | 50.19 |
| Marsalis (LA) | Mark R. Johnson | SSD | 50.21 |
| Marginal Opposition Constituencies | |||
| Whitney (NJ) | Kimberly Guadagno | DRP | 50.02 |
| Hialeah (FL) | Carlos Hernández | DRP | 50.03 |
| Modesto (CA) | Heath Flora | DRP | 50.06 |
| Fessenden (ME) | Catherine Conlow | DRP | 50.06 |
| Beech(KS) | Terry Bruce | DRP v. FFA | 50.09 |