W. Andy Knight is Distinguished Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department, University of Alberta, and past Chair of the Department. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), he is the former Director of the Institute of International Relations (IIR), The University of the West Indies (UWI), Trinidad & Tobago, and co-founder and the former head of the Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean (DAOC).
Americans go to the polls today to elect the next US President. The mainstream US media would like us to believe that the campaign for the presidency is a horse race. Americans like horse races for some reason.
Horse race journalism is the kind of political journalism of elections that gives the impression that two candidates are running neck and neck — so close that it is almost impossible to distinguish between them. This perception is only made more enticing because pollsters in the US help to create this false narrative.
The reality, however, is something that hasn’t been captured by the polls, that is, that there are major and substantial differences between the two candidates who are running to replace Joe Biden as President of the US. Those differences haven’t been adequately captured by most of the polls leading up to the outcome. Indeed, the only poll that really counts is the poll on election day and after all the ballots are counted.
