The 2020 election will be remembered as a testament to voters’ resilience

By Karen Tumulty,

“A vote is like a rifle,” Theodore Roosevelt observed. “Its usefulness depends on the character of the user.”

While every election reveals something about America’s character at a given moment in its history, none in memory has illuminated such a striking set of contrasts, underscoring what is wrong with our deeply divided nation but also what is right with it.

At every turn, there were fresh reasons to despair that our political system may have become broken beyond repair. Before a single vote was cast, no less than the president of the United States repeatedly and shamelessly questioned the legitimacy of any outcome that did not yield a victory for himself.

And yet, in its closing days, the 2020 campaign showed that Americans are not the cynics that their political leaders sometimes seem to believe they are. The election will be remembered as a testament to their resilience and their determination to make themselves heard.

For once, no one seemed to wonder whether their vote really mattered. No one claimed there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference in the choice they were being offered.

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In many respects, it appeared that the right to vote was more fragile than it had been in modern memory — under siege by a deadly epidemic, by harassment and intimidation, by confusing changes to election rules and legal roadblocks. Republicans in particular seemed to be banking their hopes for victory on discouraging voter participation, with nearly every poll indicating they would fare better under a low-turnout scenario.

But even before Election Day, more than 100 million had already cast their ballots, sometimes standing in line for hours to do so. There were instances where people drove all day to get to the polls, and even flew across the country to vote.

As I write this early Wednesday morning, it is still not clear what their verdict will be. Democratic hopes for an early knockout blow in, say, Florida were dashed, and the contest was being fought across the map.

Early in the day, President Trump sounded bullish, as he predicted on Fox News that his victory would be bigger than his surprising win over former secretary of state Hillary Clinton four years ago.

But later, speaking at his campaign headquarters in suburban Virginia, the president acknowledged that perhaps the polls that have consistently shown him lagging behind his Democratic rival, former vice president Joe Biden, might be right.

“Losing is never easy,” Trump said. “Not for me, it’s not.”

Meanwhile, while Biden appeared to have more pathways than Trump to victory, he appeared to be keeping his eye on one battleground in particular. He spent Election Day campaigning in Pennsylvania, and told campaign volunteers in Philadelphia: “Philly’s the key! Philly is the key!”

When any president is running for a second term, the election inevitably becomes a referendum on him. That was probably more the case than usual with Trump. His approval rating has been historically low, but he enjoys an unusually intense loyalty among his most ardent supporters.

This was refracted in the differing forces that brought voters out with such intensity in 2020.

Asked what issues mattered to them most, about a third of voters overall cited the economy in preliminary exit polls, while roughly 1 in 5 named the coronavirus or racial inequality. Smaller shares named crime, which Trump had labored to elevate as an issue, and health-care policy, an issue Democrats have emphasized — and which carried them to victory in the 2018 midterm elections that returned them to a majority in the House.

But, not surprisingly, the initial exit polls suggested that the priorities of people who voted for Trump were very different from those who cast their ballots for Biden.

About 6 in 10 of the president’s supporters cited the economy as their top concern; nothing else came close. Roughly a third of Biden’s voters said racial equality is their leading priority, with slightly fewer naming the coronavirus epidemic.

The most immediate choice that will confront the next president, whoever he is, will be whether to put more emphasis on containing the virus, which is surging, or rebuilding the economy. And there, voters offered no clear guidance by which to steer: They were roughly divided.

Nor, at a time when even the act of wearing a mask is politically fraught, was there anything close to a national consensus on whether what the government has done thus far has been effective, with voters nearly evenly divided on whether the effort has gone “well” or “badly.”

What just about everyone would surely agree upon, however they voted, is that 2020 is a year that the country would love to put behind it. And by showing up at the polls, despite the obstacles, they have turned the face of America toward its future.

Read more: Andrés Martinez: Americans have seen the last four presidents as illegitimate. Here’s why. Greg Sargent: Trump just revealed his plot to steal the election. Here’s a way to stop him. Dana Milbank: Vote as if our way of life depends on it. It does. Benjamin L. Ginsberg: My party is destroying itself on the altar of Trump Greg Sargent: Whatever happens, remember this: Trump never once had majority support