Election Day

Today's election day in the United States. Here's a little key election vocabulary in context.

This year's elections are known as mid-term elections, because they come in the middle of a president's four-year term of office. Mid-term elections are important in the United States because the entire House of Representatives is up for election, along with one third of the Senate. (One third of the Senate, which totals 100 senators, is up for election every two years, and the entire House every two years.) In off-years (that is, odd numbered years), there is lower voter turn-out, because no federal offices are on the ballot.

People are already talking about the next presidential elections. Some are expecting Hillary Clinton to run for president, and if she gets the nomination, she'll be the first woman presidential candidate from one of the two major parties (the Democrats and the Republicans, also known as the G.O.P., or Grand Old Party). Politicians will probably start to announce their candidacies some time next year. Then it's the long process of campaigning to be their party's nominee until the caucuses and primaries. Different states choose their presidential candidates (and their running mates) in different ways, some through meetings known as caucuses to choose their delegates to the national conventions, others use primaries, preliminary elections).

After the conventions, it's back to the campaign trail. There will be televised debates between the presidential, and sometimes the vice presidential, candidates. There will be ad campaigns, with the parties trying to lay out their platform for the voters to understand. There will also be lots of mud-slinging, a type of negative campaigning focusing on the (real or imagined) negative aspects of the opponent. There will be spin, as the candidates' staffs try to manipulate events and opinion in favor [BrEng favour] of their candidate, especially in communications with the media. The challenger attacks the incumbent saying its time for a change, and the incumbent talks about how much experience and committment he or she will bring to their new term of office.

And most of all, there will be polls, endless polls. With pollsters asking prospective voters the same questions time and time again: "Are you going to vote?", "What issues are more important for you?", "Who are you planning to vote for", and so on and so forth, ad nauseum.

As an expatriate, fortunately I get to miss most of the election madness. The best part is that I can still vote. The board of records and elections sends me an absentee ballot and I just have to return it by election day. I like to put it in the mail on election day so that I can feel part of the process.