2020 United States presidential election (What Awaits Us)

The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial American presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Neither the Republican ticket of incumbent President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence nor the Democratic ticket of U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren and former Housing and Development Secretary from Texas Julián Castro managed to get a majority in the Electoral College, although the Democratic ticket won the popular vote. The election was thereby thrown to the House of Representatives where Trump won reelection, while the Senate reelected Pence. They took office for a second term as the 45th President and 48th Vice President on January 20, 2021.

Historians characterize it as the most divisive election in American history. Incumbent President Trump was expected to lose the election handily due to a stagnating economy and a general sense of fatigue with the way the administration was handling the nation's affairs, however, a string of extremely narrow victories in Arizona, Wisconsin and Florida allowed him to tie Warren, even as a majority of Americans casted their ballots for the Senator.

The campaign was marred by intensified meddling at the behest of Russia. One example was the innovative use of 'deep fakes', which proved to be a very effective tool. The most prominent example of their success was a video that featured what appeared to be Senator Warren expressing her support for repealing the Second Amendment. In spite of it being debunked on multiple occasions and proven to be fabricated by a Russian hacker and published on Facebook by a Russian bot, Warren's support among independents lowered significantly and a Gallup poll conducted in February 2021 showed that 42% of Americans still believed the video was authentic.

Election Day was tainted by a series of incidents on a nationwide scale. News reports recorded endless lines of voters being denied their right to vote after 'vanishing' from voter lists, especially in minority voting areas, while rumors spread about hacked voting machines in several swing states. President Trump alleged on Twitter that the incidents were being caused by Democrats attempting to perform voter fraud, while the Warren campaign website enabled a new portal that allowed disenfranchised voters to seek advice on legal action. Then-congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines by implying that the election wasn't being held in fair circumstances and that it should be delayed.