2084 US Presidential Election

The 2084 Presidential Election was the 73rd such election in U.S. History. It came at a time when the Second Rennaisance was slowing in the United States, although it remained steady in Europe and Northern Africa. The Incumbent President, Abigail Richards, had been elected President by the House of Representatives in the 2080 election, no candidate having received a majority of votes, and her reputation had suffered for it. This, coupled with Richards' uninspiring and at timed mediocre leadership, made her a prime candidate for the Democratic and Independent nominees.

Of the major issues in the election, galactic expansion played a central role, with liberals favoring more developement of the galactic colonies and conservatives promoting more earth-based progress. Another major issue was the international copywrite, which had been repealed by the International Senate in 2081, leaving the United States as one of three western nations to maintain copywrite laws. The Democratic and Libertarian parties both favored maintaining the copywrite, although Democrats favored relaxing it on non-fiction work, while Libertarians favored strengthening provisions in all areas to prevent international piracy.

Libertarian Party
Incumbent President Abigail Richards announced she would seek a second term in early 2083 and, despite her low approval rates, she was not challenged in the primaries. In an effort to attract the Chinese-American demographic, which was quickly growing and threatening to surpass Latinos as the major demographic of the United States, the party replaced the sitting Vice Preisident with Amy Chan, a Congresswoman from California.

Democratic Party
Aiming to capitalize on Richards' weaknesses, the Democratic party nominated former Secretary of State Marco Juarez for President early on in the primary. Juarez was virtually unchallenged during the primary, and at the National Convention nominated Johannas R. Casey of New Mexico as his running mate. Juarez had been the first Latino American to be appointed ambassador to the International Senate in 2063, and had served in the administration of Clara Caal from 1968 to 1972. He was immediately endorsed by the high brass of the Democratic Party, including Caal and former Vice President Phillip Schuller, as well as leaders from other parties, such as Matthew Henry (L-TX) and Amanda Karmeichal, who had run fro President and an Independent in 2080.

Juarez' platform was based on his plan to revive the sagging Second Rennaisance by funding science and technology research and astly expanding federal support of the arts and humanities. This stance earned him much support from the professional class and younger demographics, as well as entrepenuers (who were generally Libertarian).

Independence Party
The Independence party nominated George Hernandez for President and Melissa diAngello for Vice President. Their platform revolved around returning America to its Revolutionary roots and throwing off galactic imperialism.

American Party
The American Party nominated Frederick Cho for President and Harry Dean for Vice President. Cho had run as the American Party candidate in 2072, 2076, and 2080, and had been the Conservative nominee for Vice President in 2064.

Independents
Energized by the sucess of their first online convention in 2080, Indepents held another online convention on March 18th, 2084. On the third vote, Alicia Springs was selected as their Presidential candidate. Springs accepted the nomination via Livefeed the next day and selected David Xi as her running mate.

Despite the expectance by several pundits for Springs to play a large role in the election, the Independent candidate did not rise to the levels of renown as Amanda Karmeichal had in the previous election, and received significantly less support.

General Election
As the General Election began, Juarez unleashed a storm of attack adds against Richards, attacking her leadership record as the reason for the decline of economic developement. Richards' campaign was slow to counter these charges, and as a result Juarez was able to effectively lower her reputation in the eyes of the public. In the first debate, Richards sank even lower, as she failed to counter attacks from Juarez that her policies were causing the lapse in entrepenuership and provided no second-term agenda. Following the debate, Richards made a series of statements against Juarez that were interpreted by the media as rascist and ignorant, doing greater damage to her campaign.

Meanwhile, Juarez' Roadmap for America became encreasingly popular, as Juarez met with economic experts and entrepenuers to add to his plan. By the second debate, Richards was trailing the Democrat 41% to 56%, with Springs far behind with only 3% of the electorate. As the campaign went on, Richards failed to do anything to turn the tide despite dozens of attack adds branding Juarez as a Washington Crony and friend of the SSR. By the third debate, Richards was concidered so irrelevant by the media that when she was talking, the camera frequently flitted back to Juarez' face, who won the debate decisively.

Results
Juarez won the election by a historic margin, becoming the third Latino to occupy the White House and the first President from the state of North Mexico. He was innaugurated on January 20th, 2085.

The Independence Party received a total of 42 votes nationwide and is not included on this graph.