Every fourth year, there is a presidential election to determine whether the current president continues their presidency, or if they have already been in office for eight years, to find their replacement. There are two main political parties, which often have different types of beliefs. They are the Democrats and the Republicans. 

The current president, Donald Trump, belongs to the Republican party. Since he has only had a four-year term, he is eligible to run for another four years. Therefore, the Republican party is endorsing solely him as their primary candidate to put forward in the presidential election. 

The national convention, the time that each party selects one final candidate for the presidential election, is ultimately going to be skipped for the Republicans, and they are going to put forward Donald Trump in hopes for his reelection. 

On the other hand, however, the Democratic party has had a long and full race for the national convention spot. Starting with a large pool of candidates, the first Democratic debate consisted of 20 candidates that participated in the debate. The results after the debates had California senator Kamala Harris dropping out of the race and Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren, as the one who did the best by general consensus (vox.com). 

The next few Democratic debates were mainly uneventful, with the same couple of candidates staying near the top. The most popular candidates for the beginning debates were Elizabeth Warren and technology entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who dropped out on February 11. However, there was a high count of candidates dropping out, with thirteen candidates less by the end of 2019. An anonymous student at YLHS (10) says that the Democrats’ time is closing in fast to see who they would put forward as their final candidate.

When things began intensifying after the ninth debate, there were seven candidates left. Thomas Styer, an activist, and Amy Klobuchar, a lawyer, were the two with the worst rating at the end of the eleventh debate, with zero delegates in favor of Steyer and seven delegates for Klobuchar. The next lowest rated candidate at the end of the eleventh debate was Pete Buttigieg, a mayor from Indiana who was also the first openly gay candidate running in the presidential race. Above him was Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of New York who was known as the billionaire candidate. The final person to drop out after the eleventh debate was Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachutes who pulled 71 delegates, which wasn’t enough to qualify for the next debate (ncsl.org). 

The two people left in the debates for the Democrats are former vice president, Joe Biden, who ran twice in the past and was unsuccessful, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who supports social Democratic policies. They have both been continuing their debates currently, as well as their campaigns becoming stronger and more public as time gets closer and closer to the presidential race. Currently, Joe Biden is winning in the Democratic Party by around 300 votes, and there are still a couple states left for their primaries to see who will go against President Trump in the 2020 election.