As the November 8 election for President of the United States nears, the presidential candidates continue to jockey for position.
According to Politico Magazine’s Bill Scher, the month of June saw the final days of primaries, which lead to Hillary Clinton (Democrat) and Jill Stein (Green Party) to be the presumptive nominees of their respective parties.
According to CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta, Republican candidate Donald Trump had secured his presidential nomination on May 26 after passing the 1,237 pledged delegates required to secure the nomination.
According to CNN’s Eli Watkins, Gary Johnson succeeded in winning his respective party’s presidential nomination at the Libertarian National Convention in late May.
Both Trump and Clinton were formally nominated for president during their party conventions held in July.
According to The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin and Alan Rappeport, before the Democratic National Convention WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails from the DNC which lead to the resignation of the DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz over an observable bias towards Clinton in the primary race against Bernie Sanders.
According to a Medium post written by Sanders, in an attempt to preserve party unity, he continued to support Clinton after initially endorsing her throughout the Democratic National Convention.
The poll results on RealClearPolitics on September 14 showed that Clinton is in first by 1.8 points when looking at the poll data spread.
Of the ten polls between August 26 through September 7, there was one tie between Clinton and Trump, one poll in which Trump lead by two points and one poll that Trump lead by one point.
The other seven polls showed Clinton having a lead anywhere from two to five percentage points.
There has been an increasing push to allow the third party candidates to participate in the general election debates, but the standing rule set by the Commission on Presidential Debates said a candidate must poll 15 percent in five national surveys. They must also be allowed on enough state ballots to have a path to the White House.
UW Oshkosh sophomore and District 16 County Board Supervisor for Winnebago County Aaron Wojciechowski said he feels that third party candidates should be allowed to participate in the debates.
“I believe 100 percent that no matter your political affiliation that all four candidates should be able to participate at least in the first general election debate,” Wojciechowski said.
According to Wojciechowski, having more than the main parties heard is a positive thing.
“I think it’s good to have more than the usual two perspectives,” Wojciechowski said.
According to RealClearPolitics polls, no third party candidate has met these standards so far, but Gary Johnson is the most likely to do so, having reached the highest in the polls of all third party candidates according to RealClearPolitics polls.
According to many of his speeches, one of Trump’s main arguments against Clinton is in relation to the email scandal that has been dragging on for over a year.
In a press conference, FBI director James B. Comey said the FBI does not recommend bringing about criminal charges in response to that incident.
Clinton targeted Trump in her convention speech in July by criticizing him for trying to “ban a religion” and his mentality that he “alone can fix this”.
“Americans don’t say ‘I alone can fix it’,” Clinton said. “We say ‘We’ll fix it together.’”
Presidential debates scheduled for September 26, October 9, and October 19 will cover many issues.
Elementary and special education major Alyssa Pionke said the campaigns have not featured constructive conversation between the two main candidates.
“No positive campaigning, just childish battering between the two,” Pionke said.
Wojciechowski said people who are unsure of who to vote for should watch the upcoming debates to see who the candidates are and what they have to offer.
“More importantly, even if you don’t want to vote for president, please go and vote for down ticket candidates such as U.S. Senate/Congress, State Senate, etc.,” Wojciechowski said. “Those are just as important and could have a larger impact on you.”