How does this effect [sic] me?
For most countries, America meddles with your affairs far more than you do ours. The executive branch is our most powerful branch of government, and it's more or less just the president's personal fiefdom. So the newly-elected President of the United States can, for all practical purposes, direct our:
- foreign policy: which countries we see as allies or enemies
- trade policy: whether we impose tariffs on your country or encourage you to join an economic sanction bloc with us
- fiscal and monetary policy (to some extent): American economic failures can trigger global recessions or depressions, and often do
- defense policy: i.e., how securely NATO works as a defensive alliance (can Estonia expect American support in the event of invasion?)
- military operations: the President is able to unilaterally and clandestinely direct operations like American drone strikes, the bin Laden raid, and the Soleimani assassination- these may have foreign policy repercussions for you, or even domestic ones (American foreign meddling can send refugees or otherwise affect the stability of your home country)
Why isn' talked more about the parallel parliament election that seems to be more important?
First, the legislature is less powerful than the President. Second, the two branches of the legislature (our lower house- the House of Representatives- apportioned by population, and our upper house- the Senate- apportioned by state) have to work in tandem to pass legislation. If the legislature is split, then it has less impact: the Senate independently confirms or blocks presidential appointments, the House independently handles the national budget, and they only pass some no-brainer legislation (e.g., COVID relief).
This is most likely a big difference from how the legislature works in your country, since in most European countries the lower house holds more power.
In this election, we can more or less expect the Democrats to retain control of the House since they are nationally far more popular at this time. The part of the legislature that
may matter is the Senate, which can go either way. But since the Republicans have nearly no chance of controlling the full legislature (both houses), the Senate race only really matters if Biden wins- in which chase the Democrats can win the Senate to gain full control of both the executive and the legislature. A federal trifecta (POTUS + Senate + House) is far more powerful than a split government: if you live in a parliamentary democracy, this would be akin to a single party gaining an outright majority (and not needing a coalition to govern). It would result in one party having near-unilateral control of American government, although defections on individual votes are more common in the US than in your country since party whips have less power here.
Finally, if you want to follow live updates on the election for some reason, FiveThirtyEight is running a highly politically- and statistically-literate live blog:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2020-election-results-coverage/
Edited 11/3/2020 18:39:57
