Everyone wants to know whether Donald Trump will return to the White House. Yet few understand the intricacies of the electoral system that will decide if he does. This week we published a detailed analysis, not of the broad trends that might affect the vote, but of the peculiarities of this year’s race. How likely is it that a third-party candidate will tip a crucial swing state? Or that Mr Trump’s criminal trials will sway undecided voters, or fire up his supporters? Or that age will hobble either President Joe Biden or his slightly younger rival? There could be big surprises between now and November.
How to illustrate this? One idea was to show a voter receiving a surprise—in this case, a rather unpleasant one, as he fell through a hole in a voting booth. A variation on this theme was to show Mr Trump and Mr Biden standing precariously on flooring that is being cut from below. The reader is left to guess which one might suddenly take a tumble.
Nothing conjures up notions of “shock” and “act of God” better than lightning. So our design team also concocted a bolt from on high striking the presidential podium, symbolising an unfortunate event that might lay one of the candidates low. Or perhaps, since we were talking about things with huge consequences, we could show the White House sinking into a black hole? Maybe this was a bit over the top.
Since luck is involved—and one of the candidates used to run casinos—we toyed with a gambling theme. We tried showing a cascade of cards, face down so we couldn’t see how good or bad they were. Look harder, and it was possible to see Mr Trump’s profile in Republican red and Mr Biden’s in Democratic blue. The same idea could be conveyed with three cups and a ball, as in a shell game. However, shell games are usually rigged, and we didn’t want to suggest that about the election. Too many people distrust the voting machines already.
What about a rabbit, ready to be plucked from a conjurer’s hat? First we fashioned its ears out of political bumper stickers. Then we tried a drawing of a bunny emerging from a ballot box. This was adorable, but not quite right. The surprises we were talking about did not involve magic or trickery.
The race is so close that something small could change the result. So how about a butterfly bending a flagpole bearing the Stars and Stripes? Some erudite colleagues quibbled that this is not how the “butterfly effect” works, but we developed it into a cover anyway.
In the end, the image we liked best showed the two candidates setting off along a campaign trail strewn with banana skins. One of them could slip, upending the race. The first design, with regular bananas, was too quiet, so our designers made it more like pop art, evoking an album cover Andy Warhol did for the Velvet Underground. The only remaining problem was that the banana was too big. We asked the design team to do some “banana optimisation”—not an instruction they’d heard before—and the result was a very appealing cover.
Leader: Three big risks that might tip America’s presidential election
Briefing: Third-party candidates could tip America’s presidential election either way
United States: Super Trump and his mighty MAGA machine
