Editorial: Americans are voting today for president, when they will have to make the best of a poor choice

At 5am UK time today, midnight on the US east cost, just as this article was published, the first Americans went to the polls in a tightly fought contest to be the 47th president of the United States.

​Elections are often called historic, and any race to the White House is so in that the US is now the world’s only superpower. But this really is a contest of immense significance not just for the US but the world. It will have major ramifications for the UK and even for Northern Ireland.

The two-party system in America has rarely seemed as problematic as now. Many citizens of that country have struggled to choose between the main candidates on offer, the Democratic Party vice president Kamala Harris and the Republican Party former president Donald J Trump.

Consider the huge differences between them of temperament and policy. Mrs Harris is a far more breezy and polite personality than Mr Trump. He is outspoken, at times shockingly so. Mrs Harris is a modern American liberal, concerned with minority rights and, as someone of mixed race, accused of pushing identity politics too. He is an American isolationist, scathing about mass immigration and an unashamed advocate of drilling for energy instead of focusing on environmental concerns.

Of a Scottish mother he is far more likely to be interested in British culture and politics than Mrs Harris, who was born on the Pacific coast. But Mr Trump was a wholly unreliable ally of the UK. He can’t even be relied upon to support Nato, and seems set to betray Ukraine and embolden the west’s enemies.

He was chaotic in office and had not the slightest interest in defending British concerns for NI amidst Irish pressure post Brexit. Mrs Harris is from a wing of her party that accepts an Irish nationalist critique of Northern Ireland that helped shape our disastrous Irish Sea border. Neither candidate seems immersed in national and international affairs. It is a poor choice from an American, or indeed local, perspective.