By Francheska Lupo

November 2, 2020

Kanye West shocked everyone at the 2015 VMAs when he announced that he would be running for president in the 2020 elections, but many are confused about the rapper’s actual standings in the elections this year. 

     West missed the filing deadlines to put his name on the ballot for most states and his name ended up on 12 states’ presidential ballots, but this is obviously not going to get him very far. On Tuesday the 13 however, West enthusiastically took to Twitter to celebrate his supposed results in Kentucky, where it appeared he had beaten both Biden and Trump with 19% of the votes. This was quickly debunked as faulty results due to technical difficulties, unfortunately for West

His entire campaign has been extremely confusing to fans and voters alike. His party is called the “Birthday Party” and he has said almost nothing as to what he plans to do as president. His objectives are vague, like how he wants to revive prayer in the classroom, reform the police, and reduce student and household debt. He has also voiced his opposition to abortion. Although he does not wish to make it illegal, he would instead reform the orphanage system to encourage people to go to adoption as their first choice. He also said back in July that “The maximum increase would be everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars or something in that range” (Insider.com) in order to encourage giving birth instead of aborting as childbirth was “the greatest gift of life.” His first piece of campaign art hardly cleared up anything as it featured the editor of Vogue, Anna Wintour, and actress Kirsten Dunst, who expressed her confusion on Twitter. “What’s the message here? And why am I a part of it?” She tweeted.

      West’s name surprisingly made its way onto the official California ballot, not as president, but vice president on Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente’s American Independent Party run. West stated in a press release that this was not his intention and he had wanted to be president, not VP. “Californians, I ask for your vote for president and urge you to write in ‘Kanye West’” (Billboard.com), he stated in his campaign issued press release.

 It seems that his main demographic are young people around 18-25 years old and possibly people trying to syphon votes from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Experts say that the only significant impact he might have on the elections is being a spoiler candidate, taking away votes from both Donald Trump and Biden.

    West even poured about $3 million from his own pockets into the campaign, raising only $14,254.66 in contributions as of August.

  West and his fans have mostly been using the presidential election as promotion for his new freestyle track, and it seems clear that he will come nowhere close to winning the presidential election.