The importance of the election can be felt on the streets of New York

Taking a walk down to Times Square at the weekend, there was a palpable tension and unease in the air, writes Holly Baxter

An early voter wears a sticker after casting a ballot at Madison Square Garden (Getty)

As coronavirus cases skyrocket across the US, we’re sitting in a relative enclave of safety in New York City (something that would have been unthinkable to say back in April or May). While lockdowns are being recommended in the rural states that thus far have resisted business closures and mask-wearing, the five boroughs of NYC continue to plug on in “phase four” – the final phase of getting back to normality.

That doesn’t mean things here are remotely normal by the standards of anything other than 2020. I still haven’t gone inside any structure that isn’t my own apartment building in over six months, with outdoor dining still de rigueur – even though, technically, indoor dining at 25 per cent capacity opened up recently. So cautious are New Yorkers about going indoors after so long outside, that businesses like the one I had brunch at on the Upper West Side of Manhattan a couple of days ago are doing a roaring trade in heated plastic “bubbles”, which line the sidewalk and zip the inhabitants into a transparent, table-sized dome.

The atmosphere was oddly charged for a Sunday afternoon during the pandemic