I posed the same series of questions to each correspondent. An edited and condensed transcript of their answers follows.

You have just a minute to explain what this year’s election is about to someone back home. What do you say?

Chidanand Rajghatta (Times of India): This is going to be history regardless of which way the results pan out. This country is either going to elect a woman or it’s going to elect a businessman with absolutely no executive experience in politics. But it’s also a surreal election because you’re seeing a guy who has literally hijacked a political party of great vintage and legacy, and nobody has been able to stop him. And he’s been able to hijack it with a bunch of randomly constructed tweets and sentences with absolutely no policy depth at all. I find that incredible in a country where elections have always involved a very in-depth discussion of policy. Most of his speeches are short, random, off-the-cuff sentences, incomplete and often incoherent. I’m completely mystified.

Zoe Daniel (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): [It’s about] explaining anti-establishment sentiments. We’ve got this anti-politician in Donald Trump, the establishment candidate in Hillary Clinton, and also Bernie Sanders attracting support from voters who are looking for something different. [These sentiments have] something to do with [voters’] sense of lack of control, their sense that politicians do not work for them, their sense that they are cut out of political decision-making.

Matthias Kolb (Süddeutsche Zeitung): Obama tried to change the country in a remarkable way—to make it more socially just, [with] Obamacare and all these things. Now the American electorate has to decide whether they want to stick on the Obama path of more government or roll back some of the things he has done.

Joyce Karam (Al-Hayat): In both parties, there is an exhaustion with the status quo, with the familiar names. Donald Trump capitalized on a wave of anger inside the Republican Party, though we never expected it. When he first announced [his candidacy], we put the story on page eight, we buried it. It was, like, 300 words. One of my editors said this is a TV star, [he’s] clownish, this is not serious.

How do you explain Donald Trump?

Chidanand Rajghatta (Times of India): I’ve been saying that this is an outcome of the frustration many Americans feel. The New York Times [recently] had a story about white alienation, and that is a core of Trump’s support. We can also call them the American Brexit voters. This is a constituency which feels marginalized, which has seen this country become more multicultural, multiracial, [and which has lost] economic opportunities to [an immigrant] force which is hungrier than they are, willing to work harder and work at probably lower wages than they are.