Elections in US: can D. Trump win against K. Harris?

Time is running out before the elections in America

On 5 November, Americans will elect a new President. The outcome of this election will be decided by voters in seven states, known as swing states, where most voters vote Republican or Democrat.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are engaged in a fierce battle in Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. These states are often called battlegrounds because they are where most rallies are being held and where most of the money is spent on advertising^[1].

The importance of individual states is linked to the peculiarities of the American electoral system, where the President is not elected by direct vote but by the Electoral College. The election winner is not the one with the most electoral votes, but at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton received three million more votes than Trump, who was the winner.

This is because of the federal constitutional structure: technically, each state votes first, and then the state electors cast their votes for the candidate who won in their state. Most Americans favor abolishing this system, but politicians are not prepared to change it^[2].

In most states, things are fairly predictable because they have a clear political orientation that has not changed for decades. New York last voted for a Republican 40 years ago, when Ronald Reagan ran for a second term; several southern states last voted for a Democrat 60 years ago, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Opinion polls show that nothing has changed dramatically this year.

But the votes of liberal or conservative states alone are insufficient for a contender to win the election. Barack Obama has won at least once in swing states; in 2016, they were overwhelmingly in favor of Trump, and in 2020, they are in favor of Biden.

But this does not mean that the people of these states are changing their political principles like a glove. Most voters in these states, as in the rest of the country, already know who they will vote for. For example, the industrial center of Wisconsin, the city of Milwaukee, and the political center of Madison vote predominantly for Democrats, while Republicans are preferred in the rural districts around them^[3].

However, in all these states, Republican and Democratic voters are roughly evenly distributed, and the election results depend on a minority of undecided voters. The unpredictability is not so much because they are plagued by uncertainty. Opinion polls show that these voters are the least interested in politics. In a popular joke, undecided voters are asked questions such as "What are the names of the presidential candidates?" and "When are the elections?"

However, ignoring them can be costly for candidates. Clinton did not visit Wisconsin during the 2016 campaign, which has been called one of the fatal mistakes of her campaign. As a result, she lost in a state where B. Obama won twice.

The road to the White House goes through Pennsylvania

In this electoral cycle, the favorite was former President Trump, the Republican candidate. He was ahead of incumbent President Biden in the polls throughout the spring, won the debates in June and survived an assassination attempt in July. For a while, it looked like his victory was in his pocket.

This led the Democrats to persuade Mr Biden to withdraw from the race and give Vice-President Harris a chance. Four months before election day, an unprecedented candidate change in the US presidential election's history changed the race's course. Harris was ahead of Trump in the polls, and the Democrats were enthusiastic^[4].

But the enthusiasm had waned by the autumn, and it became clear that the upcoming election could be the most unpredictable in decades.

Both Harris and Trump need to win in several swing states. According to the analysis, which presents data from different polls, Harris now leads Trump by 1-2% in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Trump has a lead of around 1% in Georgia and Arizona.

The polls show the same level of support in North Carolina, but in reality, they can be considered the same in all these states, as sociologists consider a 1-2% difference in one direction or the other to be a statistical error.

In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin by 20 600 votes over Trump. This time, the gap between the winner and the loser in key states could be even smaller, analysts say^[5].

The easiest and most direct path to victory for both candidates could be a win in Pennsylvania. Under the US Constitution, it is represented by 19 electors, the largest number of any of the other swing states. As a result, both Harris and Trump are holding the largest number of rallies and campaign meetings in the state, and spending the most money on television advertising there - a total of EUR 138 million. The New York Times reports.

Arabs lean towards Trump, Poles look to Harris

A new Harris campaign video, "The Unstable Threat," quotes former Trump allies—the Vice President, the Secretary of Defence, and his administration's National Security Adviser—who say he cannot be trusted on national security. The advert is being broadcast on TV channels in all seven swing states.

This is because voters across the country believe that Harris can better defend US interests on the world stage. But in the swing states, the opposite is true. According to a poll commissioned by the Global Policy Institute, 52% of those there trust Trump's foreign policy talents more than Harris^[6].

Harris' most vulnerable point on foreign policy is her support for Israel in the Gaza war. This is a source of anger and frustration among the Arabs, who are very numerous in Michigan. Harris had the opportunity to distance herself from Biden's unequivocally pro-Israeli stance, but she did not do so.

However, these differences are not expected to affect the outcome of the election: however disappointed Arabs and Muslims may be, they will not support Trump, who also supports Israel unconditionally. One of Trump's first acts as President in 2017 was to ban the entry into the US of citizens from many predominantly Muslim countries. Critics called the decree a 'Muslim ban'.

However, a recent poll showed that this year, for the first time in history, a majority of Arab voters want to vote for the Republican candidate. And the invasion of Lebanon, in which the Biden administration supports Israel, is unlikely to reverse this trend.

Harris is trying to make up for lost time: her National Security Adviser Phil Gordon recently held a Zoom meeting with representatives of the Muslim and Arab communities in the United States, trying to convince them of her determination to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Lebanon.

Harris also appeals to the Eastern European diaspora, stressing her pro-Ukrainian stance and her refusal to compromise with Russian leader Vladimir Putin - and contrasting this with Trump's neutrality. Her claim that Putin is a threat to Poland caught the attention of Polish-Americans in Pennsylvania, where the Polish diaspora of around 700,000 people has traditionally supported Republicans.

The swing states are located in different parts of the country and differ demographically, economically and climatically. These include the Midwest (Michigan, Wisconsin), with a predominantly white population and a working class that is in deep crisis following the relocation of American companies to China; and the western part of the country (Arizona, Nevada), where around 30% of the population is of Latin American origin and much of the territory is desert; and the former Confederate states in the south of the country - Georgia and North Carolina - which are home to a large number of African Americans.

However, skin colour or ethnicity is no longer directly linked to political attitudes as it used to be. Paradoxically, a majority of Spanish-speaking Americans support Trump despite his tough stance on illegal immigration. This is one of the most pressing issues for voters at the federal level and especially in the southern states. This also explains why the swing state of Arizona is leaning towards voting for Trump. It borders Mexico, and on the Mexican side of the border, part of the border is controlled by drug cartels.

Trump's tough measures have helped to reduce the number of illegal border crossings significantly. Biden has reversed most of them, which has encouraged potential migrants. As a result, under his leadership, around 8 million people have crossed the southern US border with Mexico illegally, more than three times the number of migrants during the Trump administration, when the number was around 2.4 million^[7].

As a result, Biden has started rolling back the tough measures imposed by Trump, and Harris promises to continue on this course. Last week, she traveled to Arizona, on the border with Mexico, where she promised to introduce stricter asylum rules in the United States and other measures aimed at reducing illegal migration.

However, all this has not yet convinced the voters, especially those living in the border areas.

"I followed her and President Biden. We had an open borders policy. Now we are seeing how it will end," Jim Chilton, a local farmer who accompanied Harris on her trip to the border, told the BBC.

A key county in a large country

In addition to the seven traditional swing states, the 2nd congressional district in Nebraska is particularly interesting to sociologists. It represents the votes of more than 600,000 people living in the most populous and urbanized part of Nebraska: the city of Omaha, a successful financial and economic center, and its suburbs.

Nebraska is one of only two states that do not follow the rule that all voters in the state vote for one candidate (the other is Maine, which always votes for the Democrats). Nebraska has five electoral votes; two go to the winning candidate in the state and three more to the winner in each of the three congressional districts. And while most of the state consistently votes Republican, the 2nd district is a toss-up. In 2008, its residents supported Obama; in 2020, their vote goes to Biden^[8].

That one vote could make a big difference to Harris. According to sociologists, if she wins Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, then the vote from Nebraska's 2nd district will ensure that she gets the 270 electoral votes she needs to enter the White House.

In the run-up to the election, Trump tried to reverse the existing system and return to a system where all five Nebraska votes go to one candidate. His allies traveled to the state capital for talks, and local newspapers reported that he personally phoned members of the Nebraska legislature to persuade them to change the rules. However, the initiative did not pass, and in the upcoming elections, the 2nd district will choose who to vote for.

It is important to note that sociologists can be wrong too. In 2016, Clinton was the favorite throughout the campaign, and Trump has never beaten her in the polls. On the eve of the vote, sociologists expected her to win Wisconsin with 83.5%, Michigan with 78.9% and Pennsylvania with 77%.

Moreover, as election day approaches, every unexpected event disproportionately impacts its outcome. For example, a week before the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comey indicated in a letter to Congress that the agency was launching a new investigation into Mrs Clinton's emails. Many of her supporters believe that these emails were the main reasons for her defeat.