This November 5, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday in France, Americans will vote to elect their President. In a climate of great tension.
More than 75 million American voters have already voted. Either by mail or in person at polling stations open for weeks in many states.
While all the polls show that the electorate is traumatized by the loss of purchasing power caused by inflation and on the other hand shocked by the uncontrolled influx of millions of undocumented immigrants, the optimism of the Republican camp , last week, gave way to some concern
Seven pivotal states
The release, in recent hours, of polls reflecting an increase in voting intentions for Kamala Harris has given morale to the Democratic camp. His bet to make the election a referendum on Donald Trump, a caricature and outrageous character certainly, but who is not the outgoing candidate, could succeed.
The two candidates appear virtually tied in the seven “pivotal” states: Arizona; North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.
The scenario of a large victory for one or the other seems implausible. Unless once again the pollsters have underestimated the population of registered people who usually do not vote, but who would make an effort this Tuesday to return Donald Trump to the White House.
Harris' popularity in question
The behavior of voters registered on the electoral lists as “republican” (in order to be able to participate in the primaries) has completely changed compared to 2020. They did not wait until the first Tuesday in November to vote. And as the Democrats did massively four years ago, they, almost in the same proportion, voted in advance.
We will only know in the coming hours if this unprecedented mobilization of Republicans will have really changed the final participation rate. Naturally, Donald Trump, who maintains his personal preference to vote on the last possible day, sees the early Republican vote as an encouraging sign of progress compared to 2020. The popularity of Kamala Harris, below the norm for Democratic candidates among men and black people, also reassures him.
An army of lawyers on war footing
The narrative of its most radical supporters, carefully maintained by “the donald” himself, is that only cheating in the vote count or the illegal voting of immigrants could deprive him of his revenge. An army of lawyers and volunteer scrutineers was deployed by both camps to immediately take legal action in the event of any apparent irregularity. Pennsylvania and its nineteen electors, the largest of the pivotal states, remains the most tense point of this confrontation.
The Democrats, who have mentioned the disaster scenario of a coup d'état by Donald Trump in the event of a close result, fear that the ex-President will proclaim his victory very early, before the counting of thousands of ballots sent by mail since weeks are completed, in order to create a state of affairs which is favorable to it.
Republicans also vote by mail
But this risk is therefore less high today, since the Republicans have also largely voted by mail.
The fact remains that in almost half of the states, it is possible to register on the electoral lists and vote the same day, even though no central federal file exists. The potential for fraud is real because only 35 states, mostly dominated by the Republican Party, require voters to show proof of identity. And Pennsylvania is not one of them.
