Trump leads in nerve-wracking race, Harris not yet giving up in ‘Blue Wall’

While votes are still being counted, Donald Trump is expanding his lead in a number of battleground states. The Republican candidate is doing particularly well in Georgia. With 91 percent of the votes counted, Trump has a lead of 3.7 percentage points. He has already won North Carolina.

If Harris wants to win, she needs to do well in the Rust Belt: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But even in what was hoped would be a ‘Blue Wall’, she is having a hard time and Trump is in the lead.

Worse than Biden in 2020

What is certain is that Harris scores less well in many states than current President Joe Biden. The state of Virginia was one of the first distress signals for the Democratic camp in that regard. Four years ago, Joe Biden won there with a large margin of 10 percent, now it is a neck-and-neck race.

In 2020, Biden did significantly better with workers and voters in smaller towns. He did not achieve monster scores there, but he did gain a few percentage points that proved crucial to his victory.

According to initial analyses, Harris has failed to get out of the shadow of the unpopular Joe Biden. Biden’s satisfaction score stands at just 40 percent and only 28 percent of Americans think the country is moving in the right direction with the current president. By not convincingly distancing himself from the current president, Harris saddled himself with his contested legacy.

Biden’s economic policy – the most important election issue in the US – is certainly receiving criticism. Although inflation is under control and unemployment is low, many Americans say they see black snow: the high inflation of the corona years continues to bite into the family budget and unemployment among the less educated is significantly higher than among university graduates: 6.8 to 2 .3 percent.

Latinos are defecting

Yet another reason why Harris is struggling: Quite a few Latino men are defecting to the Republicans. 45 percent of Latino men voted for Trump, which is less than Harris (53 percent) but 13 percent better than four years ago. Particularly in Michigan and Pennsylvania, many Latino men appear to admire Trump’s masculine style. Apparently they don’t like a black woman as president. Trump is also doing well with young men.

Harris was unable to compensate for her poor score among men with a strong showing among female voters. Compared to Trump, Harris attracts 10 percent more women, but Biden did even better against Trump with a gap of 14 percent.

When the first results came in at the closing of the polls, things looked good for Harris. She had a considerable lead in several battleground states and the Democrats’ optimism was further fueled by exit polls that showed that preserving democracy was at least as important an issue as the economy.

These polls showed that no fewer than three-quarters of voters believe that American democracy is “threatened”. 48 percent said they were “concerned” or “anxious” about the figure of Trump. In the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, among others, voters put their concerns about democracy at the top of their priority list. One factor that was seen as an advantage for Harris: quite a few voters were apparently worried about Trump’s dark and apocalyptic rhetoric.

Trump stated several times that not only his political opponents but also a number of top people should be prosecuted or even shot. Harris has warned several times in recent weeks that a second Trump term would threaten the foundations of American democracy.

Hoping for Philadelphia

The dark atmosphere was further reinforced on election day by a number of bomb threats at election offices in the battleground state of Georgia, where it was said that mainly Democratic voters would vote. Until the last moment, local Democrats continued to call on the startled voters of these offices not to be deterred and to cast their votes anyway.

Yet Harris doesn’t seem to be giving up yet. “There is still a path to victory,” her campaign chief declared, although he admitted it was a very close race. Harris continues to hope for a breakthrough in the ‘Blue Wall’, where the results of Democratic-leaning major cities such as Detroit and Philadelphia have yet to come in. Harris says the margins will be very small, but she will pick up victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.