One poll gives wings to the Harris camp, another comforts the Trump team: two days before the election, never has the outcome of a presidential duel in the United States been so unpredictable.
The whole world is waiting to know if America will open the doors of the White House for the first time to a woman, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Or if she is going to send former Republican President Donald Trump back there, at the end of a potentially eventful campaign.
More than 76 million Americans have already voted, early or by mail. On Tuesday, when the polling stations of the world’s leading power close, and the counting begins, a period of feverish waiting will begin, marked by the fear of violent protests, especially if the result is very close. According to the latest New York Times/Siena poll, this is on the way.
The opinion survey, concentrated on seven crucial states, certainly gives Kamala Harris in the lead in a majority of them (in Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin), and perfectly tied with Donald Trump in two others (Pennsylvania and Michigan), when his rival is ahead of him in Arizona.
But this closely followed poll shows that she has lost ground in the most contested state: Pennsylvania, this vast territory in the northeast which has 19 major voters out of the 270 minimum that one of the two candidates must reach for take it away.
Tiny difference
In any case, the difference is tiny. The Democratic candidate, who is campaigning in the center and who is counting on the defense of the right to abortion to mobilize women en masse, faces an opponent with an ever more extreme message.
On Saturday, a local opinion survey brought joy to the Democratic camp, showing that Kamala Harris was now ahead of Donald Trump in Iowa, a small state in the center of the country where the 78-year-old billionaire seemed assured of a comfortable victory.
As D-day approaches, the two rivals, who have spent tens of thousands of dollars, are trying to occupy the field and saturate the media space. On Saturday, Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance in New York on the comedy show “Saturday Night Live“, lending itself to an exercise in self-mockery with actress Maya Rudolph.
The vice-president, a former California prosecutor born 60 years ago to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, suddenly entered the campaign in July after the resounding withdrawal of Joe Biden, 81 years old.
“Fascist”, “beast”
On Sunday, she returns to Michigan, an industrial hub state on the shores of the Great Lakes, where she must convince a blue-collar electorate. She should still call “turning the page on a decade with Donald Trump“, New York real estate billionaire, elected president to everyone’s surprise in 2016, and who shook up American democracy as well as international relations.
Kamala Harris portrays it as “fascist“in mind”avenger“. The tireless populist tribune, on whom legal convictions and indictments seem to slip, having emerged unscathed from two assassination attempts, has moved on to open insults: he speaks of “Kamala, low IQ“and said it”stupid as his feet“He presents himself as a providential man for a United States threatened with a “Gender Depression of 1929” et “invaded“by millions of illegal immigrants”murderers“.
The voting system in the United States, a federal country, is complex. The presidency is awarded by indirect universal suffrage: Americans vote for a college of 538 electors, distributed among the 50 states, without the total votes at national level being decisive. A large majority of these states are already considered to be either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
This is why the candidates’ efforts and the suspense focus on the seven “swing states“. Donald Trump, who returns to Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia on Sunday, is already multiplying the allegations of “cheats“. In Virginia, Brandon Dent, a 22-year-old delivery driver, thinks his champion “will win hands down“but fears that”cheats” do not reverse the result. The former president has never acknowledged his defeat in November 2020. He is facing criminal charges for his role in the assault by his supporters against the Capitol, the seat of Congress in Washington, on January 6 2021.
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