the United States awaiting the results, Donald Trump in the lead against Kamala Harris

The results continued to trickle in in the United States on the night of Tuesday November 5 to Wednesday November 6, giving Donald Trump an advantage over Kamala Harris in the race for the White House, according to statistics from the American press. .

The two candidates won, according to the Associated Press agency, a series of states that were promised to them. However, the suspense remains in several “swing states”, these seven states likely to change the result of the presidential election. While Donald Trump seems the favorite in each of them, according to estimates, he has at least already won North Carolina and Georgia.

During the day, the former Republican president, convicted of criminal charges and targeted by multiple prosecutions, had mentioned “rumors” according to which voting operations in Philadelphia, in the hotly contested state of Pennsylvania, were parasitized by “massive fraud” – accusations immediately denied by the authorities.

Two Americas oppose each other

At the end of an incredible campaign, two apparently irreconcilable Americas lined up behind the two candidates, each convinced that the other camp will lead the country to disaster.

Kamala Harris painted her rival as a dictator “fascist” in power and a danger for women’s rights. She multiplied messages on highway radios to urge Americans to vote until the last minute, while her campaign team distiled optimistic information on the mobilization of young voters or voters in certain crucial areas. “We will win”, she insisted on Monday.

Donald Trump described his opponent as a weak leader and ” beast “lax in the face of illegal immigration and crime. “We will win by far”he also said on his Truth Social network.

The campaign was marked by the resounding entry into the running of Kamala Harris in July, after the withdrawal of President Joe Biden, and by two assassination attempts targeting Donald Trump.

At the historically black Howard University in Washington, thousands of people gathered Tuesday evening to listen to the Democratic candidate, who is due to speak later. Quite a different tone in the Palm Beach convention center, Florida, where Donald Trump organized his election night and where supporters wearing the essential red MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) caps gathered.

Visible tension

Across the country, the tension surrounding the vote was palpable on Tuesday: in certain polling stations transformed into fortresses, in front of the high barricades surrounding the White House or these barricaded storefronts in Washington, where the memory of the assault from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by supporters of Donald Trump, is still alive.

In two “swing states”, Georgia and Pennsylvania, dozens of false bomb threats also targeted polling stations, according to the authorities.

On Tuesday, Americans were also voting to decide whether Republicans or Democrats will control Congress and to choose certain governors. The former won two seats in the Senate previously acquired by the latter, in the state of West Virginia, which was expected, and in Ohio. These two conquests thus give the Republicans the majority of this chamber, with at least 51 seats, against 49 for the Democrats. The gap could widen further in the coming hours.

The highly polarizing issue of abortion has been the subject of several referendums across the country. In one of the most followed, in Florida, a proposal aimed at reintroducing the possibility of carrying out an abortion up to around twenty-four weeks of pregnancy, instead of the current six weeks, did not collect the necessary number of votes to take it away. This is the first failure of a direct vote on abortion in the United States since the Supreme Court overturned federal protection of the right to abortion in June 2022.