The American election is very uncertain: Kamala Harris is garnering slightly more voting intentions than Donald Trump nationally, but this 2024 presidential election will be played out in a handful of “Swing States”.
The American presidential election will be very close, the results are so uncertain that an expert in American electoral sociology compared in early September in Politico this 2024 presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to a “knife fight in a phone booth.” Violent terms that reflect the brutal and impetuous nature of this campaign.
According to the latest polls, Vice President Kamala Harris has around 48% of the voting intentions against 47% for her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, at the national level. Be careful, in the United States, the voting system does not give full powers to the popular vote. It is necessary to obtain the approval of the majority of the 538 electors, spread across the 50 states of the country. Generally speaking, the person who wins the election in a state wins all the seats of electors linked to this territory. This is why the candidate who obtains the most votes is not necessarily elected as President of the United States.
What are the poll results between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris?
Since Joe Biden’s withdrawal, the new Democratic candidate has enjoyed unprecedented popularity among Democrats. Polls show that she is garnering more voting intentions than Joe Biden did. The graph below compiles the largest national polls, in voting intentions, conducted on the American elections.
The American election is actually played out state by state, with each state giving candidates a share of votes through the electors at the end of the vote. It is therefore the polls identified at this scale that are relevant to having a vision of the probable results of this American presidential election.
Kamala Harris’ victory, an increasingly likely outcome
Polls vary easily from day to day, but the trend and momentum are in favor of the Democratic candidate. Here is what the polls show in each state at this point. Here is the map of Democratic and Republican vote projections, updated daily on Linternaute.com:
The United States is a very politically divided country, with states that traditionally vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, such as California or Maryland; and others that traditionally vote for Republicans, such as Montana or the Midwestern states.
But in a dozen states, the balance of power is more nuanced, voters can swing their territory either for one or the other candidate. These “Swing States” are the most targeted by presidential candidates, because the one who wins the election in the main ones generally wins the election. For now, in the 7 most important, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck. Here is the list of polls in the most important Swing States, according to 270towin’s compilationSeptember 10, 2024:
- Pennsylvania (19 electors out of 270): Harris 48% – Trump 47%
- Arizona (11 electors out of 270): Harris 46% – Trump 48%
- Michigan (15 electors out of 270): Harris 47% – Trump 45%
- North Carolina (16 electors out of 270): Harris 48% – Trump 48%
- Florida (30 electors out of 270): Harris 44% – Trump 49%
- Georgia (16 electors out of 270): Harris 47% – Trump 47%
- Michigan (15 electors out of 270): Harris 47% – Trump 47%
When is the 2024 US presidential election?
Voters are expected to go to the polls on November 5 to vote in the 2024 presidential election and choose who will be in the White House for the next 4 years. However, Americans will not directly elect the President of the United States, instead they will designate 538 electors divided according to the number of representatives each state has in Congress. It is these electors, also given a political color – between blue for Democrats and red for Republicans – who will then elect the President and his Vice President on December 17. The official inauguration of the Head of State will take place on January 20, 2025.
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Trump, an eligible presidential candidate despite the trials?
The Republican camp will be represented by Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. The millionaire discouraged or defeated the dozen or so candidates who entered the race before or during the primaries. It must be said that the former White House tenant enjoys impressive popularity among conservative voters. And his support is never weakened by his legal setbacks, or even his convictions. Donal Trump has already been convicted twice since January 2024 for defamation and financial fraud.
The presidential candidate was also convicted in April in a criminal case for falsifying campaign accounts to cover up a bribe paid to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, and in August he faces another trial for voter fraud in Georgia during the 2020 campaign. The most anticipated trial, on Donald Trump’s involvement in the January 2021 Capitol assault, was scheduled to begin on March 4, but has been postponed to a later date.
This latest trial is the only one that poses a real risk to Donald Trump’s candidacy. In the United States, no conviction or prison sentence represents a character of ineligibility in the United States, only the fact of having “taken part in an insurrection or rebellion” against the country and its institutions prevents an individual from being elected to high state office. The charges of “conspiracy against the state” and “calling for insurrection” being retained in the trial on the Capitol affair, the trial could recognize Donald Trump’s ineligibility. But in fact the chances of this happening are (very) slim.
Donald Trump’s eligibility was threatened for the primaries of three states – Colorado, Maine and Illinois – but these judgments were overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States on March 4. A choice supported by conservative and progressive judges who believe that decisions of federated states cannot influence a federal election common to all American states.
Kamala Harris, the surprise candidate with the surprise result?
Can Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump? The American billionaire’s team had as its main campaign argument Joe Biden’s age and health problems. It will be necessary to take out of the boxes the talking points against Kamala Harris: her record in California where Kamala Harris was prosecutor, position considered too lax on immigration, personality too frivolous…
Kamala Harris is determined to beat an opponent she knows well. Her personal journey is impressive and the vice president knows how to remind people of this. “I am the empirical proof of the promise of America,” she regularly explains, she the African-American from an academic background who became the first woman to be elected prosecutor of San Francisco, before becoming attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017. Her energy but also her youth could end up seducing the Democratic camp. At 59, Kamala Harris’ candidacy would send the announced duel between the two seniors Biden-Trump, both over 80, into oblivion.
And also in the news
Who are the other candidates for the 2024 US presidential election?
Aside from the candidates of the two major American parties, one man has entered the presidential race, confident of his chances. Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., nephew of former American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is running as an independent candidate. Although he had initially considered participating in the Democratic Party primaries, before ultimately giving up on this possibility in October 2023, the heir to the famous American dynasty has finally ended his campaign to officially support Donald Trump. In the event of a new victory in the presidential election, Donald Trump has also said he is ready to offer the future ex-candidate a position within his administration.
Three other candidates are in the race and are collecting a few crumbs in the voting intentions – which explains why the total between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is less than 100: Cornel West, candidate of the People’s Party, an independent political party; Chase Olivier, the candidate of the Libertarian Party; Randall Terry, candidate of the Constitution Party and Jill Stein, candidate of the Green Party. All these candidates have no chance of being elected, given the weakness of their support and their funding. But above all, American political life is entirely structured around two main parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, which offers a framework ensuring both the predominance of two clearly opposed voices and the assurance of an alternation in the long term.
How do US elections work?
The American electoral system is complex. It is based on an indirect system where citizens do not directly elect their president, but electors who then meet to choose the head of state. This “electoral college” has 538 members, corresponding to the total number of senators and representatives in Congress, as well as three electors for the District of Columbia. Each state has a certain number of electors, allocated according to the size of its population.
In presidential elections, which take place every four years, citizens vote in early November. The candidate who wins the majority of votes in a state, according to the winner-takes-all rule, wins all of the electors in that state, except for Maine and Nebraska, which distribute their electors proportionally. The candidate who receives at least 270 electors wins the election.