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The Democrats’ presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Republicans’ ditto, ex-President Donald Trump.
1 / 4Photo: AP/TT
A criminally charged candidate, a late dropout and two attempted murders.
After a unique election campaign, it’s time for the Americans to have their say: Will Donald Trump or Kamala Harris be the next president of the United States?
– Democracy itself is at stake. Regardless of who wins, the country will be divided, notes Jennifer McCoy, professor of political science at Georgia State University.
The feelings on both sides are strong to say the least. Republicans TT met accuse Vice President Kamala Harris and her boss Joe Biden of the wars in the world, the high prices that many countrymen are squatting under and for having opened the southern border to illegal immigration.
– Donald Trump really cares about America. He will secure the border and deport everyone who got here illegally. I can’t save myself until he’s president, says doctor and Trump voter Joy Slade in the wave champion state of Georgia.
Her colleague, researcher Stephanie Caulew, agrees.
– Trump is the only one who can negotiate peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. He’s a businessman, no one sets his sights on him, she interjects.
A threat?
Democratic voters have a different worldview. They paint Donald Trump as dangerous, backward, selfish and a threat to Americans’ freedoms and rights. Harris supporters say she is the one who can lift the middle class through her promises to help families with children, self-employed people and young people buying their first home.
– And I think she will try to reinstate abortion rights and do something about the housing crisis and guns in society, says health care administrator Aiyana Cottman, who campaigned and knocked on doors for Harris in Georgia during the election campaign.
Campaign workers like her — particularly in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia — have been fighting day and night for months to get people to vote.
But until the end it is super even and few observers dare to make any predictions for the outcome of the election.
Toxic spills
The election campaign has been unusual to say the least with assassination attempts against Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s dramatic defection, Harris’ unconventional path to candidacy and personal attacks on a rarely seen level.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Harris’ intelligence, claiming she is radical and dangerous. Harris has questioned Trump’s inability to take criticism, saying he only cares about himself and his personal vendetta. The plays are denied by Jennifer McCoy.
– Good leadership is essential if the United States is to be healed. The loser’s reaction determines whether the polarization worsens or even degenerates into violence, she says.
FACT Background: An unusual election campaign
The spring of 2024 was characterized by low-key primaries during which the Republican Donald Trump and the incumbent President of the United States, the Democrat Joe Biden, secured the candidacies of their parties. Instead, the focus was on the four charges brought against Trump, not least the trial in New York that led to his conviction on 34 counts of accounting violations in connection with payments to a porn actor.
In mid-July, the drama began. During an appearance in Butler, Pennsylvania, just days before the Republican convention, shots were fired at Trump, hitting him in the ear but not seriously injuring him.
Just over a week later, with his disastrous performance in a televised debate fresh in his mind, Biden announced that he is not running for re-election and is favoring his vice president, Kamala Harris. That the former senator became the presidential candidate after a digital vote within the party – without having to go through a primary election process – was widely criticized. But Harris managed to unite the Democrats and was praised for his performance in the only televised debate against Trump.
During the fall, Harris initially had an advantage in the opinion polls, but then Trump stepped in. At the moment, it is basically a dead race between the two, both in national opinion and in the decisive wave master states.
Read moreFACTS The state of opinion in the hours before the US election
Democrat Kamala Harris currently has the support of 48.7 percent of Americans and Republican Donald Trump 48.6 percent, according to the political site Real Clear Politics’ compilation of current polls.
However, the US’s complicated electoral system means that the election is decided in a few so-called wave master states. This is how the candidates’ support looks in percentage in these.
The number of electors in the swing states is in parentheses, to win the presidential election requires the support of at least 270 electors.
Pennsylvania (19): Trump: 48.5; Harris: 48.1
Georgia (16): Trump: 49.1; Harris: 47.8
North Carolina (16): Trump: 48.7; Harris: 47.5
Michigan (15): Harris: 48.3; Trump: 47.8
Arizona (11): Trump: 49.1; Harris: 46.3
Wisconsin (10): Harris: 48.6; Trump: 48.2
Nevada (6): Trump: 48.2; Harris: 47.6
Source: Real Clear Politics
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