The contradiction between Republicans and Democrats has perhaps never been deeper in the United States.
The cracks not only divide towns and villages into different camps, sometimes they also cut right through families.
In the Nix family, Robert votes for Harris – while wife Erica is a Trump supporter.
Philadelphia attorney Robert Nix says he’s a Republican at heart. But he does not intend to vote for presidential candidate Donald Trump and is active in an organization with Republicans who criticize the former president. This year, Nix reluctantly casts her vote for Kamala Harris.
– A tough decision. Harris is not a candidate I’m jumping around for joy. But I vote for her because I put the country before the party question.
Voted for Biden
Nix voted for Joe Biden in 2020, even though Nix has been a Republican since the eighties. Shortly after Trump’s victory in 2016, he regretted his election. He quickly saw how society was changing
– The actions during the presidency are almost impossible to repair. It concerns the legal system and that his way of making it difficult for the press, for example.
Robert Nix’s portrait can be seen on a giant sign next to one of the main highways in Philadelphia. He is part of a campaign where Republicans vote for Harris. Friends and acquaintances have quietly let him disappear into social media.
Nobody has behaved badly says Robert Nix, but it has been very clear that Republican colleagues often see him as an apostate.
The wife sympathizes with Trump
At home, the family no longer talks about politics. Robert’s wife, hairdresser Erica, strongly sympathizes with Trump. She is critical of the labels that Democrats stick on Trump’s supporters, she says:
– We are the racists, we are the fascists. But the hate that I see, well it comes from the other side.
For Robert Nix, the problem is that the Republican Party has fundamentally changed with Donald Trump. How it will be in the future will be linked to the election results.
But even if Trump were to lose, Nix believes that Republican “fundamentalists” will influence the next elections in the United States, probably a bit into the 2030s, he believes.