U.S. Election Breaking Democratic?

This post is written and prepared by John Brewin and Nils Engell. Nils is a recent graduate from Trent University and a member of the extended Brewin clan to which he has met all the necessary qualifications including having a passion for elections, including the current U.S. campaign and polls relating thereto, Welcome Nils.

Conventional wisdom and many of the polls suggest that the U.S. election is too close to call. 

Observers of elections will attest that often elections that seem close will occasionally in the last few weeks break decisively one way or the other. 

A look at the data and at history suggests this may will be one of those late-breaking elections

 

Starting with the polls.

Virtually all the polls since the debate and the weeks before that nationally and in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan show Kamala Harris ahead. The way the Electoral College is structured Harris can win the election with the aforementioned rust belt states assuming she wins the safe blue states. Nationally she regularly has a lead of between 3 and 7 % points from the higher rated polls. The same polls usually show her ahead by three or more points in the key swing states mentioned above. The gap between national and swing state support is noticeably less this year than in 2016 and 2020, if it even exists at all.

If she gets her present level of support as indicated by the polls she will win. If she “outperforms” today’s polls she will win comfortably. A reasoned case can be made that is exactly what will happen.

A Trump win is unlikely, but not impossible. We will only know the results when the votes are counted on November 5 and 6, if then. The consequences are enormous for millions of people and for the planet. Little wonder anxiety and stress are everywhere. 

As everyone can observe, the Trump camp is large, deeply committed and determined to vote. It lives in a different universe than everyone else. Their worldview is formed by a separate “news” system that will largely ignore news that undermines their favoured narrative about events and/or feeds them with made-up information about the items Trump and friends want them to believe. All of this make the MAGA adherents very hard to shake in their determination to elect Trump.

The undecided in this world are largely folks who share with varying degrees of intensity do doubts about Trump but are nots sold on Harris, maybe simply because she is a Democratic, or because she is a black, south asian woman or because their sources of information including friends, family, neighbours or work-mates bad-mouth her based on what they have heard on Fox News, talk radio or Tik-Tok,

The divisions in the United States are real and scary. So far the evidence is that a slight majority recognize this and are rejecting Trump. But MAGA, its sustainers and support systems are big enough and powerful enough to put them in a position to win. A lot of Americans really like Trump, feel that the country is in a mess (“heading the wrong direction”), that millions of illegals are flowing across the southern border bringing death, crime, destruction into the otherwise well-ordered U.S., that minorities including women, who of course aren’t a minority, have captured power in the U.S. to the country’s detriment. They are unwilling to overlook Trump’s obvious unfitness for the office of President, his criminality, his physical, emotional and mental unfitness, his racism, his misogyny, his instinct for violence, hatred, ignorance, and division. They like his complete rejection of conventional values such as the imperative for telling the truth. For many Americans these destructive negatives are positive attributes. Trump and his sustainers have turned these “virtues” into potent political weapons as have other authoritarians.

But we are witnessing a powerful pushback. Kamala Harris is “Presidential”. She is running a good campaign. And is getting a good response. The data is encouraging, more volunteers, more money, more advertising, more enthusiasm, better polling numbers. GOP colleagues steadily announce they can’t support Trump because he is not fit for office. They will vote for Harris. Trump’s public appearances and his history continue to demonstrate to the public that he is unfit to be allowed within miles of the White House. 

In the end I expect this narrow band of voters will vote on the issue of character, on what sort of person they want or don’t want in the Presidency.

Questions are yet to be answered. Will organization and history bring key demographic groups over the line? Do the polls overestimate Harris’ support and underestimate Trump’s?

The United States was born in division, its economy was based on slavery and still is, internationally and in the working conditions and quality of life of so many Americans at the bottom of the pile. The U.S. was founded by an armed revolution. A civil war killed more than 600,000, the wounds live to this day. As did the Dutch Reformed South Africans the Americans have even developed a false form of Christianity, white nationalist fundamentalism, to sustain their politics. They have created a society based on greed that preaches and institutionalizes inequality as a virtue.

As we are witnessing, the world as a whole is a dangerous place right now. It has arguably been so throughout the decades of U.S. leadership since the end of World War 2, including the years since the end of the Cold War. 

How to achieve change? That has to be the subject of another post, or a book or maybe even a prayer.

We can only hope that this year’s election will see the rejection of the worst of America, its racism, inequality and violence. And hopefully we will see the election of a government that will edge the country and the world toward peace, justice, equality and collective climate common sense and action. At this point that’s probably the best we can hope for.