PERHAPS for more than any of the pivotal elections in recent years, people around the world are waiting with bated breath as Americans head to the polls on Tuesday.
We have become tone deaf to the apocalyptic language out of both US Democrats and Republicans since Donald Trump first exploded on the political scene in 2016, but in many ways the 2024 elections in the US appear to be truly the nation’s last chance to pull back from the precipice of democratic decay and jingoistic isolationism.
Former President Trump swept to office in 2016 on a wave of massive discontent among working class individuals, who have borne the brunt of the economic pains of globalisation in the US. Later anger over Trump’s mishandling of the COVID crisis and his erratic personality led voters to remove him from office in 2020, only to catapult him back into contention this year.
Change is on the mind of American voters, who, despite the solid US economic picture, remain unforgiving of President Biden over the post-COVID inflation spike, and unsure if Vice President Kamala Harris represents the change they yearn for. Polarisation in the US between the right and left is widening, fueled by one-sided news sites on both ends of the spectrum, but particularly inflamed by massive misinformation from rightwing sources.
Many key Republican candidates in particular have fanned these flames by embracing and propagating outright lies and conspiracy theories about immigrants, people of colour and a fictional “shadow state” within the US government that they say is ready to take away American guns and civil liberties.
But none of these candidates surpass the mendacity and corruption of former President Trump. In every public appearance of this campaign, he has fabricated lies and promoted a host of dangerous conspiracy theories, whatever it takes to get himself back in office.
Many of his own cabinet officials from his first term, as well as Republican luminaries like former Vice President Dick Cheney, have declared him dangerous and unfit for office and say they are voting for his opponent in order to save American democracy.
Trump himself has outlined plans for hounding political opponents while in office, undermining the criminal cases against him in the courts, pulling the US back from its global commitments, attacking Iran while embracing Russia, imposing high tariffs on Chinese and other foreign goods that will harm global trade and fuel inflation and deporting thousands of illegal and possibly legal immigrants without any notion of due process.
And yet the few voters left in the middle that have yet to make up their minds remain unsure. In interviews with major US media outlets, some of these individuals express displeasure with both candidates and lament Trump’s lying nature and bombastic style, but say they are still considering voting for him because they think he might be better for the economy.
In poll after poll, Americans lean towards Trump if asked about the economy or managing immigration; and towards Harris when asked about abortion or defending democracy. Men skew heavily towards Trump and women heavily towards Harris, who if elected, would be America’s first woman president.
Most Americans, however, will have little say in this election. The 235-year-old US Constitution still requires the use of an Electoral College – a relic that was meant to allow rich landowners to block the election of someone they didn’t like, but never worked out that way.
Instead, this system requires that all the electors of a state, based on population, must support the highest vote getter in that state. Consequently, this means that California, the most populous state with 54 electoral votes, must give all its votes to the highest vote-getter in the presidential election in this heavily Democratic-leaning state, such that Republican votes there count less than they would if the vote were tallied nationally.
More importantly for this election, it means that candidates are focusing all their efforts on the few “swing states” where the outcome remains unclear, in order to pass the magic number of 270 electoral votes to win. Effectively, voters in these 6 or 7 states will decide this election.
And no swing state at the moment is more pivotal than Pennsylvania. With a host of liberal-leaning states like California fairly assured for the vice president, and Wisconsin and Michigan seeming to tip in Harris’s direction, Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes will be just enough to get her over the 270 mark and into the White House.
And the opposite is true: a Trump victory in Pennsylvania seems almost certain to signal a second term for the former president, unless Harris can tip at least two other smaller states like North Carolina, Nevada or Georgia, where Trump has been polling slightly ahead in recent weeks. And within Pennsylvania, much of the vote hinges on several key Philadelphia suburban towns that could go in either direction, and whether Democratic voters within Philadelphia itself – long a Democratic stronghold – turn out in force.
Legions of lawyers on both sides stand ready to challenge the outcome, which Trump has already said he will do if he does not win. If any of these lawsuits succeed in delaying the counting, or if the close races require recounts in light of the large numbers of mail-in ballots – which seems almost certain in Pennsylvania and Georgia – we may not have a winner declared until days or weeks after Tuesday’s election.
One outcome that is certain on Tuesday is that the country will be even more divided by the results. If Trump is declared victor, fears of rapid deportation among immigrants – legal or no – across the US will swell, and the more liberal states will move quickly to try to prevent federal actions.
Harris herself is likely to strike a more unifying tone if she wins, but Trump’s almost certain rejection of the results will embolden actions by his extreme supporters like the January 6, 2021 takeover of the Congress or the attempts by rightwing militias just after the 2020 elections to kidnap and assassinate the governors of Michigan and Virginia.
These heavily armed fringe militias have become even more active in recent years and may be only one or two trigger events away from linking up into a broader movement, and former President Trump has shown he is all too willing to encourage them.
Opinion polls this weekend seem to suggest a slight movement back in Kamala Harris’s favor. The world can only hope that enough Americans value their democracy more than they fear the immigrants in their midst, as well as whatever frustrations they still hold with the Biden-Harris administration over post-COVID inflation. If they do not, then we may well watch US democracy face its greatest threat since its 1861-65 Civil War.
