The Republican candidate for the White House, former President Donald Trumphas gained ground in the polls over his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the elections on November 5 are shaping up to be the tightest of the last century in the United States.
The candidacy of Harris, who replaced President Joe Biden After he threw in the towel in July, he initially aroused great enthusiasm that carried over into the polls, but Trump has managed to shatter that advantage with 16 days left until the elections.
According to the latest forecast from the FiveThiryEight portal based on the average of polls published nationally and in key states, Trump has a slight advantage over Harris and has a 52% chance of winning the November 5 elections.
Although the Democrat leads voting intentions at the national level, the Republican is more favored by the Electoral College, the system by which states award a certain number of electoral votes to the winning candidate.
Two weeks ago, the same portal’s forecast gave Harris a 58% chance of defeating Trump.
The difference between Harris and Trump
Although the Republican has gained ground in recent weeks, the situation is so tight that the chances of victory for each of the two candidates are practically equivalent to the toss of a coin.
The difference between Harris and Trump is less than two percentage points in the seven decisive states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) so a small statistical error could alter the result.
Furthermore, at the national level, the vice president is only two points ahead of the former president, a difference narrower than the margin between Biden and Trump on any of the days of the 2020 campaign.
After those elections, the Republican refused to accept his defeat and promoted the recount of votes in some key states and several lawsuits that were dismissed in court.
In 2000, the outcome of the election was up in the air until the Supreme Court gave victory to Republican George W. Busch over Democrat Al Gore in Florida, which was then a swing state.
But according to the FiveThirtyEight portal, to find an election as close as what the polls show, you have to go back to 1876, when the Republican Rutherford Hayes defeated the Democrat Samuel Tilden by a single electoral vote: 185 against 184.
Every vote counts
In such a tight scenario, every vote counts and the two candidates are redoubling their presence in the seven decisive states, where in some cases early voting has already begun with high participation.
The rhetoric and crossfire between the two has also intensified with attacks and insults.
Trump suggested this week that he would be willing to deploy the military against the United States’ “internal enemies,” in an apparent reference to his political rivals, while Harris called her rival “fascist” and “unhinged.”
The vice president has decided to raise the tone against Trump in an attempt to revitalize her campaign, which has also been joined by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and former first lady Michelle Obama to give it a new boost.
The Republican is this Sunday in Pennsylvania, where he is expected to visit a McDonald’s and from there accuse Harris of having invented that he worked for that fast food chain as a young man.
For her part, the Democratic candidate, who turns 60 today, is in Georgia before traveling to Pennsylvania, where tomorrow she will campaign with Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman opposed to Trump.
USA / EFE
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