WASHINGTON (EFE).— There is exactly one month until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of this leap year, the day on which the United States traditionally celebrates its presidential elections, and uncertainty reigns on the horizon.
With Kamala Harris slightly ahead of Donald Trump according to the polls, the battle will be defined in the key states.
And it is on them where both candidates have focused their efforts in recent weeks and, presumably, will do so during this month.
After passing through Georgia on Friday, one of the states affected by Hurricane Helene, yesterday Trump visited Pennsylvania, the municipality of Butler, the place where on July 13 he was wounded in the ear by a gunshot to his first attack attempt.
And Kamala Harris, who burst into the campaign by surprise on July 21, after Joe Biden’s withdrawal, went to Michigan on Friday and traveled to North Carolina on Saturday to receive information on the recovery efforts from Hurricane “Helene.” the deadliest since “Katrina” in 2005, with more than two hundred deaths in the country.
These four, along with Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin, are the key or hinge states, due to how tight their results will presumably be, since their population is not of a marked political nature as is the case in others such as California (Democratic since the 90s). or Texas (Republican since the 80s).
In electoral language they are known as the “battleground states” and it is there where the candidates fight the hardest, with in-person events, advertising and interviews with local media.
In a conversation with the media on Friday, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, stated that the party has been “on the ground since the first days of this campaign,” speaking “to all the voters in all the congressional districts that are in dispute”.
The party has “312 offices in the disputed states” and annual investment in state parties has increased by 25%.
According to political scientist David McCuan, a professor at Sonoma State University, of the 3,100 counties in the United States, “approximately 15 or 20 are the most important for the outcome of the presidential elections.”
That is why in the campaign the focus is on names like Northampton or Erie, in Pennsylvania, Maricopa in Arizona or Gwinnett and Fulton in Georgia.
“These are county-by-county elections, not even state-by-state, to get to 270 electoral votes,” McCuan notes.
And in the United States, citizens do not elect their president directly, but through the 538 members of the Electoral College, who meet on a date after the elections to vote for the president based on what the citizens choose. at the polls.
Those 538 members are distributed proportionally based on population among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and the candidate with the most votes wins all the electors, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska.
To be president, one of the candidates must obtain 270 voters.
According to the FiveThirtyEight portal, which compiles an average between the surveys, Kamala leads Trump by 48.4% to 45.9%, although in the key states the distance is much smaller.
An average of polls prepared by the New York Times gives Kamala victory in Pennsylvania (by less than one point), Nevada (1 point), Michigan (1 point) and Wisconsin (2 points). Meanwhile, Trump would win North Carolina (less than one point), Georgia (2 points) and Arizona (2 points).
For Lanae Erickson, political scientist at the Third Way think tank, the level of participation will be key in these elections.
“In 2016 a lot of people stayed home because they didn’t believe Trump could win and they weren’t really motivated by any of the candidates,” while in 2020 “Democrats came out in droves,” says David McCuan.
There Kamala Harris has the advantage, because after Biden’s abandonment she is seen by many citizens as “the agent of change” who will make them go out and vote.
For Aaron Kall, political scientist and author of the book “Debating The Donald”, this will be a month in which “campaigns will intensify their work in terms of travel, media interviews and rallies.”
“I think that the sense of urgency is finally reaching the campaigns, since there will be no more opportunities for debates,” since the former president has not accepted a second debate with the Democrat after the defeat he suffered in the first and only of their clashes.
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