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U.S. elections: Rough times ahead as Trump edges ahead in polls

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(Image via Gage Skidmore | Flickr)

Aggregations of usually fairly accurate voting intention polls in America, with margins of error under 3%, show former President Donald Trump edging ahead in key states, as the presidential campaign enters its final few weeks.

One of the leading poll monitors, 270 to Win, is routinely checked each morning by millions of Americans. After the retirement as a candidate of President Joe Biden last July, it recorded a surge of support for his successor, the current Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris’ candidature recouped committed Democratic Party supporters who had been wavering and added new sectors among the young and among women. But in a generally balanced register of Democratic and Republican voters, the optimistic mood and enthusiasm for the candidate did not keep going; it did not carry through beyond a small national majority for Harris, at present 2.5%.

In the American system, the national majority does not count. Candidates who win the vote in a state get all of that state’s votes in the Electoral College that chooses the president and where most states are predictably Democrat or Republican, the decision this time has come down to the seven “battleground” states where the margins are thin.

The “consensus” measure on 270 to Win says the Democrats have 226 Electoral College votes, the Republicans 219, with 91 still undecided in those seven states.

Trump was slightly behind in most of them up to the week beginning 13 October, but now leads by thin margins in six:

  • Arizona (by 1.8%);
  • Georgia (0.5%);
  • Michigan (0.5%);
  • Nevada (0.6%);
  • North Carolina (1.2%); and
  • Pennsylvania (0.1%).

Harris leads in Wisconsin by 0.3%. While the figures are small, they confirm a trend that could be spotted more than a week before and are consistent across the country. The Democrats might take heart that they have recruited many first-time voters who might not be showing up in the polls and that close polls can prove to be wrong. In a system where voting is not compulsory, they have conducted a big drive to get out the vote.

The Election is a fresh test of the Republicans’ use of disinformation on social media, with the support of allies including Elon Musk, owner of the renegade social media service X, and foreign interventionists including state agencies in Russia. The large state of Florida last month drifted into the “battleground” category, with Trump’s lead reduced to 2.8%. It is now back out of that zone, at 6%.

What happened in Florida was a natural disaster, two cyclones hitting the coast in succession. While Biden and his Federal Administration provided a large-scale aid effort, Trump and the Republican social media campaign claimed the region was being neglected or that all the aid was being given to Democrats. Did that messaging resonate with people in a vulnerable situation and alter their voting intention?

What has caused the trend, if that’s what it is, to Donald Trump? The global upsurge in inflation and interest rates, only just beginning to subside in America, has activated the phenomenon that many people feeling a squeeze will vote against the government of the day — and Harris is seen as an incumbent. That sentiment has obscured very rosy economic figures achieved by the stimulus policies put in by Joe Biden, such as strong employment and employment growth, and also popular proposals for clearly badly needed reforms, like public health insurance.

On the more skittish level of jumbled perceptions of reality being traded around on do-it-yourself mass media, the charisma of Trump as a crazy old guy who knows the game and doesn’t care what anybody thinks gets magnified in importance; he can be seen as somehow endearingly rough and stupid — a guy “like the rest of us”.

Kamala Harris, despite great personal charm and competence, is handicapped as a Black person and as a woman. American commentators will quickly concede the Democrats would not have gone for that combination if their hand had not been forced by the collapse of the intended candidature of Biden. In that analysis, the United States is “not quite ready” for somebody like Kamala Harris, if it ever will be.

It would be a great breakthrough if Harris got in, but consider some signs of this problem, where the prospect of a woman head of government has been frightening weak men. The big strong blokes in the U.S. firefighter’s union decided at the start of October not to endorse either Harris or Trump; the only other time they did not endorse a Democrat was the only other time the candidate was a woman, Hillary Clinton.

Likewise, the former African-American U.S. President, Barack Obama, has been out at rallies, imploring Black men not to drift away from their usual support of Democrats, amid signs several can’t handle the idea of it being a woman.

Donald Trump has continued to fire up his constituency, strong on conventional Republicans wanting the party to win right or wrong, hillbillies of various stripes, gangs of young men as seen in the Washington riot of 6 January 2021. He has majority support among people identified racially, as “White”, among the less educated and among men overall.

What happens if he gets his own way, beyond “revenge” attacks on his opponents in the courts and in other fields? He has demonstrated a willingness to stack the justice system his way; proposes a mass deportation of undocumented migrants; and wants a haphazard foreign policy, partly an isolationist “America first” program, partly confrontations with China, partly flirtations with authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin in Russia, in preference to America’s key allies in  Europe.

His policy towards Australia when President was a whimsical liking for it, as a “good country”, he’d been told, but otherwise mercurial and unpredictable — a worry about funding and managing security schemes like the AUKUS submarines arrangement. Australians should try and find out, or find out the hard way: Would he be a good ally? In a real crisis, would he prove a coward?

Amongst Dr Lee Duffield’s vast journalistic experience, he has served as ABC's European correspondent. He is also an esteemed academic and member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review and elected member of the University of Queensland Senate.

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