Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris: a tough competition that will be defined by just a handful of votes

In a few days, the world will know who will govern USA for the next four years. Although the campaign has been marked by milestones and chaos, such as the change of Democratic candidacy and the assassination attempts against the Republican contender, the citizen voting intention polls have always remained close. To date, there is no favorite that prevails, and the candidates – the vice president Kamala Harris and the former president Donald Trump– continue to focus proselytizing activities in states that could define their victory.

In the current race for the White House, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, in addition to North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, are the highest “swing states”, and that is why the candidates Trump y Harris They concentrate their campaign efforts on them. But the states themselves are not a monolith either, since they have counties that stand out from others and can completely tip the balance towards the red or blue vote. The latter can end up sealing the result of the entire election, since – except in Maine and Nebraska – it is enough for a candidate to reach the majority of “electoral votes” to take the entire state.

MIRA: Harris or Trump: Who is winning in the 7 key states of the United States, according to the latest polls?

“If one really wants to follow the center of the American election in depth, one must focus their attention on how voters are leaning in specific counties in Arizona (Maricopa), Georgia (Fulton), Michigan (Wayne), Pennsylvania (Lackawanna) and Wisconsin (Brown), mainly. “We are talking about a handful of no more than 300,000 votes – with other counties in Nevada and North Carolina – that can completely change the result for the entire country.”explained David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University in Minnesota.

Schultz, who is the author of the book “Presidential Swing States”pointed to The Commerce that the last elections had almost the same picture and that this is due to a curious distribution of people with different political alignments in both territories. California, for example, is not a swing state, since it can be predicted that, at least, a large part of its 54 delegates will vote Democratic after being guided by the traditional and mostly Democratic citizen vote.

“Let’s look at what happened in 2016: If (Hillary) Clinton (who won the popular vote, but did not reach 270 delegate votes) had obtained about 90 thousand votes distributed among small counties in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, she would have become the president of the United States. Four years later, if Trump had won some 40,000 citizen votes in counties in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, he would be finishing his second presidential term today. “It is curious because we are talking about an entire presidential election held by less than 5% of voters in a group of counties.”commented the specialist.

To remember: Why “pendulum states” or “swing states”?

The American electoral system does not directly grant victory to whoever obtains the most citizen votes. This is because the popular vote is directed to representatives of the “electoral college”, an entity made up of 538 members. This number is not coincidental, but is an exact sum corresponding to the number of deputies and senators that the National Parliament has – 435 and 100, respectively – plus three additional delegates for the District of Columbia, where Washington DC is located.

Between the 50 states of the United States and the District of Columbia, these 538 delegates direct the votes received from the population towards one of the two candidates. Thus, to win the presidential election, it is enough to obtain 270 of those “electoral votes” or delegated votes: half plus one of the 538. However, there are states where the “electoral votes” generate more dispute because there is no preference clear majority for one party or another among the voting citizens. These states – where it is difficult to predict whether the competitor who will take the delegate votes is Democrat or Republican – are called “swing states” or “pendulum states.”

MIRA: Harris and Trump choose the same states for their campaign close: Pennsylvania and Michigan

The Latino vote will also mobilize the race

According to figures from the Pew Research Center, the Hispanic community represents 19% of the inhabitants of the United States. For this year, Latinos eligible to vote are more than 36 million, when just a couple of decades ago they were less than 15 million. The states with the most eligible Latino voters are California, Texas, Florida, New York and Arizona. Together, these five states comprise 22 million. However, the Latino community is not a “bloc” either socially or politically speaking.

“Latinos/Hispanics are a much more diverse demographic in the United States than some people realize. For example, the Latino or Hispanic from South Florida is usually Cuban or of Cuban roots and quite conservative. But there are also quite Republican Latinos/Hispanics in Texas and Arizona. There are issues on the electoral agenda, such as abortion, that also have an impact on the decision made by subgroups of Latinos with greater conservative or religious backgrounds.”said Professor David Schultz.

From the electoral strategy, the Latino is a vote to capture, but also a vote to divide. Unauthorized or “illegal” immigration is one of the problems on which the candidates’ speech and proposals revolve. This year, according to the Pew Research Center, there are more than 11 million people living illegally in the United States, of which 4 million are of Mexican origin.

“If everyone comes (to the United States), it should be legally,” says Jerry DuBois, a 72-year-old Republican voter and Air Force veteran who lives in the state of Wisconsin. “That’s the way it should be. If they seek to cross (the border), we must know who they are and what they have done before. I am against illegal immigration. I think we need to know their profiles before they enter the United States because we don’t need more problems than the ones we already have.”he said.

For citizens like DuBois, the US government has not adequately controlled the entry of immigrants and this has become a threat to national security due to the infiltration of people with criminal records. Latin Americans – who at some point had irregular or illegal status – share that point of view.

In Florida, Cubans and Cuban-Americans tend to vote Republican. “Many years will have to pass before I start thinking differently,” said Pedro, a Cuban citizen in Miami, Florida. Although special legislation has been in force in the United States since 1966 that allows Cuban immigrants to obtain residency, many of them, like this person, cross the US border illegally and on foot after leaving the island. “I’m going for Trump,” he responded when asked which candidate he would vote for.

Arizona is one of the most important swing states in these elections and has 11 delegate votes. Here, Trump repeated his offer to place 10,000 immigration control agents to protect the border with Mexico. In this last stretch of the campaign. The Republican candidate has also announced a plan for mass deportations and blamed illegal immigrants for putting the country at risk.

“I don’t like Trump’s policies or his aggressiveness”said Irene, a Mexican woman who worked as a maid in Phoenix, Arizona, for 19 years. “It says that Mexicans steal jobs from Americans, but that is not true. There are many jobs that Americans don’t want to do and that’s why American companies hire Mexicans or Latinos instead.he added.

Irene considers Trump’s offer to eliminate birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants who do not have papers as cruel. When asked about Mexican immigrants who support Trump’s speech, he said that “that is not surprising,” since “there is a lot of racism and classism among Mexicans, especially among those who live in the United States.”

Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants may swing the ballots in his favor. The Pew Research Center has shown that, for this year, Latino voters lean towards Trump at a higher percentage than in 2020 and 2016. Although Kamala Harris has around 56% support among Latino voters and Trump has 37% %, the current vice president has problems conquering this community much more than Biden and Clinton did in 2020 and 2016, respectively.

In general, voters’ main concern is the state of the economy. This last Friday, the Department of Employment (Department of Labor; a simile of what is known as the Ministry of Labor in other countries), updated its report on the situation of American employability. According to official information, only 12 thousand new jobs were created in October, while the unemployment rate continued to remain at 4.1%. This, taking into account the context of hurricanes Helene and Milton, and a massive strike of workers in the aerospace machinery field. In the countdown to election day, the report has become the perfect material for Trump and Republicans to sharpen their criticism of Joe Biden’s government and the candidacy of his Vice President Harris.