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Tuesday 5 November 2024 is the formal election day for the US Presidential election with Kamala Harris (Democratic Party, current US Vice President) and Donald J Trump (Republican Party, former US president) as the contenders. At the same time, 34 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives in the US Congress are also being decided. There are also 12 gubernatorial elections taking place making it a particularly critical moment in the US voting cycle and potentially momentuous for the United States and the wider world.
The two contenders offer radically different perspectives on the United States with Harris reflective of the future and a positive, hopeful message. Trump in contrast has continued a long history of listing deficiencies, conspiracies and claims of one form of grievance or another. Trump has also been the subject of a range of prosecutions, a number of which are not resolved and others resulted in convictions. The contrast between the two candidates could not be more extreme yet despite this situation, Trump at this point could easily win the election. There are also concerns with the public opinion polling by various organisations including media companies, that Trump's support may be underestimated. Only the election results will show whether this is correct or not.
The US is one of the most partisan divided countries at present with the majority of states either voting/aligning with the Republicans or the Democrats leaving a small number of 8 states being termed the 'swing states'. These are -
- Pennsylvania
- Georgia
- Nebraska District 2
- North Carolina
- Michigan
- Arizona
- Wisconsin
- Nevada
The margins in these states are paper thin. The US election system also has a number of in-built deficiencies such as: voluntary voting (almost 40 % of eligible voters do not vote in the Presidential ballot and almost 50 % of eligible voters do not vote for the ballots for seats in Congress); different voting systems used in different states and subject to local political influence; no limits campaign funding and little control on the truthfulness or accuracy of claims made; an electoral college system where for most states, the candidate with the most ballot votes (a bare majority) is given all that State's electoral college votes (a winner-takes-all-approach) even where the winning candidate may not be supported by the majority of Americans on a country wide basis. The stakes could not be higher for the US and for the rest of the World.
