The gate is closed, the Butler Agricultural Fair is deserted, and the excitement has died down. It is here, in this town in Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh, where history almost changed on July 13, when a young man tried to assassinate Donald Trump in the middle of a meeting; The bullet grazed his ear. The scene, immortalized by cameras, made history, with a furious president shouting at his followers. “Fight, fight, fight!” » (“struggle!”). That day, everyone believed that the campaign for the presidential elections on Tuesday, November 5, had ended, with this twist of fate, attributed to God by some supporters of Donald Trump in the face of an aging Joe Biden. Then, the Democratic president had to throw in the towel on July 21, making way for his vice president, Kamala Harris, and relaunching the race for the White House.
Long before July 13, Pennsylvania was the heart of the electoral battleground. According to the saying, “Whoever wins Pennsylvania will win the US elections”. This was the case in 2016, when Republican Trump won this state (which is part of the Rust Belt, due to significant deindustrialization) and its top 20 voters with a lead of 44,000 votes over some 7 million voters. It was again in 2020, when Democrat Biden, a native of the state, was declared the winner, after several days of counting votes and 81,000 more votes than his rival. And without a doubt it will still be the afternoon of November 5. On the eve of the elections, polls show that the two candidates are very evenly matched, without it being possible to decide in advance.
Curious state, founded in 1681 by the English religious reformer William Penn, today populated by 13 million inhabitants and with an area equivalent to one fifth of France, Pennsylvania has no unity and is home to two large metropolises, the short-lived capital of the Union. , Philadelphia, where the US Constitution was written in 1787, and the steel city of Pittsburgh, the embodiment of the industrial revolution. Both are Democrats, separated by a mountainous landscape, populated by Mormons, Protestant farmers or former coal miners, conquered by the Republicans.
In Butler, where early voting was held on Monday, October 28, nothing, or almost nothing, remains of the July drama. In front of the scene of the attack, the gardener who sells pumpkins during this Halloween season does not want to talk. “I manage my post-traumatic stress”, she trusts. This is not the case for Chelsea Rowe, 33, a front-office assistant at farm equipment seller M&R Power Equipment, who displays a cynicism unusual in the United States: “The FBI came for a week and they left. For a moment we thought the shot had been fired from our roof. “We had closed, he gave us a day off”, she responds with a smile. His colleague Justin Olayer, a delivery driver for the company, believes that the attack strengthened Donald Trump. “You won’t find many Democrats here. I’m on the road every day. You only see Trump posters, very little Kamala. Only Pittsburgh and Philadelphia vote Democratic, the rest are Republican. »
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