In a country more fractured than ever, former President Donald Trump appears to be the winner of Tuesday’s American elections. The count is progressing slowly, especially in the swing state of Pennsylvania and the rest of the Midwest, but Kamala Harris’ path to victory is narrowing.
Early results show clear Republican victories in Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, while uncertainty persists in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where there are also signs pointing to a Trump victory. Further review in these states could take several days.
The Harris campaign insisted that votes remained to be counted, particularly in large city areas, notably in the Midwest, due in part to the delay in closing polls due to long lines and bogus ballots. bomb threats in Pennsylvania. But some signs elsewhere, such as in small towns in some counties, pointed in Trump’s direction.
For example, early results showed more support for the Republican in certain neighborhoods of Dearborn, the city with the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States and where a portion of Democratic voters were demobilized by the War of Gaza. Harris’ campaign also showed the vulnerabilities of Michigan’s Jewish community, skeptical of its support for Israel over Joe Biden.
Uncertainty
As polls show, the election outcome is close, so it’s harder to estimate who won until counting is finished or nearing the end in more counties. The AP press agency, which is in practice the body which collects and adds up the votes on election night, has not yet been able to declare the winner of the elections this Wednesday morning.
The proximity of the result is combined with the obstacles to control, notably postal voting in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Rules on how to vote by mail and when to process those ballots change from state to state, and Pennsylvania has been at the center of tensions since a 2019 law allowed voting by mail without having to justify the request, but at the same time she did not do so. allow the processing of these votes – with tasks such as checking the required signatures on envelopes or removing ballots from their various packaging – until election day.
The battle in the tightest states
Each candidate’s advantage in percentage points and vote totals in the 2024 presidential elections
divided country
The gap in the country between two candidates opposing each other on style, substance, gender and life experience is even wider, according to early data, with a new divide between the Midwest and the South of the country. Americans’ top concern, according to exit polls, is now democracy, and many voters have expressed concern about the future of a country led by a politician who promises to persecute his perceived enemies, to purge the administration and behave like a “dictator” (his most recent collaborators of his first government define him as a “fascist”).
Trump’s larger victories in Florida and Georgia, traditionally more divided states, as well as Kentucky and West Virginia, Republican strongholds, as well as the biggest shift in favor of Harris compared to Biden four years ago in traditionally Democratic states paint a picture of a country increasingly geographically segregated.
More pro-Trump Latinos
Some exit polls indicate that in some states, Democrats’ advantage over Republicans among the population who identify as Latino or Hispanic has diminished. Harris won among these communities, but by a smaller margin than Biden did four years ago, a trend that has been seen over the past decade, particularly among men.
There are, however, large differences between the states, notably due to the effect of Trump’s victory among Puerto Ricans in Florida, where the Republican largely dominated.
Strong participation
Turnout is expected to be at an all-time high and early local data indicated an unusually high level of participation.
“Today when we came out to open, there was a line around the whole block. We’ve never seen that before,” Eileen Walker, a retired nurse and Democratic District Committee representative from central Philadelphia, explained this Tuesday morning. She has been involved in politics her whole life and said she has never seen such mobilization as during these elections.
Lines across the country stretched for several blocks as voters rushed to close polling stations, which were required to allow anyone in line to vote before voting ended.
Trump heats up the party in Florida
The former president summoned some of his friends and political allies to attend the electoral count at his mansion in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Among them, Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro; and the ultra-British leader, Nigel Farage, as well as the owner of Tesla and X, Elon Musk; or Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carson accompanied Trump to several campaign events, like one in which the former president told him that Liz Cheney — a Republican who asked to vote for Harris — “should feel” what it’s like to have “nine guns shooting at him”. your head.
As Trump watched the count with friends at his mansion a few miles away at the Palm Beach Convention Center, some of his supporters gathered eager to celebrate an election victory they seemed to cherish on Tuesday night, but they can still I will not sing this Tuesday evening.
In a video posted on social media, Trump encouraged voting and predicted “a big victory,” while “he was doing well everywhere.”
