a final sprint in the key states that looks askance at the Middle East

On November 5 there are presidential elections in the United States. They hardly make headlines, with the world devilishly entangled in wars that have been going on for years without a solution and are getting bigger, but the campaign advances, rally by rally, accusation by accusation. Proposal by proposal… less, because everything is being played at the level of the vision of opposites: either me or chaos, whatever each person’s program says. That’s your motto.

There was a big unknown that is becoming clear: would Kamala Harris be able to continue riding the wave of popularity, after the effusiveness of her election as a replacement for Joe Biden, who gave way to her in July? The answer is yes, it has not lost steam and is, little by little, becoming more known. After four years as vice president of the United States, the Democratic candidate for the White House was a mystery to voters, who asked her to show herself, to explain herself. He is doing it, although there are gaps, and that is gaining him support.

According to the FiveThirtyEight pagewhich does the formidable job of preparing averages of all the polls on these elections that are published, right now Harris would achieve 48.5% of the votes, which is 2.5 points more than the 45.9% that is expected that his adversary, former Republican President Donald Trump, achieves. At the beginning of October, the difference reached 2.8 points, the largest since the former prosecutor was officially proclaimed by her party last August.

Since then, a situation of practical tie has been maintained, and let’s not fool ourselves, the data from this average confirms that we are still within the margin of error of most of the polls. Demographers believe that an acceptable margin of error is usually between 3% and 6%, with a confidence level of 95%. There is a match, obviously.

Participation, therefore, will be key, because no one yet knows who is going to mobilize en masse: if the Democrats are excited about the change of candidate, the one who may be the first woman in the Oval Office, the second black person, the first Asian, or the Republicans who long for the return of the tycoon and his MAGA politics, Make America Great Again.

That is why the hinge or pendulum states are so important (swing states), which are those who can define the presidential election. In 2024, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina are the undecided states that may end up defining the head of state of the leading power on the planet. It is on them where the campaign of the two candidates has focused in the last two weeks, a full-fledged sprint. It must be understood that of the 3,100 counties where voting takes place, only 15 or 20 of them are really decisive for the election. A reality that we are surprised by every four years and it is always the same.

Currently, the polls are tight. An average of polls prepared by the New York Times gives Harris victory in Pennsylvania (by less than one point), Nevada (one point), Michigan (one point) and Wisconsin (two points). Meanwhile, Trump would win North Carolina (less than one point), Georgia (two points) and Arizona (two points). Three for each and in a fist, again everything within the margin of error. Nothing clear.

Sensitive changes… and money

The polls do refine something more in terms of the opinions that Americans have of Harris and Trump, popularity, more than voting intention. And on this point the Democrat has risen significantly: 47.1% of those surveyed have a favorable opinion of her (the figure was 30% before even dreaming of a change of horse in the middle of the race), compared to a 46.6% of people who have an unfavorable opinion. The margin between the two figures is, however, very small. In the case of Trump, the love and hate are more pronounced: 52.5% do not have a favorable opinion of him and 43.1% do. And those who reject it win, as you can see.

He Times has also published these days a more detailed and in-depth surveywith sensations and convictions. It states that voters are growing “prone to seeing in Harris, not Trump, a break with the the state in which“We now have a Democratic Administration, that of Biden, and yet, the change today is more associated with the continuation of the same party, with a new candidate, than with a different formation, that of Trump, which implies alternation in the game.

In addition to believing that the vice president represents this change, Americans understand that she “cares more about people like them,” which would be a triumph for the Harris campaign, in which from the very beginning she has tried to link her messages and its image with the middle class, the ordinary citizen, one of them.

The newspaper notes that the rookie has made “advances, although small” in temperament, confidence and hope for change, that she has won votes at all age levels (including the elderly) and all races, and that there are even more undecided Republicans that they would go with it on 5-N: they have gone from 5 to 9% in just one month.

Harris’s people do not want triumphalism, but they are clearly happy in a week in which it has been revealed that her campaign has already raised $1 billion since she entered the presidential race at the end of July. according to media like CNN“marking a massive fundraising milestone in his campaign against former President Donald Trump.”

“Other presidential candidates, along with their political parties, have surpassed the billion-dollar mark in past elections. But Harris has crossed that threshold at a dizzying pace, highlighting the extent to which her rise to the top of the Democratic ticket approximately two and a half months ago has transformed the finances of this year’s race for the White House,” the television network maintains. “It is clear that Harris has done something absolutely unprecedented,” confirms Sarah Bryner, research director of the nonpartisan group. OpenSecretswhich tracks money in elections.

Consensus and differences

This week of campaigning began, on Monday, with the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 and the start of Tel Aviv’s endless offensive on Gaza. Both Trump and Harris have made it a point to attend events in memory of the 1,200 murdered by the Palestinian militia party and to demand the release of the hundred hostages remaining in the strip, of the 250 initially kidnapped. Political events and religious events, with the country’s Jewish community, of enormous burden less than a month before the elections.

The electoral component weighs, because although the majority of American Jews usually vote Democratic, they are increasingly becoming closer to Republicans. There are younger, left-leaning Jews who no longer see unequivocal support for Israel as a litmus test, on the other hand, but it is still a flank to take into account in elections in which the margin of difference is so tight. They are only 2.4% of the US adult population, but they are more likely to vote than the general population registered to vote and to make political donations.

As EFE explains, Harris reaffirmed her commitment that she will “always” ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself, but she also considered that the world must work to alleviate the “immense suffering” of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who have experienced “so much pain and so much loss during this year.” Furthermore, in response to questions from the press, he stated that he will not “give up” on attempts to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages.

Trump even put on a kippah when visiting the grave of a New York rabbi, and after the event he said: “We must never forget the nightmare of that day.” Those acts “would never have happened if I had been the president,” he said, as he has repeated on other occasions. He welcomed the progress in Israel’s campaign to degrade the military capabilities of Hamas, and said that “the dawn of a Middle East new and more harmonious is finally within our reach”.

The war in Gaza and Lebanon, rooted in the previous one and increasing over the days – from the searches to the bombings to the ground invasion – are posing a major headache, especially for Harris, who is the one who is still in power. There is very little time to make important decisions, at the door of the elections, and the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has benefited from this when making decisions that do not please Washington. He doesn’t care and, furthermore, he is known to have a preference for Trump. This week what everyone imagined has emerged: that the president calls his counterpart from Israel a “son of a bitch” in private.

It is already known that foreign policy does not help to win elections, but it does help to lose them, which is why the candidates look askance at the Middle East for what may happen. The Biden Administration only highlights its “efforts” to achieve a ceasefire, so far without fruit. Meanwhile, Israel’s attack on Iran in retaliation for the one on October 2 is still expected and no one knows how that may affect prices, especially oil. Inflation has been one of Biden’s biggest headaches in these four years and one of the things that voters reproach him most for.

There is consensus in supporting Israel. Where there has not been one is in the crisis caused by Hurricane Milton, despite the fact that the consequences of its passage through Florida – where the governor is Republican Ron DeSantis – have been much less than expected. Trump always says that both Harris and Biden have mental deficiencies and are not up to the task of their positions and he has brought it up again in these days of uncertainty. Trump used the same tactic during the Hurricane Helene drama, falsely accusing Democrats of ignoring Republican areas.

He has falsely claimed that Harris had depleted the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) budget to house undocumented immigrants and was therefore unable to help storm victims. And Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, also misled the country by claiming that the federal government was only offering $750 in aid to citizens who lost their homes.

Some of Trump’s claims were even debunked but, from the millionaire’s point of view, it doesn’t matter if his claims are crazy. The point is to gain a foothold among voters who may not know the nuances of federal aid, but who might have an unflattering image of Harris.

She has tried, of course, to redirect things and remember that, in fact, the one who took money from that fund for the unfinished wall project in the south was Trump. And it has also gone to empathy. “I’m afraid he really lacks empathy at a very basic level to care about other people’s suffering and understand that the role of a leader is not to beat people down, but to lift them up, especially in times of crisis.”

Harris has been able to explain herself in the three interviews she has had in the media this week, something unusual for someone who is not very interested in the media, but who has understood the message that she has to put herself in the showcase. Now he doesn’t stop holding rallies, social events, visits and fundraising events, taking risks like going to the legendary program 60 minutesto which Trump has not wanted to go.

There has been another minor but symbolic struggle between the Republican and the Democrat, when Trump has pointed out that the fact that Harris is not a biological mother makes her less humble. The number two in the US is married to lawyer Doug Emhoff and is a full-fledged stepmother to her two children, Cole and Ella, who call her warm. She has not remained silent and has responded in a podcast about women’s rights and sexual health saying that, perhaps, being humble is not her highest aspiration in life. The “cat lady” attacking again.

There are four short weeks of fighting left…