The former president of EU Donald Trump (2017-2021) has not gone so far as to say that he will declare himself the winner before the vote counting ends, as he did in 2020, although in recent days he has intensified his complaints of electoral fraud and the campaign of Kamala Harris She claims to be ready to respond if he does.
It is the third time that Trump competes in a presidential election and the third time that he has raised the specter of fraud. In 2016, he won and did not need to materialize his warnings; but, since 2020, he attributes his defeat to manipulation of the results for which there is no evidence.
In this last week of the campaign, Trump has intensified his rhetoric, trying to discredit the legitimacy of the elections and falsely ensuring that millions of undocumented immigrants will vote for Harris.
Several state election authorities have warned that it could take several days before the final result is known due to the tightness of the race. For example, in Maricopa County, where most of Arizona’s electorate lives, local officials estimate that counting could take 10 to 13 days.
In 2020, the US had to wait four days from the closing of schools until Joe Biden was declared the winner. The process was slower than usual for two reasons: the pandemic caused an increase in early voting, which requires more processing time, and participation was especially high with 158 million voters, almost 22 million more than in 2016.
In the United States, there is no central electoral authority, so the major US media outlets, which have teams that analyze the data from each state, are the ones who declare the winners.
A pattern in vote counting
There is an important pattern in the vote counting that Trump could exploit to claim fraud, the so-called “red mirage.” This phenomenon, already seen in previous elections, tends to show an initial advantage for the Republicans (associated with the color red), while as the night progresses the Democrats close the gap.
This happens because, in many states, the in-person vote – where Republicans tend to have greater participation – is counted before the early or mail-in vote, so the first results tonight could give the impression that Trump is winning, although it is not the case.
Just as, in 2020, Trump could take advantage of that initial advantage to declare himself the winner and claim that the subsequent votes in favor of Harris are an indication of fraud.
The Harris campaign has assured in recent days that it is prepared to respond. A senior Democratic official said in a call with reporters on Friday that they “fully expect” Trump to declare himself the winner on Tuesday night, before counting is complete.
As he did in 2016 and 2020, Trump has not committed to accepting the election results, stating that he will only do so if he considers them to have been fair.
Trump wants a resounding victory
Trump has assured his followers that the only way to avoid fraud is to achieve a victory “too big to manipulate”, that is, with a margin so wide that it demonstrates his overwhelming victory and prevents Democrats from manipulating the results.
This rhetoric has led part of the citizenry to convince themselves that their victory is certain. For some time now, conservative media have insisted that Trump will win by a wide margin, winning all the key states, and even the commentator Greg Gutfeldfrom Fox News, has stated that Trump has already “won” the election.
If the media does not announce his victory, Trump has made it clear that he is willing to take the recount to the courts, as he did in 2020. Unlike that election, this time he has an army of volunteers from the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement ( Stop the Robbery, in Spanish), organized to gather alleged evidence of fraud at the voting centers themselves.
The electoral authorities of several states have reinforced security at several voting centers due to the risk of violence exploding, as occurred in 2020, when armed men stood at the entrance to voting centers in Arizona and in Michigan, some supporters banged on the windows. in counting rooms.
Furthermore, that narrative could be amplified on social networks like X, whose owner, Elon Muskwho supports Trump, has promoted conspiracy theories about fraud. EFE (I)
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