US election remains close after conventions and national attention

Washington and New York. Enjoying the andFollowing the success of last week’s Democratic National Convention, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will kick off this week’sandon a bus tour to the key state of Georgia on Wednesday, while his Republican opponents Donald Trump and JD Vance will hold multiple rallies in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

These states were not selected at random by the campaigns, but are three of the six or seven states considered “key” around which the national result of the presidential election on November 5 will most likely be defined.

Polls indicate that the presidential race is very close, and so the focus in the final 10 weeks of the contest will be on those key states that include Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and possibly North Carolina. In those states, the candidates are virtually tied, although nationally Harris is leading by 3 points, according to the average of the major polls. But there is no direct national vote for president in this country, and in practice there are 50 state elections, and with a couple of exceptions, whoever wins each state wins all of that state’s electoral votes in the contest to accumulate the 270 or more that are ultimately required to win the White House.

More than 154 million people participated in the 2020 national election, but Joe Biden won by only a margin of 100,000 to 300,000 votes overall. The political news and analysis site Axios examined the potential 2024 electorate and concluded that “roughly 244 million Americans will be eligible to vote. But 99.5 percent of us will not be the deciders: either we don’t vote, or we always vote the same way, or we live in states that are virtually certain to be red (Republican) or blue (Democratic).” That is, “6 percent of voters in six states” could end up deciding this election, according to a Democratic analyst interviewed by Axios.

For a country that never stops lecturing the rest of the world about democracy, the United States is an undemocratic country. In 48 of the 50 states, the winner of that state’s vote is awarded all of that entity’s electoral votes even if he or she wins by a microscopic margin. Moreover, because of an electoral system that gives small states non-proportional power in the electoral vote, the candidate who wins the majority of votes nationally does not necessarily win the presidency. In 2000, for example, Democrat Al Gore won more votes nationally but lost to George Bush, and in 2016, Hillary Clinton also won more votes nationally but lost the election and Trump went on to win the White House.

However, the dynamicmica The very small number of states that will likely determine the election results offers opportunities for other voices. For example, Trump won Michigan over Clinton in 2016 by a margin of just 10,000 votes. But this year, more than 100,000 voters in that same state cast their primary ballots for “unpledged” delegates to Harris — across the country, 700,000 voted that way in the primaries — all in demand of a shift in policy toward unconditional U.S. support for Israel and its genocidal war in Gaza.

Despite demonstrations, protests, and a call from progressive leaders within the party, Kamala Harris managed only to squeeze in brief comments of concern about the “situation” in Gaza interspersed with a staunch defense of Israel’s right to “defend itself,” and she and her campaign refused to grant the request of several party delegates and lawmakers to allow a Palestinian speaker a few minutes to speak from the podium at the convention.

“We want to defeat Trump,” Abbas Alawieh, an “uncommitted” delegate from Michigan explained last week during the convention. “But in order to mobilize our people behind Vice President Harris, we need to hear from her that she supports an immediate ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel. She is at risk of losing the state of Michigan.” That state has an Arab-American community that could directly impact who wins that state.

Harris did mention, on the final night of the convention in Chicago, the need for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and the release of the hostages. She added that with this, “the suffering in Gaza will end, and the Palestinian people will be able to achieve their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.” But as one “uncommitted” delegate commented to the convention, The Day who requested anonymity, “calling for a ceasefire while sending bombs” is not convincing. A veteran American Middle East analyst summed up the convention (referring to Harris’s repeated “cheerful” campaign message) as “Alegr“I was in the midst of genocide.”

The other issue that could derail Harris and Walz’s momentum from the convention is immigration. On the day Harris delivered her speech formally accepting her party’s nomination, Trump was visiting Montezuma Pass in Arizona, to praise the border wall he claims to have built, even though that section was actually built during Barack Obama’s administration. There, the former president again criticized Harris for her administration’s failure to “control” unauthorized border crossings — completely ignoring that Mexico’s efforts have reduced the flow of migrants to the border by nearly 50 percent.

Surveys conducted by the national public radio NPR y CNN Harris has a slim lead over Trump in the key states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but it is so close as to be within the margin of error. When voters are asked which candidate will handle the border better, large majorities favor Trump.

While Harris did dare to mention the phrase “path to citizenship” in her convention speech, she did so only after repeating the emphasis on securing the border, and immigrant leaders and immigrant rights advocates were relegated to the background during the convention.

Some in the party believe that this is a mistake. “Our policyethics “has been pushed so far to the right on immigration by Donald Trump that it’s time to fight… to realign our immigration policy to where it was just a few years ago,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas told Democracy Now.