There is great uncertainty about the outcome of the US presidential election, but also great concern about what will come after November 5: will there be a long legal battle, a violent challenge to the result with demonstrations, or will Americans instead refuse to be further divided?
With memories of the 2020 election frenzy and the invasion of Capitol Hill by Trump supporters still fresh, the question looms as to whether citizens will experience similar nightmarish scenes again.
Analysts believe that the answer to such questions depends to a large extent on the ability of the two candidates to accept their defeat after a race whose winner seems to be decided in the thread. From this point of view, the reaction of Donald Trump is the one that causes the greatest concern.
Trump insists on fraud
The 78-year-old Republican keeps saying that the only chance he can lose to Kamala Harris is if the presidential election is rigged. He has repeatedly refused to state clearly whether he will support a peaceful transfer of power and continues to claim that the 2020 elections were stolen from him.
“If he loses, I’m sure he will plead fraud, do everything possible to overturn the result and refuse to attend Harris’ inauguration. Not only does he not know how to lose, but he has never conceded defeat,” predicts Donald Nieman, a political science professor at Binghamton University in New York state.
Harris’s reaction
For her part, will Kamala Harris admit her failure if she loses? 95% of her supporters think so, but that number drops to 48% among Trump supporters, according to an Oct. 10 Pew Research Center poll.
Two in three Americans fear violence will break out after the Nov. 5 election, according to an Ipsos poll published Oct. 24.
The two candidates accuse each other of stoking the tension.
Harris accuses Trump of being a “fascist.” The billionaire attributed the attempts on his life to the rhetoric of the Democratic candidate, estimating that she is responsible for a “bloodbath” in the US.
Fear after the result
In Washington, the authorities have been preparing for at least a year for an extremely sensitive period after the elections and until January 20, 2025, the day the new president is sworn in.
Already the first metal bars have been erected near the White House, while soon they will be placed around the Congress.
In addition, the number of Capitol Police has increased significantly, reaching 2,100, about 300 more than on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
On January 6, 2025, the crucial day when the election result will be ratified, security measures will be as tight as on the day of the inauguration of the new president.
Four years ago the elections were held on November 3rd, but the result was not known until the 7th of the month.
Trump declared himself the winner as early as election night and immediately began reporting irregularities while trying in vain to convince Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Bill Barr that he was right.
If the Republican nominee rushes to declare victory again, “we have the resources and the knowledge” to respond, Harris said on Oct. 22.
And this time Trump is no longer in office and won’t be able to ask the judiciary or the military to apply pressure.
After all, in 2020 he immediately went to court, but without winning a single appeal with the judges explaining to him that he should have reacted earlier.
But Republicans have learned their lessons from the 2020 election. They have enlisted 100,000 volunteers and thousands of legal officials to oversee the “integrity” of the election process, and have filed more than 130 appeals in at least 26 states.
Democrats have responded with about 35 appeals, and the media has already called the 2024 presidential election a “litigation election.”
The presidential election in numbers
Candidates, key states, funding… here are some numbers for the US presidential election, which will be held on November 5.
Two candidates: the Republican ex-president of the USA Donald Trump and the Democratic vice-president of the country Kamala Harris.
In every election contest for the presidency of the USA there are also some independent candidates who, however, do not manage to break the dipole of the two parties. This year’s candidates, among others, will be the environmentalist Jill Stein and the university’s Cornell West, who are expected to gather a very small percentage of the vote.
The US president is elected for a four-year term and can serve two consecutive or non-consecutive terms. That means if Harris is elected in November, she can run for president again in 2028, but Trump can’t.
The elections will be held on November 5. Traditionally, the US presidential election is held on the first Tuesday of November.
The seven swing states — Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina — will decide who wins the presidency.
Both candidates are focusing there their last efforts to convince the voters and win the elections. As Trump and Harris battle head-to-head, as the polls show, the outcome is expected to be decided by a few tens of thousands of votes.
On November 5, Americans not only elect their next president, they also vote to fill 34 seats in the Senate (out of a total of 100) and all seats (435) in the House of Representatives.
In the upper house, senators are elected for a six-year term. Republicans hope on November 5 to make gains and manage to overturn the small majority of Democrats in that body.
Lawmakers are elected to two-year terms, and Democrats hope to regain control of the House of Representatives, which is now majority-controlled by Republicans.
Americans vote for 538 electors who then choose the president. To be elected a candidate must collect 270 electors.
The number of electors each state elects varies and is calculated by adding the number of senators (two for each state) to the number of representatives it has in the House of Representatives, which depends on each state’s population.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, about 244 million Americans are eligible to vote.
The 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, as well as the 2020 presidential election, saw the highest turnout in decades, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
For example, “about two-thirds” of voters voted in 2020, “the highest percentage for a national election since 1900,” according to the same source.
According to official data, Kamala Harris’ campaign had spent $270 million as of September. Trump’s team just $78 million.
According to the New York Times, the Democrat has raised more than a billion dollars since July, when she launched her campaign after Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Something unprecedented in one quarter.
More than 41 million Americans had voted early in the election as of Sunday, Oct. 27, according to a tally by the University of Florida.
In almost all US states, voters can vote early either by mail or by ballot.
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