US presidential candidates arouse little enthusiasm in the electorate

Washington and New York. The opinion makers in this country express a common feeling in this election where few are enthusiastic about the options in the presidential race in a country apparently divided in half between a candidate described as a “lunatic” by a conservative commentator and a female candidate. which one liberal commentator says lacks much substance and is incapable of making a human connection with the electorate.

That influential Republican-supporting commentators call Republican standard-bearer Donald Trump a lunatic and liberal Democratic sympathizers criticize Kamala Harris, their party’s standard-bearer, as lacking empathy offers a good summary of the dynamics of this election. The contest provides, once again, a choice between the lesser evil and the worse. Polls have been consistent in recording that many voters do not trust and even deplore the political class in Washington, and a majority believes that politicians do not act in the best interests of the people.

As a result, both candidates attempt to project themselves as “outsiders” to the political establishment despite the fact that one is a former president and the other is the current vice president of the United States. With the elections less than a month away, both candidates remain focused on the 5 to 7 “key” states that will decide the final result, and on that small segment of voters who say they still do not know who they will vote for.

Last week the focus for both campaigns was the Latino vote. Harris participated in a Latino voter assembly organized by Univision last Thursday in Nevada, one of the key states, while Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance appeared at a Latino voters forum in Arizona, another key state, Trump is scheduled to appear at a Latino caucus organized by Univision in Florida this week.

For Harris, it is increasingly urgent to find a way to improve her support among Latinos. President Joe Biden won 59 percent of the Latino vote in 2020, but polls now show Harris trailing that. “We believe that if the election were today, we would lose in Nevada,” commented a spokesperson for the hotel industry workers union, a union with a huge Latino base and perhaps the most powerful pro-Democratic Party organization in the state, in an interview with Politico last week. pass. That would be a huge defeat since Democrats have always won the presidential vote in Nevada thanks largely to the Las Vegas-based union, but if hotel workers start deserting Harris or simply don’t participate, she will lose the state.

Democrats say they are confident that they will recover the majority support of Latinos and the event of Univision It is part of that strategy, along with the purchase of advertising in Spanish in that state in newspapers and billboards with messages of “Las Vegas is with the unions…. Vote with the Democrats!”

But Republicans are also betting they can broaden their support among Latinos. Although no one expects him to win a majority of the Latino vote, Trump won 36 percent of the Latino vote (an increase from 28 percent in 2016) and according to a new poll from the New York Timesis managing to maintain and even improve that support to 37 percent, while Harris is supported by 56 percent, below the 62 percent that Biden obtained.

In Arizona, Vance stated that “a lot of moms, especially Latina women in places like Arizona… are saying we don’t want our kids playing in parks where a bag of candy is really fentanyl in disguise.” He also argued that inflation, energy prices and problems at the border are impacting Latinos more.

But Latinos are not the only problematic indicator for Harris. In Detroit, Michigan, a city with a population that is 80 percent African-American, several organizers are warning the Harris campaign that enthusiasm for the Democrat is waning, especially among African-American men, reported Politico.

To seek to confront that, the campaign has deployed several famous African-American figures, from legendary basketball player Magic Johnson, to several federal lawmakers and stars to boost turnout. No one doubts that the vast majority in Detroit will vote in favor of her, but it is worth remembering that it was the low participation rate in Detroit that contributed to Trump’s unexpected victory in Michigan against Hillary Clinton in 2016 by only a margin of about 20 thousand votes.

The central message of the Democratic campaign in Michigan has focused on the threat that Trump represents against women’s rights, including abortion.

But local politicians have repeated to the national media that the economy is a more important issue for voters in that state and where Trump is perceived better than Harris in that area. At the same time, Michigan is the state with one of the largest Arab-American communities in the country, and where anger over Washington and the Biden and Harris administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza is leading a significant number to decide that they will not participate in this election.

Every week new polls show that the presidential race is in a technical tie, with Harris with a lead within the margin of error.

Given the tie, both campaigns are looking to avoid making any mistakes at this point in the game. Trump suddenly insisted, for example, that he is not opposed to abortion, and his wife Melania just published a book that includes a section proclaiming her support for abortion rights.

For her part, Harris, with her training as a lawyer, continues to avoid directly answering potentially controversial questions. For example, at the Univision event on Thursday, Ivette Castillo told Harris that her undocumented mother had just passed away, adding that “my question to you is, what are your plans to support that subgroup of immigrants who have been here all their lives, or most of them, but they have to live and die in the shadows? Harris, the daughter of immigrants, did not answer the question as she turned it around and attacked her opponent’s positions.

Political analysts say that as the number of voters who will decide this race shrinks, it is increasingly difficult to predict what will happen on November 5, election day. Only 13 percent of voters say they have not yet decided how to vote, according to a new poll from Pew Research Center. Worse yet, by some estimates, the election is likely to be determined by 6 percent of voters in six key states, reports Axios.