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The countdown is on. The United States will elect a new president in just over a week. Whether it’s the former, whether Donald Trump will get a second term in office despite all the scandals and a stable poll backlog, or whether Democrat Joe Biden beats him, is the question people around the world are asking today. .
If the polls, in which Biden has been leading more or less clearly for months, were election results, the question would be answered quickly, and all those who fear Trump for four more years could breathe a sigh of relief. But it is not so easy. Due to America’s electoral system, voters in a handful of so-called swing states ultimately decide who can rule from the White House for the next four years.
That is why the candidates and their supporters are currently only touring a fraction of the country; the president even holds a rally in a different location every day. Will that change anything? Trump’s time is running out, at least that’s for sure.
The complicated voting system
Americans do not elect their president directly on November 3; otherwise, Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016 with an advantage of almost three million votes. Voters only determine the so-called Electoral College. That happens in individual states. Each state sends between three and 55 voters to this body, depending on its population.
How they are determined varies from state to state, but the “winner takes all” principle generally applies. This means that the respective winner receives all the votes available to the state, regardless of the margin by which they won. The 538 electors thus determined elect the new president in mid-December. The winner is whoever has at least 270 voters.
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In most states it is already clear what the outcome will be. Here’s how liberal California becomes: a “blue state“ – definitely vote for Biden and conservative Alabama – a “Red State” – Trump. In the final sprint, election activists are targeting those states where polls predict a particularly tight result and / or those that have constantly shifted back and forth in previous elections.
One example: Trump got all 29 votes in Florida in 2016, though he only won this important changing state by a 2.2 percentage point margin. Democrats’ concern: If Trump narrowly wins again in those states, Biden could end up losing despite his lead in national polls. Like Al Gore in 2000, when Democrats voted for more than half a million more people than Republican George W. Bush. But Bush ended up becoming president after beating Florida by just 537 more votes.
The electoral college problem
America’s complicated electoral system means that not all votes count equally. Currently, the electoral body favors the Republican Party. Because no matter how many million people in California or New York vote for Democratic candidate Biden, there are no more than 55 voters per state.
In 2016, Trump won a quarter of his electorate with just 191,000 votes in the four states where the race was closest. In six undecided states – Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – it got 99 voters.
According to critics of Swing States, the “winner takes all” rule gives too much weight. And there are more people in these who tend to vote the Republican way: they tend to be older, white, with a lower level of education, and those were Trump’s top voters in 2016.
Polling site RealClearPolitics describes 17 states as swing states, election blog FiveThirtyEight 16. Most election researchers pay special attention to nine to ten states.
Florida
Perhaps the most classic of all swing states is extremely exciting for survey experts. They currently agree: as in the last six elections, which ended three times in favor of Democrats and Republicans, it will be very close again. Sunshine State includes the Trump super fans in the conservative northwestern corner (“Panhandle”) of the state and a disproportionately large number of retirees who prefer warm weather year-round to colder regions and tend to Trump, at least up to the crisis of the crown.
The many Latinos in Florida are a diverse group: While many migrants in the south of the state around Miami are closer to Democrats, migrants who fled socialism in Venezuela and Cuba are considered conservative and very politically active. Those who secure this status and their 29 constituencies have taken a great step toward victory. According to polls, Biden is currently very close to the front line in Florida.
Ohio
But Trump easily leads in Ohio. This state in the American Midwest also went back and forth in the last six elections. In recent years, residents have voted for more Republicans. While Democrat Barack Obama won here in 2008 and 2012, Trump won the 18th electorate in 2016.
But since Biden is more popular with the white working class and older voters than Hillary Clinton, he has a chance. No Republican has become president without winning in Ohio. If Trump loses Ohio, other less conservative states in the Midwest will likely go to Biden as well.
Michigan
This status, which Trump surprisingly won in 2016, is currently more inclined to Biden. Here, too, the Democratic candidate is much better received than his predecessor. He also expects a lot of support from suburban voters and a high turnout of blacks in Detroit. Here, however, the corona pandemic, which particularly affects African Americans, is a huge unknown: 16 voters are available.
Wisconsin
Ten voters want to secure Biden here after Trump surprisingly won Wisconsin in 2016. Polls see the Democrat ahead, in large part thanks to his huge advantage in the cities of Milwaukee and Madison. In contrast, rural areas are a deep red. It will be interesting to see how the Kenosha riots affect the elections. Serious riots broke out in the city of 100,000 in late August after African-American Jacob Blake was shot multiple times by a police officer.
Pennsylvania
According to polls, this industrial state, like Michigan and Wisconsin, which helped Trump rise to power in 2016, tends toward Biden. Ultimately, his 20 votes could make a difference if the election is tight. But they could be late because mail ballots are counted here after everyone else.
Because the decision can be made in Pennsylvania, election activists flock here. On Wednesday even Obama performed live for the first time in this election campaign in Philadelphia. By the time Trump won, Democrats had won Keystone State six times in a row.
The general rule of thumb is that Biden, who was born here in the working-class city of Scranton in 1942, has to win so much in the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and their suburbs which undermines Trump’s victory in the very conservative rural part of the state, where the headline craze is enormous.
Iowa
Trump’s victory in this agricultural state in 2016 was overwhelming: At nine percentage points, he got all six votes. The fact that the race in this conservative state, only in the cities of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, are clearly ahead of the Democrats, it is close to everything, the two are almost even, clearly shows the weakness of the incumbent.
Although Trump supported suffering farmers with billions in aid, it was he who started the trade wars in the first place. Then there’s the pandemic, which is currently getting worse here, as in other “rust belt” states. How effectively the Trump administration countered the virus will play a big role at the polls.
North Carolina
In fact, this state is very conservative. In 2016, Trump won it too. But now it could be tough, at Realclearpolitics and FiveThirtyEight Biden is leading with a minimal advantage. This is another reason why Trump has already visited half a dozen times in the last two months.
Almost every scenario in his campaign stipulates that he must win this state to secure his re-election. There are 15 votes to win here. Republicans have won ten of the last twelve presidential elections. Obama surprisingly won in North Carolina in 2008, for the first time since 1976.
Four years later he lost there again to Mitt Romney. But the state is changing permanently and similarly to the neighboring state of Virginia in favor of the Democrats. Excellent universities, medical centers and tech companies attract newcomers with good education and ethnic diversity. Additionally, there are many African Americans who traditionally vote democratically, if they do vote at all. However, here too the rural regions are a deep red.
Georgia
This conservative southern state may also become a swing state after 28 years of Republican rule. Democrats have been waiting for a long time to get all 16 votes here; the last to triumph was Southerner Bill Clinton in 1996. Biden leads by a slim margin in the average of the polls in RealClearPolitics and now in FiveThirtyEight as well.
Demographic lines are changing in Georgia too. The metropolis of Atlanta, in particular, is growing: in the last ten years from 5.3 to six million inhabitants. More than half of Atlanta’s population is black and in all of Georgia it is just under a third.
The growing black middle class is gaining influence and is clearly leaning toward the Democrats. During the “Black Lives Matter” protests, African American Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms became known across the country and was even marketed as a potential vice presidential candidate Biden.
Arizona
In the Grand Canyon state, demographics are also shifting in favor of the Democrats. In this really conservative state, too, Democrats are waiting for the “blue spin” and waiting for 2020 to happen. In 2018, a Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, won the Senate race and the party hopes former astronaut Mark Kelly will do something. similar this year. Biden leads the presidential race with just over two percentage points on average in the polls. In 2016, Trump secured all eleven votes in Arizona.
Texas
Texas is not a classic swing state. The last time a Democrat won here was in 1976. But meanwhile, some observers count the “Lone Star State” among the states where Biden could score a surprise victory: with 38 voters, after California (55). , the highest number of votes is at stake here. One of the reasons it could become scarce, as in Arizona, is that the rapidly growing population, especially in the metropolitan regions around Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin, is becoming more diverse and thus therefore more liberal.
Part of this demographic shift can be traced to Latino immigration. But if George W. Bush was able to tie this to the Republicans to a great extent, Trump has done a lot of damage with his anti-immigration rhetoric. At least it is not ruled out if it will be so far this year that most will tip. If it did, Trump would have wasted all the time.
RealClearPolitics sees it just ahead, with FiveThirtyEight Biden just caught up with it. It is noted with great interest that voters have been able to vote for a week, doing so in record numbers and sometimes waiting up to ten hours. It is not yet clear if Biden will use this automatically.
