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CLOSE-UP: Hundreds of people were close together when Donald Trump delivered a speech from the White House on Saturday. Photo: MANDEL NGAN / AFP
US President Donald Trump is struggling with the polls, while challenger Joe Biden is set to hijack valuable auspicious states. Trump still has a chance, American experts say.
November 3 is the fateful election in the US: Will Republican Donald Trump get four new years as president or will Democrat Joe Biden take office?
In the past week, Biden has increased his lead and is 10.1 percentage points ahead of Trump in polls, according to the FiveThirtyEight average.
– It is a great challenge for him, also because there are very few voters who have not made a decision on Trump, only about 10 percent, says Eirik Løkke, an adviser to the think tank Civita.
– Then we must also remember that he is significantly better in the tipping states than in the national level. It is very likely that he will lose “the popular vote” as in 2016, so the question is whether he will win important states with a tip as in 2016.
– Trump has a small advantage
The next 24 days are crucial if Trump wants to reverse the trend.
– In the United States, it is not important to win national polls, but rather that you win individual states. But even there, Biden makes it clear, says Sofie Høgestøl, associate professor of law at the University of Oslo (UiO).
In the American electoral system, the winner takes all. That is, the candidate who obtains the majority in a state obtains all the electors of the state. The Trump or Biden who gets 270 or more voters wins the election.
– Trump and the Republicans have a small advantage because they are a bit complacent in the electoral college, says Jørgen Bølstad, associate professor in the Department of Political Science at UiO.
US EXPERT: Sofie Høgestøl is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oslo and has studied US Constitutional Law in the US. Photo: Frode Hansen
– Therefore, they can lose a few percentage points at the national level and still achieve a majority among the voters. This gives them little hope, but it is clear that the polls we see now in all major states indicate that Trump is too far behind, he continues.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton led the polls, and Trump’s victory came as a shock to many.
– So it is important to realize that Biden has a much clearer advantage now than in 2016, and there are far fewer voters who have not decided now than in 2016, says Bølstad.
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– It seems quite dark
Høgestøl divides the states into dark blue, light blue, “launches”, pink and dark red, according to a Financial Times model. Based on the newspaper average of the latest polls, it’s clearly most dark blue states, where Biden has a solid advantage, and light blues, where Biden has a certain advantage.
– If Biden sticks to the states he has now, then he has enough voters to win the election. Trump must win everything he has now, some “pitches” and he must find a way to go blue, Høgestøl tells VG.
Since states have different numbers of voters, some of them are more important than others. One of them is Pennsylvania, which Trump won by a hair in 2016, and which has 20 of 538 voters.
Pennsylvania appears to be the state that pushes Biden to more than 50 percent of the electorate. If Pennsylvania wins, it will probably win the election, says Bølstad, continuing:
Another interesting question is whether Biden can win back the six states that Democrats lost four years ago. It looks like it can at least get Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan back. If you do, and keep all the states that the Democrats took in 2016, that’s enough to win the election.
Read also: It is the auspicious states that decide the choice
Trump’s loyal voter base does not appear to be large enough, Bølstad believes.
This means that you should preferably convince everyone who has yet to make up your mind, and you should probably also be able to get some of Biden’s voters to side with you. If the polls we see now were to hold until the election, it seems pretty dark for Trump, so he relies on getting a very strong incentive to win.
It can be post-voting chaos
One x-factor that could increase Trump’s chances is the risk that filing and counting votes by mail will cause electoral chaos.
– Trump and the Trump campaign know that if all the votes are counted, the probability that they will lose increases. They are interested in not having all the votes counted, says Eirik Løkke.
EXPERT IN THE UNITED STATES: Eirik Løkke in Civita. Photo: CF Wesenberg / Civita
Different states have different rules about when votes must be received by mail and when they can begin to be counted.
– It is not certain that he will have time to count all the votes, says Løkke.
It is also expected that it will take longer to count the votes by mail, as the signature on them must be checked against the signature on the voter registration cards.
– I do not believe that all votes count equally, but that there will be so many that it really affects the result of the elections, I hope and I do not believe it.
Follow the US Presidential Elections in VG’s Election Study
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You must spend money in Texas
Presidential candidates typically spend most of their time and money in the auspicious states, which are crucial to ensuring victory.
– Trump has bad advice and the US election campaign costs a lot of money. They don’t bother spending money in states where they lead big. I don’t think Biden will spend a crown in California, says Høgestøl.
The great West Coast state has as many as 55 out of a total of 538 voters, and a victory there gives a huge head start in the quest to capture the majority – that’s 270 voters.
But California has given the Democratic presidential candidate a majority in every election since 1992, and it is considered safe for Democrats and a lost cause for Republicans.
– Biden made a lot of money in the first debate and can invest a lot of money in Texas, which has suddenly become a very even state.
Texans have given Republicans their 38 voters in every election since 1980. But according to recent opinion polls, the great southern state could become a watershed state this time.
– Forces Trump to spend a lot of money in Texas, a state in which he did not intend to spend money.
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On November 3, American citizens will vote on who will be the president of the country for the next four years.
Despite Biden’s leadership, it is too early to anticipate pain or joy.
Høgestøl reminds us that Trump managed to turn things around in the sprint four years ago.
– On Friday, it was four years since Wikileaks leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails. Now the Trump campaign looks for themes or moments that can give the same momentum and turn things in its favor.
