Harris or Trump: Still anybody’s guess

Too close to call’ is an overused cliché when it comes to predicting the outcome of elections, but with less than two weeks to go for polling day (5 November), the American presidential race is indeed looking too close to call.

Democrat vice-president Kamala Harris’s brief honeymoon with the electorate seems to have tapered off, and however unfit Donald Trump may be for the highest office and however bizarre his public pronouncements, his prospects are again looking brighter.

The state of the economy remains the number one concern for voters. And even though incumbent president Joe Biden registered record employment and a healthy GDP growth during his tenure — after inheriting a post-Covid shambles from Trump — he is seen as having failed to control inflation, which is casting a shadow over Harris’s prospects.

Opinion polls indicate voters may back Trump as more capable of bringing down prices, never mind that he says he will impose heavier tariffs on imports, which can only hurt consumers. The billion-dollar question is: will these perceptions be decisive?

Harris is still ahead in national surveys, but only just. An election to the White House, though, usually boils down to who wins the ‘swing states’, given that the results in most of the 50 states are generally a foregone conclusion.

Many Republicans have turned against Trump for what they see as the unacceptability of his candidature for public office, let alone being president of the US. One such is Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney and a former lawmaker, who was ousted by Trump from the House of Representatives. She has accompanied Harris on her whistle-stop tour of battleground states, to sway conservative, suburban women (traditionally Republican supporters) to her side. They have underlined that Trump would be a threat to abortion rights, which most women are agitated about — and to national security and democracy.

In May this year, Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes. A New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush-money payment to a porn actor who said the two had had sex. Trump had brushed aside the verdict as “a rigged, disgraceful trial” and said “the real verdict is going to be November 5”.

The divide is quite clear. Graduates are with Harris, non-graduates with Trump. So, if it isn’t populism or crude references to the lady who stands in his way, Trump is playing on religion. Speaking to evangelical Christians, he said he was saved in the assassination attempt on him by “a super-natural hand”.

He will worry, though, that white voters without a college degree, the backbone of his ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) base, have declined by 2 per cent as a share of eligible voters, and fallen below 40 per cent of the electorate for the first time. This was revealed by demographer William Frey, who analysed Census Bureau data. Correspondingly, white voters with four-year college degrees are today one in four of America’s voters and non-whites (who often lean Democrat) comprise a third of eligible voters.

Trump has gone out of his way to woo black and Latino voters, while Harris has combed urban areas in swing states with a high percentage of white graduates. An expansion in Gen Z voters could help Harris, since young Americans have increasingly been voting for Democrats for the past two decades. But she still needs to hold on to the male voter in this category.

Biden had the reputation of being a foreign affairs specialist, having been in the thick of it for decades as a senator and then as vice-president under Barack Obama. Ironically, as president, this is where he has stumbled, with a knock-on effect on his vice and Democrat nominee.

On Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Americans by and large stand with Ukraine, but the billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine has begun to trouble them. On the question of Israel’s genocidal project in Palestine, the US was expected to possess greater clout. But the cunning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is believed to have maintained unadvertised links with Trump and successfully kept the Democrats ambivalent on the question.

While foreign affairs do not normally decide a US presidential election, the Democrats had banked on successfully mediating a ceasefire in West Asia to wave it at voters as an accomplishment. US secretary of state Antony Blinken has again rushed to the war-torn region — for the 11th time in the past year — in a last-ditch effort to pull a rabbit out of a hat. He tweeted his intention to engage in “intensive discussions” to end the war, return hostages to their families and alleviate the suffering of Palestinians.

For Netanyahu, though, a cessation of hostilities is bad news; at stake is his very survival in politics. He will be tried for grave corruption charges and worse the moment a semblance of ‘normalcy’ returns to Israel. An end to the war will also immediately focus attention on his failure to rescue the still 120-odd Israelis held hostage by Hamas.

On 22 October, the New York Times gave Harris a slender one percentage point lead — 49 per cent for her to 48 per cent for Trump — in a national polling average. More crucially, though, in the states that will determine the winner, the two are running neck and neck. In Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada, the two were tied at 48 per cent each. In Wisconsin, Harris led 49 per cent to 48 per cent; in Georgia, Trump was ahead by the same margin, while in Arizona he was at 50 per cent to Harris’ 48.

The Financial Times, echoing a Washington Post projection, is also reporting a dead heat. As are the forecast models pre-pared by ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight and the Economist, among others.

In terms of campaign funds at her disposal, Harris is massively ahead. She has raised more than $1 billion in a mere three months compared to Trump’s $400 million-odd in the same period. In effect, the Democrats can deploy a war chest in the critical final lap, which the Republicans won’t be able to match. The money will likely be utilised for a media blitz, especially in the all-important states.

Harris’ campaign will also, according to CNN which spoke to her team, stage ‘attention-grabbing events showcasing Harris’. The purpose is to attract disengaged voters with ‘tactics that are new to presidential campaigns — some that rely on new technology’. The network summed up Harris’s aides as exuding ‘a jittery self-confidence’.

Undecided voters will make up their minds in the final week. Indian Americans tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat, and with one of them among the aspirants this time (Harris had an Indian mother), this is unlikely to change.

How should New Delhi envision it? Harris, as president, will mean a continuity of Biden’s outlook, though she is ideologically more to the left than her present boss. Despite Narendra Modi’s desperate 'hugplomacy', four years of the Trump presidency yielded no special favours for India. If he now cracks down on imports and immigration, it won’t exactly be music to New Delhi’s ears.

Ashis Ray can be found on X @ashiscray