Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump: who will win?
This evening, I attended online a 90-minute presentation on the US presidential election given by Mark Malcolmson, the Principal of London’s City Literary Institute and an expert on American politics. Here are my take-aways with some key quotes.
Following Joe Biden’s eventual withdrawal from the race thanks to the decisive intervention of longtime ally and friend Nancy Pelosi (apparently they haven’t spoken since), Harris has proved to be “an incredibly strong candidate” and performed “infinitely better than we expected”.
Some 60 million people have already voted. So few Americans remain to be convinced one way or the other that “I genuinely believe this is a turnout election” and so “It will be the ground game”. Like almost everyone else, Malcolmson believes that “It’s too close to call”.
Of course, the vagaries of the Electoral College mean that the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the EC vote may not be the same person. Malcolmson is fairly sure that Harris will win the popular vote (so am I) and “My heart tells me that she’s going to win” the EC vote (again I agree, but that may just be because I can’t contemplate the notion of Trump back in the White House).
This election will be historic for a number of reasons:
1) If Trump wins, it will be only the second time in history that the same person has won two non-sequential presidential elections. In the final decades of the 19th century, Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president and, over a century later, Trump would be the 45th and 47th president.
2) If Harris wins, it will be only the second time that a person of colour has occupied the White House and the first time ever that a woman has won the presidency in the near 250 year existence of the United States.
3) This is the first time that every swing state – there are seven in this election – has had the two leading candidates separated by a polling difference that is within the margin of error.
4) Every presidential election, the candidates claim that it is the most consequential such election, but: “It is the most important presidential election ever“.
As well as the presidential election, next Tuesday voters will choose all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 34 members of the Senate. Malcolmson thinks that the House could be won by the Democrats but that the Senate will be won by the Republicans.
If both of those assumptions prove to be correct, this will be the first time in history that both chambers have changed majority but in the opposite direction.
If neither the Democrats nor the Republicans win both chambers, then whoever becomes president will struggle to pass legislation and will resort substantially to the use of Executive Orders.