USA: photo finish

At this point in the race, it is also a tradition to speculate about a possible “October surprise”, a scandal revealed at the last minute

Exactly three weeks before the most important presidential elections in recent history in the US, it is practically impossible to predict the result. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are not only tied in popular vote preferences, but they are also tied in the so-called swing states.

I won’t bore you, dear readers, with the baroque details of the American electoral system. Suffice it to say that in what calls itself the most important democracy in the world, the winner is not the one who gets the most votes, but the one who wins enough state delegates. Indirect election, then, in which everything really depends on the results in 7 entities, without caring much about what happens in the other 43.

Nor do I intend to dwell on other issues that purists might find relevant, or transcendental, such as campaign financing, access to the media or the role of social networks. Here only the very brief note that Harris’s campaign has raised more than a billion dollars since she was proclaimed candidate, or the open proselytism of Elon Musk (owner and avid user of X) in favor of Trump.

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Let’s talk a little about other things that could tip the balance in favor of one or the other: the Latino and African-American vote, for example, which shows surprising (at least for me) openness and sympathy for the nativist and ethnocentric discourse of Trump and his running mate. Or the terrible dissatisfaction among young college voters and the Muslim population with the Biden/Harris government’s unrestricted support for Israel, and which could tip the balance in Michigan, for example. Or the paradox that those same segments could end up leaning in favor of Trump, whose position on the Middle East conflict is even more extreme.

At this point in the race, it is also traditional to speculate about a possible “October surprise,” a scandal that breaks or is revealed at the last minute to try to derail one or both rivals. This seems unlikely now, since Trump would only need some scandal or intergalactic crime, and the Harris/Waltz duo seems a bit bland for big scandals, although you never know.

And, needless to say, the fact that Trump’s support base, his hard vote, is irreversibly committed to him, regardless of revelations.

Finally, let’s also think about how the result will impact Mexico, now the US’s first commercial partner and possible beneficiary of even bigger disputes between Washington and China or Russia, without minimizing our own.

There are three weeks left, and bets are accepted.

BY GABRIEL GUERRA CASTELLANOS

GGUERRA@GCYA.NET

@GABRIELGUERRAC

Nota publicada originalmente en El Heraldo de México.