Democrats are pushing their supporters to vote early to maximize Harris’s early advantage, fearing Republican media hype and a potential “blue party” backlash on Election Day.
Vice President Harris and her supporters have been traveling across the country this week, focusing on key battleground states where early voting has begun or is about to begin. Her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, traveled to North Carolina on the first day of early voting there, while her husband, Doug Emhoff, was in Georgia urging voters to show up to the polls.
Surprisingly, the Republican Party has also made a similar move, despite the fact that presumptive nominee Donald Trump and many other Republican candidates have criticized some early voting methods, including the widespread use of ballot drop boxes, for fear of voter fraud. The former president’s most recent visit to Georgia on October 15 coincided with the start of early voting in the state. In a recent social media post, Trump also urged Arizonans to vote “immediately” the following week.
Although it has little impact on the race for the White House, early voting allows campaigns to track who has already voted and focus on undecided voters, according to Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. This helps both candidates increase their chances of winning in a tight race where the final result can be decided by just a few votes.
Electoral College Problem
One of the reasons why the race for the White House is so unpredictable is the electoral college system. The presidential candidate who wins at least 270 electoral votes, or more than 50% of the 538 electoral votes, wins the presidency. In 48 states, the winner of a statewide election receives all of that state’s electoral votes. In Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who receives the most votes in each congressional district wins one electoral vote from that district, and a statewide victory awards that candidate two more electoral votes.
Neither Trump nor Harris have a clear advantage over their opponents based on state-by-state data. In the most recent CNN tally, Harris starts with 225 electoral votes to Trump’s 219. Ninety electoral votes from seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) and one electoral vote in Nebraska’s 2nd District are still up for grabs.
For Kamala Harris, the shortest path to the Oval Office is to win the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If she loses the Sun Belt (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina), the Vice President will have to detour through at least three of the five Great Lakes states, reach Nebraska’s 2nd District and win support from other states that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.
Meanwhile, victories in three Eastern states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia – are likely to give Mr. Trump a second term in the White House. The President’s campaign has also “locked” its targets on these three important battlegrounds, with about a quarter of the campaign’s $435 million in advertising spending going to these regions.
In particular, Pennsylvania – the most important swing state for both parties – is stuck in a statistical tie. The average poll of support in this battleground state with 19 electoral votes shows the gap between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris is less than one percentage point. This is the closest gap ever between two major party candidates in the most important race in the United States in at least the past half century.
Unpredictable signals from opinion polls
The tight race has been evident since the vice president officially entered the race in early July. The Trump-Harris pair have never led their opponents in any of these states by more than 5 percentage points — a gap large enough for observers to make a “credible prediction” about their chances of winning.
“Every time there is a good sign for Trump, there is another good sign for Harris. This fact makes me not really sure about the result, even though the election is only about 2 weeks away,” CNN's American political writer Harry Enten commented.
Many Republicans say that the pre-election polls “don’t tell you anything.” In fact, in the 2016 US election, Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 points, but won the electoral vote 304-227 thanks to narrow victories in many states. If history repeats itself, he is likely to easily win with more than 300 electoral votes.
However, the risk of the former President losing the election comes from within the party itself, as there are still some Republicans who openly oppose Mr. Trump. According to the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll in Pennsylvania, the rate of support for Ms. Harris among Democratic voters is overwhelming the rate of support for Mr. Trump among Republican voters, making the state more likely to be “dyed blue” on the electoral map this year.
Trump is courting Arab-American voters in Michigan who disagree with the Democratic Party’s policies on the Gaza war, while Harris is focusing on white-collar, middle-class and especially female voters. Overall, while not the most high-profile issue right now, reproductive rights are seen as a potential Democratic trump card.
More than two-thirds of voters who are determined to vote in November believe this is the “most important election of their lives,” including 72 percent of Trump supporters and 70 percent of Harris supporters. Ironically, the one-third of undecided voters could decide the outcome of this year’s race.
Diep Thao/VOV.VN According to CNN, The Hill
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