By our Foreign Correspondent
Washington: It was only five day for the American President’s election on Nov 5, it was very difficult to predicate who will win the election as both are neck and neck contrary to previous elections. In earlier US President’s elections, the opinion polls had shown clear lead for the possible winner in the elections. One will have to wait patiently for December 07 to know exactly cookie crumbled to which side either for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
The results of the recent opinion polls did not show clear lead to anybody. They are neck and neck Trump has been trying to capitalize on the support he has among men, focusing especially on bolstering his number among younger Black and Hispanic population.
Trump has had a 21 point lead over his rival Harris among young men (58 per cent v/s 37 per cent). But Harris had a 39 point lead over Trump among women (67 per cent v/s 28.1 per cent) in the Three New York Times/Siena College polls, as reported by the New York Times.
The leads are I n a similar direction, albeit of a smaller magnitude for all men and all women irrespective of age .The pattern is consistent with 2016 President’s election outcomes.
The Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton won the female vote by 15 points and Trump won the male vote by 11 per cent. The non-partisan Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter said, noting that variation is in the percentage of men supporting Democratic Ticket (41 per cent) in 2016, 45 per cent in 2020 and 43 per cent this year.
Bot candidates are, therefore squeezing out what support they can from segments that could get them over the finishing point. Trump with men and Harris with women, independent and undecided voters stressed the need for support.
However averages of national polls suggest that Harris has a slender lead of around 1.7 per cent with close to 48.1 per cent of the results as against Trump’s 46.4 per cent.
The Democratic candidate depends on Indian diaspora in the US estimated about 1.5 million and pins pious hope on them that they would en masse support Ms Harris.
A new Survey of Indian American Political attitude found that numbers of this group strongly supported the Democratic party, as they done historically, their attachment to the party has declined. The Indian American Attitude Survey (IAAS) found that the proportion of respondents identifying as democrats was 47 per cent, down from 56 per cent in 2020 as per the last survey.
The proportion of those identifying as independents (26 per cent) has increased while those identifying as Republicans has remained steady (21 per cent).
The decline in numbers favoring the Democratic Party has been offset, by a rise in Republican identifiers, yet the total number of those identifying with the ideological left has grown since 2020, the survey revealed.
The survey and its accompanying report was published by the Carnegic Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) and authored by Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav.
It was conducted online and partnership with YouGov by surveying 714 persons. It was held in between Sept 18 and October 15.
The survey also found that a majority of 60 per cent registered Indian American voters pan to vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. Only 32 per cent registered voters intended to vote for the Republican candidate.
In an opinion poll conducted by Reuters and published on Aug 29, Kamala Harris was leading by four points over Mr Trump. While Harris scored 45 per cent support, Trump had only 41 per cent.
Abortion and immigration also played an important role in the President’s election as the Democratic party supported abortion law and the Republican candidate were for deportingillegal immigrants from the US.
There are 24 per cent of Catholics in the USA. Pope Francis’ briefing to media in the middle of September that “one may choose the lesser of two evils”. When the pressmen asked who is the lesser of two evils ? That lady Kamala Harris or that gentlemen Donal trump, the pope replied “ I don’t know “.
Pope Francis was dead against abortion law and deporting of illegal immigrants from the US as also the Catholic Church. The votes of the Catholic community in the US President’s were determining factor in deciding the victory of the election
In the US president’s election popular votes were not the deciding factory in the victory of the election. Whatever may be the large majority of popular votes, it would immaterial. But the villain of the peace is the electoral college’s electors vote. In all there are 538 electors spread in the various States of America. It is essential for the winning candidate to gain at least 270 electoral college votes for a candidate to be declared as elected officially.
Early voting is also an important factor in President’s election. Both the Democratic and the Republican candidates have made fervent appeals to voters to cast their votes early, before Nov 05. In 2020, the percentage of early voters was 36.9 per cent and 43 per cent cast postal votes. The percentage of early voters in 2016 was only 17.5 per cent.
