There are three weeks left until the eagerly anticipated election day, with the whole world holding its breath. The electoral campaign has reached an intensity level that is hard to imagine, and more and more journalists, commentators, and opinion leaders are talking about possible violence.
Representatives of Kamala Harris announced recently that they have raised one billion dollars in donations since she entered the race, which is an exorbitant amount even by U.S. standards. The stakes of the political confrontation have reached unimaginable levels.
However, there is not the slightest hint of who the new President of the United States will be. In the seven swing states that will decide the winner, all calculations based on dozens of opinion polls show that the differences between Harris and Trump are within the margin of +/- 2%.
The one-billion-dollar threshold is more than what Donald Trump announced he had raised throughout the entire year 2024. He raised approximately 853 million dollars this calendar year together with the Republican Party, according to a tally of financial disclosures released by his campaign team.
New York Times, October 9, 2024
We are in a situation where anything can happen on election day, from a big victory for Trump to an equally significant one for Kamala Harris.
With three weeks left before the elections, things are changing rapidly and will be increasingly difficult to track through opinion polls. That's why in the final three weeks, candidates will throw everything into the fight and focus on the states, localities, and even streets where their teams are trying to persuade people to vote.
"Kamala Harris has made steady and gradual progress in the 10 days since the September 10 debate, but now the race has stabilized. She had a great launch, even at the Democratic convention and the televised debate, but in such a campaign, every time you pass one hurdle, another one rises. You always have to improve your game and adjust your strategy," explained David Axelrod, Barack Obama's campaign strategist.
In the last three weeks, Kamala Harris has dozens of electoral events in key states. Additionally, former President Obama has embarked on a tour of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, where he participates in rallies in support of Harris.
At the same time, the current Vice President of the United States is in Arizona speaking in front of tens of thousands of voters.
The magnitude of the adjustment varies slightly from state to state, depending on how much Trump's poll differs from the public polls there, but this is not particularly important. What matters more is that the adjusted data match the public polling averages in each state.
Nate Silver, U.S. polling expert
They Will Not Fight with Ballots, but with Fists
In a very strange manner, while his opponent is focused on key states, Donald Trump has scheduled two major electoral events in Coachella, Los Angeles County, California, on October 12, and at Madison Square Garden, New York, on October 27.
The organization of these two large-scale political shows seems to have no logic since Donald Trump has no chance at all of winning the electoral races in the states of California and New York.
Harris leads by 22 percent in California and by 14 in New York, according to polls.
Representatives of an American foundation, Veterans For Responsible Leadership, which advocates against Donald Trump, believe that the former American president is using the two events, funded with campaign money, to prepare for post-election protests in case he does not reach the White House.
"The MAGA movement was born in California as Republican radicals became increasingly extremist in their isolation, anger grew, and Trump wants to give extremists a reason to fight," a report published on X-Twitter by the organization states.
"They will not fight with ballots, but with fists. We know that Trump encourages political violence. The evidence provided by the special prosecutor for the January 6, 2021 trial showed that Trump knew about the violence and encouraged it. He is running, in part, to avoid the consequences of those legal violations. He will be violent again to avoid prison," the war veterans' post states.
Trump Supporters' Anger Higher than Four Years Ago
The clue provided by the cited organization would not have attracted anyone's attention if there had not been others suggesting that Donald Trump is preparing an extensive revolt across the entire U.S., in major cities, where his supporters will challenge the election results in case he loses.
These people from California and New York cannot vote in other states, so he is not going there to win their vote. He is trying to annoy them. To make them angry. And there is a precedent.
Veterans For Responsible Leadership
The events in New York and Los Angeles seem like an ideological warm-up, an action to mobilize his voters for what will follow after November 5.
"If everything is fair, I will gladly accept the results. If they are not, you have to fight for the country's rights," Donald Trump declared in an interview earlier this year.
It should be noted that the former American president has never acknowledged his defeat in 2020 against Joe Biden, making the contestation of the election's fairness the cornerstone of his electoral campaign.
Anger and frustration are at their highest levels among Donald Trump's supporters, and a defeat at the polls could provoke a revolt.
"Trump supporters are more likely to say they feel furious about a Harris victory on November 5 than they were in 2020 about a Biden victory (42% today, compared to 31% in 2020)," a study published by the Pew Research Center a few days ago states.
A Hero Behind Bars?
Journalists from "The Economist" publication, in a video analysis, believe that Donald Trump will not acknowledge the election results if he loses and will do everything possible to turn them in his favor.
The battle will be fought on three fronts: legal, political, and in the streets, according to the cited magazine.
Together with his lawyers, Donald Trump will try to open as many lawsuits as possible to challenge the election results in various jurisdictions, especially where local administration representatives are on his side.
Based on these lawsuits, he will try to push the legal battle towards the Supreme Court, where there is a conservative majority, with three of the judges appointed by Trump.
However, such a path has little chance of success, as does the political one, where he needs majorities in both houses of Congress to contest the election results, almost impossible to achieve.
What remains is the third path, that of protests, and even if he does not achieve his goal, Trump hopes to provoke a major crisis to carry forward his political vision, and for the MAGA movement not to disappear.
Another important stake for Trump through this strategy is to create high tensions so as not to end up in prison, to intimidate the judges through street pressure, and ultimately to turn his imprisonment into a heroic act.
After the tragic experience of January 6, 2021, U.S. authorities suggest that they will be more prepared than almost four years ago. There is another difference from that time: now, Donald Trump will knock on the White House door, not being inside as he was back then.