Paula lugones
11/01/2020 8:34 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 11/01/2020 8:34 PM
The last days before elections in the United States are usually intense, but this year they are lived here with a drama never seen before,
with frantic trips of the candidates jumping like kangaroos for multiple acts
in the states that will be decisive in Tuesday's elections.
Joe Biden leads by 7.2% in the polls over Donald Trump, but the gap is reduced to 3.2%, almost the margin of error, in key states.
But, given the experience of four years ago, nobody trusts the numbers and that is why the campaigns are now red hot.
It is already known that in this country the candidate most voted by the people is not the president, but the one who wins the most electoral votes in each state.
It is a proportional system that guarantees that the most populous districts (such as California, Texas or New York) are not always the ones that always end up deciding the president.
This is how Hillary Clinton got almost more than 3 million votes in 2016 but ended up losing because Trump won by a few votes in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin.
That is why the final battle is then concentrated in a few places.
President Trump, who is 74 years old and has just recovered from coronavirus, traveled like lightning this Sunday more than 3,500 kilometers in five states: Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
This Monday he will continue jumping through those places and will add Pennsylvania, all districts where he hopes to consolidate his bases and add votes from the undecided.
Biden focused his visits on Pennsylvania on Sunday
, a state that Democrats lost just 1.2% of the vote ago and where today they are looking for a victory there.
This Monday he will add Ohio, but he will return to the state where he was born: he cannot afford to lose there.
President Donald Trump in Louisville, Kentucky.
AFP photo
The effort is not only of the candidates.
The vices, Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Kamala Harris, also roam the key states like ants and also have the help of other characters.
In the last week Biden added Barack Obama - the most popular figure, along with his wife Michelle from the Democratic party - and Trump sends his relatives in search of more votes: Donald Jr, Ivanka, Eric and even his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump,
are on tour on their own
and speak publicly to supporters of the New York patriarch.
The message that the president (and his relatives) carries to his followers in the final stretch of the campaign is pure Trumpism: it does not seek to appeal to unity or to independent or moderate sectors, but rather to its bases, as it did in the 2016 campaign. Now he says that
his Democratic rival is a radical socialist
who will lead the country towards a collapse of high taxes, environmental regulations that will eliminate jobs and towards a regime like the Cuban or the Venezuelan.
He continues to criticize scientists for the coronavirus and assures that Biden will "close the country" if he wins.
He continues to harangue his supporters as if he were a newcomer to power.
"We didn't go that far or fight that hard just to surrender the country to the Washington swamp," he roared in Michigan.
The pandemic has already caused more than 230,000 deaths in the United States and 9 million infected and in recent weeks there is a worrying outbreak in several of the Midwest states, where the candidates are on tour.
No wonder: in the tour that
Clarín
made these last weeks through those places, it
was very difficult to find people who used chinstraps
.
Thus, Trump's acts are massive, with thousands of people crammed in and without protection, a way of challenging Biden and the Democrats, who are much more concerned about the advance of the virus.
Biden, who wears a mask and organizes events in outdoor parking lots with social distance, accuses Trump of having “almost criminally minimized” the disease and of saying that the virus “is gone”, while the cases progress.
"More than 230,000 Americans have died of covid-19 and Donald Trump has given up trying to control the virus," he says, accusing him of promoting people to stop wearing masks.
In addition to managing the coronavirus crisis, in recent days his message has focused on criticizing the character of his rival,
his lack of empathy with citizens, his lack of leadership and the chaos that reigns in the White House .
He tries to show himself as a unit leader, capable of healing the wounds of the country and, above all, as a “normal”, reliable person, in the face of the tycoon's tumultuous personality.
The Democrat is more comfortable in the polls.
According to the RealClearPolitics average, it
is up 7.2% and 3.4% in key states
, but the polls were already very wrong in 2016 and they do not want surprises.
Biden focused on Pennsylvania, a crucial state where he has a 4.3% advantage in the polls, but where Trump's message of recent days was strong: the president assures that Biden is going to ban fracking, the extraction technique of oil and gas that is questioned by environmentalists and that is very important in that state.
Despite the fact that the Democrat has denied it, it is an issue that worries many people.
Experts
assure that people by now have their vote decided
and that these frantic tours serve to consolidate it and to encourage enthusiasm for people to go out to vote.
So far there is a strong participation, since some 90 million people have voted in advance, in person or by mail.
But the two candidates want no one to stay at home.
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