Ben Lowry: Whites in America, like unionists in Northern Ireland, feel increasingly insecure, so Donald Trump could yet win

Plenty of Americans adore their current president, of course, as is obvious from his rallies. But it was clear to me in 2016, in Florida and North Carolina, that about half of Mr Trump’s voters are not fans.

Since 1988, in my teens, I have tried to be in the US, my birth nation, for big elections (2000, 2008 etc). If not for Covid I would be there now.

In recent elections in Northern Ireland, UK and US, I have done mini exit polls in weather vane polling stations. I do so for two reasons: for an early snapshot of voting intentions and to talk to people for insights into why they vote as they do.

Such micro polls are far too small to be reliable (and led me, at a marginal polling station in the 2014 Scottish referendum, to think nationalists might have clinched it). But they do give strong clues.

Elmgrove in East Belfast has since 2010 let me know, before party canvassers, who is likely to win the seat (that year I feared my findings were wrong because they had Naomi Long level with Peter Robinson – but they were right, she won).

In 2008 I travelled through US swing states as Barack Obama was trying to become the first African American president. En route to his home state, Illinois, I diverted to Indiana next door, due to inklings he was doing unexpectedly well there.

In Perry Township, Indiananpolis, my exit poll had the Republican Party’s John McCain 10% below normal for his party there. It suggested Obama would win the state, as he did. He also won the overall US race easily.

In 2016 my straw poll in St Matthews, Raleigh, North Carolina showed voting following typical patterns for that location, and pointed to a tight race (as it was overall: Trump won narrowly, but Hillary Clinton got more votes across the US).

The sense I got that day (and in Florida before) was a lack of enthusiasm for Mr Trump among many people who admitted voting for him.

James Stone, a World War II veteran, 92, told me: “I don’t like [Clinton’s] personality ... I was wary about [Trump] a bit if it came to pushing the button – I think he would do it a little hastily. But, hey, I didn’t have another choice.”

Such wariness for Trump was outweighed by dislike for Mrs Clinton and her Democratic Party .

It was like tribal Northern Ireland.

In Fermanagh & South Tyrone in the 1980s/90s, when SDLP and Sinn Fein both stood for MP, the former sometimes got half the nationalist vote. But in a simple choice between a unionist and an IRA hunger striker in 1981, almost all moderate nationalists voted for the latter.

Or consider Mid Ulster where in 1983 UUP, DUP, SDLP and SF all polled well. But after the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement, when Willie McCrea was the sole unionist candidate, almost all UUP votes went to him.

The joint UUP-DUP 1983 vote of 23,240, when unionist voters had a choice, was similar to 23,695 votes and 23,004 votes Rev McCrea got in 1986 and 1987 as the only unionist.

America is less polarised than that but might be heading that way.

It has of course always been a nation of divisions but there is a growing white affiliation with the Republican Party.

Whites still float between it and the Democratic Party, but now 60%-70% of white men vote Republican.

This reflects a sense of insecurity among whites that Protestants have long felt in Northern Ireland.

Non hispanic whites were 85% of US voters in 1988 when I stood outside the Boston home of the Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential nominee Mike Dukakis (where he hosted his party rival, the black leader Jesse Jackson).

Now whites are 67% of voters.

Last year they became a minority of Americans aged 16 and below.

My view of Trump has not budged since the first 2015 Republian Party debate. He is as awful a president as it was clear he would be. I marvel at evangelical support for a man whose daily conduct is the antithesis of Christian decency.

But it is easy to understand the yearning in America for firm leaders who will defend the values of a great civilisation, even if Trump is not fit to play that role. Race riots will have bolstered that yearning.

Brexiteers will sympathise with the tribal loyalty many Americans feel to Trump, because he was a rare global fan of Brexit. And unionists will too, after Joe Biden parroted Irish grievances about Britain.

A Biden presidency alongside a Republican Party-controlled congress to constrain him is one palatable, but unlikely, outcome.

Polls show Biden is clear favourite on Tuesday. Yet I was not surprised by either Brexit or the first Trump win, and nor will I be if the president scrapes a re-election.

• Ben Lowry: A remarkable account of the late Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava by her godson

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

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