Gerry Lynch: The two reasons why Donald Trump will win the US presidential election

Donald Trump is running neck and neck with Kamala Harris in the polls, so if this is an underestimation of his support - as has happened in the past with polls - it looks like Trump will win the popular vote, and win the Electoral CollegeDonald Trump is running neck and neck with Kamala Harris in the polls, so if this is an underestimation of his support - as has happened in the past with polls - it looks like Trump will win the popular vote, and win the Electoral College
Donald Trump is running neck and neck with Kamala Harris in the polls, so if this is an underestimation of his support - as has happened in the past with polls - it looks like Trump will win the popular vote, and win the Electoral College
​Simply put, there are two reasons why Donald Trump is now the clear favourite to win next week’s presidential election: the polls and the campaign.

In his two previous presidential campaigns, the polls significantly understated Trump’s actual result.

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This year, for the first time, the polls do not put Trump well behind in the final days, but instead show him running neck and neck with Kamala Harris.

If the past tendency of polls underestimating his support continues, we would expect Trump to win the popular vote for the first time ever, and to win the Electoral College comfortably. I think it is that simple.

Rev Gerry Lynch is an Anglican minister and former executive director of the Alliance PartyRev Gerry Lynch is an Anglican minister and former executive director of the Alliance Party
Rev Gerry Lynch is an Anglican minister and former executive director of the Alliance Party

The reason why this simple presumption might be wrong is that the polls show this election is not a simple rerun of 2016 and 2020.

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In particular, there are many fairly conservative, upscale, white women who’ve voted for Trump twice but will vote for Harris this time, with the overturning of the Roe-v-Wade decision guaranteeing nationwide access to legal abortion being a significant driver of this shift.

At the same time, there are young working-class men of all races who voted for Clinton and Biden but will vote for Trump this time, seemingly alienated by the progressive message in the culture wars.

In this scenario, the Democrats retain some hope as well-off white women are a group who vote reliably in big numbers, while younger working-class men tend on average to be less diligent about casting their ballots.

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Yet I think Trump remains the clear favourite, due to the key issues for US voters and the candidates.

Americans have for several years now cited inflation as the most important issue facing their country; in recent months, immigration has surged to second place.

Basic groceries and rent are much more expensive than they were four years ago, while both legal and illegal immigration to the USA has increased significantly.

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Democrats, and not just Harris at the top of the ticket, face an election environment in 2024 where the electorate’s top two issues are among those where they are least trusted.

As for candidates, while Trump’s manifest and grievous flaws are the subject of constant comment, they have long ago been “priced in” by voters.

Harris was crowned as heir presumptive for the ailing Biden even though insiders have long known she was a poor campaigner with a weak record as vice president; the electorate have now had the chance to see that every day since July.

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That the Democrats anointed her rather than running a competitive process to select a candidate under emergency rules in the four weeks between Joe Biden’s withdrawal and the Democratic National Convention is an error that might haunt the party for years.

All this followed several years of most of the media lying to cover up for Biden’s progressing senility in a way that was laughably obvious.

The Democrats tried to behave like the old East German Information Ministry in a country with a rambunctiously free press and open internet; this was never going to end well.

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When voters decry the spiralling prices and immigration and endless official lies of Biden’s America, they are told that Trump is literally Hitler.

No doubt this vindictive, angry, vain, and intolerant man, transparently unfit to hold the most important elective office in the world, has the psychological raw material of a frightening tyrant.

But the USA in 2024 is not Germany in 1933. The state which Hitler took over had barely been a country for 60 years, with political institutions only 14 years old, introduced after catastrophic defeat in war and characterised by repeated economic collapses and incessant street violence between extremist parties.

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In contrast, the USA and its political institutions have been in place for almost a quarter of a millennium; despite its supposed current crisis, the country remains the world’s political colossus with unmatched economic dynamism and military might.

Those deeply embedded American political institutions locate much power in states and cities, and most of the most important of these will remain in Democratic hands regardless of the identity of the next President.

It is in these cities and states that the Democrats have the means to rebuild should Trump win.

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To do that, however, they will have to address the question they have refused to face honestly for the last eight years: why do so many Americans have so little faith in the post-1960s political and cultural order, a world that the Democrats are the most visible manifestation of, that they will turn to any a vehicle, even one as manifestly horrid as Trump, that promises to truly change the political script?

l Rev Gerry Lynch is an Anglican minister and former executive director of the Alliance Party

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