Interestingly, Donald Trump addressed a rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden around a week prior to the election. Although almost no Republican expects to win on deep blue turf like New York, it may help some Republican incumbents hold their Congressional seats.
Trump has visited places in other Democratic-dominated states, such as Chicago in Illinois for an economic forum recently, Long Island in New York state for a rally in the summer and the Coachella Valley in California last month.
A president benefits from having a majority in the US Congress, but unless he is sure of winning, why would he waste valuable campaign time outside swing states?
Indeed, pollsters have understated Trump’s support in the last two elections. Also, Democrats lost the White House despite leading the popular vote in both 2000 and 2016, highlighting the peculiarity of the US electoral college system.
The conservative support base has historically been underestimated by pollsters. In the UK, ever since John Major’s re-election in 1992, it has been referred to as the ‘Shy Tory’ factor in Britain. Compared to Labour voters, Conservatives are thought to be less inclined to show their allegiance.
The success of the Republican Party in the US has also been analysed using this approach. In this case, the ‘Shy Trump supporter’ factor refers to people’s reluctance to reveal their support for Trump, who is a controversial figure.
More recently, David Cameron’s victory in the UK election of 2015 revealed a segment of the electorate dubbed ‘Lazy Labour voters,’ who told pollsters they intended to vote Labour but didn’t turn up to cast ballots. How many ‘Lazy Democrats’ does America have?
Again, on election day, some voters will vote against a minority candidate, such as a person of colour, while telling pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for that person.
This is the ‘Bradley effect,’ named after Tom Bradley, an African-American who led the polls heading into the 1982 California gubernatorial race, but lost.
When Colin Powell’s name was mentioned as a potential 1996 Republican presidential contender in 1995, Earl Graves, an American entrepreneur and founder of Black Enterprise magazine, warned Powell about the Bradley effect that had been observed in numerous elections.
However, some observers contend that the Bradley effect has been losing force in recent US elections. Instead, the idea of a ‘reverse Bradley effect’ was put forth after African-American Barack Obama defeated his Caucasian opponent in 2008 and again in 2012.
There’s also the so-called ‘Chisholm effect,’ named after Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to the US Congress in 1968, who made an unsuccessful bid to secure the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972.
Decades later, the term ‘Hillary effect’ was coined to reflect the power of American patriarchal culture after Obama defeated Hillary Clinton, a Caucasian woman, in the 2008 Democratic primary.
As a political phenomenon, Trump’s rise is an outlier. He paid little heed to political correctness along his path to the White House in 2016. During his campaign, Trump branded Mexicans “rapists” and made other negative comments about immigrants.
This time, he accused immigrants in Ohio of consuming people’s pets with no evidence to back his claim. Trump has constantly been laying the blame for crime and a growing number of migrants at the feet of his Democratic rival. And ‘white power’ extremists have always heard these racist dog whistles loud and clear.
Nearly 9,500km away from Washington, DC, Tel Aviv might be shaping this election considerably. The Joe Biden administration has been unwavering in its support of Israel, splintering the Democratic base, with some voters—particularly some Arab Americans—turning against the party, put off by Kamala Harris’s statements in support of Israel.
Some Arab-American and other Muslim voters in swing states like Michigan might choose to stay at home. Although Joe Biden received 59% of the Arab-American vote in 2020, Harris and Trump were nearly deadlocked with 41% and 42% of Arab voters, respectively, according to a September poll by the Arab American Institute.
But according to a survey by the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the Jewish vote is forecast to mostly follow the same trend as previous elections over the decades.
As the final voting day drew close, surveys began to show Trump steadily gaining, although some of his gains may have been neutralized by ill-judged remarks on Puerto Rico made by a comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally.
But then, all these surveys and estimates may be flawed. From 36% in 1997 to 6% in 2018, the Pew Research Center’s telephone surveys saw a sharp decline in response rates. In 2022, Nate Cohn of the New York Times stated that his surveys had a 0.4% response rate.
High non-response rates generate significant problems of sample representativeness even if statistical adjustments are made for it. Voters who respond to questions on their choice might behave very differently from those who don’t.
Lastly, if a close ballot count is dragged to court, former candidate Al Gore could attest to how complex the story might get. Trump seems confident of one of history’s most remarkable political comebacks.
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, renowned pollster Nate Silver said that his “gut says” Trump will prevail; according to his model, Trump’s chances of winning were 53.1%.
Nevertheless, nothing is guaranteed, as the Bradley, Chisholm or Hillary effects might all be reversed. The US is no longer a Caucasian country. It’s a country where Kamala Harris can aspire to script history as well.
