Two days before their highly anticipated televised duel, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain neck and neck in new polls released on Sunday, September 8, making the US presidential election on November 5 more undecided than ever.
This latest round of opinion polls shows that the Republican billionaire, who presents himself as the defender of debased Americans and victims of inflation, may yet return to being president of the United States in January 2025, despite his legal troubles and the chaos surrounding his departure from the White House in 2021.
The Democratic field remobilized around Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris, who remobilized the Democratic camp after her late entry into the campaign to replace Joe Biden, could also win, according to these polls.
Nationally, Donald Trump, 78, leads the vice president of the United States by just one point (48% to 47%), according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted from September 3 to 6, a gap too narrow to indicate a trend.
Especially since the US elections are decided by indirect universal suffrage and everything at stake is concentrated in a handful of key states that are highly contested to obtain the majority of the electoral college that will designate the future president.
However, here too the suspense is total according to the same poll: Kamala Harris, who has gone from being a faded vice-president to an assertive candidate in just a few weeks, is slightly ahead of Donald Trump in Wisconsin (50 to 47), Michigan (49/47) and Pennsylvania (49/48). The candidates are tied (48/48) in Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.
According to a separate CBS News/YouGov poll, also conducted Sept. 3-6 and released Sunday, the election is up for grabs in Michigan (50/49 for Harris), Wisconsin (51/49) and Pennsylvania (50/49).
“Superhuman”
Uncertainty is also heightened by caution surrounding poll results, which underestimated the vote for Trump in 2016, when the billionaire businessman and former reality TV star upset all predictions by beating Hillary Clinton, the overwhelming favourite.
The only thing that is certain is that the first televised debate is eagerly awaited, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Philadelphia, considered the cradle of American democracy, in the key state of Pennsylvania, and broadcast by ABC.
The exercise was fatal, on June 27, for Joe Biden, who seemed so diminished that he had to throw in the towel less than a month later.
Donald Trump faces this duel after having achieved an important legal victory: the postponement until November 26, that is to say, after the vote, of the pronouncement of his sentence in the case of the hidden payments to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign for which he was found guilty at the end of May by twelve New York juries, a historic first for a former president of the United States.
American voters in uncertainty
The decision, handed down on Friday by trial judge Juan Merchán, means that American voters will not know, when they put their ballots in the ballot box, what punishment their hypothetical future president will receive.
One of the topics of debate will be the attitude of Donald Trump, accustomed to excesses and verbal provocations, who continues to claim without evidence that the 2020 elections are tainted with fraud and were stolen from him.
On Saturday, on his Truth Social platform, he warned that once back in the White House, he would impose “long prison sentences” on anyone he believes plans to “cheat” in November.
“It takes almost superhuman focus and discipline to take on Donald Trump in a debate,” Transportation Secretary and Harris supporter Pete Buttigieg predicted on CNN.
Beyond how she will address the attacks, Kamala Harris is also expected to take concrete steps, although she has been criticized for the lack of details in her proposals.
Source: BFM TV
