Elections in the United States, live | Maximum equality in the last week of the campaign. usa elections

What the surveys say (I): Maximum national equality

Just over a week before in-person appointments to vote, and millions of Americans having already exercised their right to vote, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in a technical tie. Although the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregator puts the Democrat 1.4 points ahead of her Republican rival, some polls published in recent days, such as TIPP Insights on Saturday, point to overall parity, with 48% of the vote for each candidate.

This is not good news for Harris: although it is possible, there is little chance that, having lost in the popular vote at the federal level, she could prevail in the electoral votes. The trend in recent elections is exactly the opposite: Democrats get better results in the popular vote than in the Electoral College, which ultimately tips the balance in favor of one candidate or the other.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton received almost three million more votes than Donald Trump – thanks mainly to her comfortable victories in California, New York and Illinois – but lost clearly to the Republican in the Electoral College: 232 to 306. , with minor losses in states that typically support Democrats, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin. The reason for this difference is the electoral system, which gives all the electoral votes to the winner in each state – except Maine and Nebraska – regardless of the advantage received.