In two weeks, Americans will have voted. Whether they will have picked a president remains to be seen.
In an election year with more twists and turns than most, we should be ready for the unexpected.
Remember, just three months ago Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee and Kamala Harris was his running mate. The unprecedented palace coup carried out by senior Democrat operatives and donors changed the race fundamentally.
Just two months ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had sought to be the nominee for the Democrats but was blocked, announced he would endorse Republican Donald Trump in all swing states. RFK Jr. has been working to get Trump elected president ever since along with the likes of former Congresswoman and Democrat presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard.
Then there were the assassination attempts on Trump, an almost forgotten aspect of this campaign.
Trump was shot in the ear on July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania. The bullet narrowly missed killing him with a direct shot to the head, only because he turned to look at a chart showing immigration numbers.
Since that event, where Trump was injured, there have been two more attempts. The Secret Service found a gunman in waiting at a Florida golf course while a man with a gun was recently intercepted trying to gain access to a Trump event in California.
Given that list of events over the past several months, having something momentous happen between now and Nov. 5, or even on voting day, wouldn’t be out of place.
Were the election held right now, it looks like Trump would take the White House, the Republicans would narrowly win in the Senate, and control of Congress would come down to who wins in a few remaining toss-up districts.
The average of polls calculated by the aggregator Real Clear Polling shows Harris with a slight lead over Trump on the national stage – 49.3% of voters favouring her to 48.5% for him. In the key battleground states that will decide this election, Trump is leading and he’s gaining momentum as the race comes to a close.
Trump is currently leading in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three states that Harris needs to take in order to win the White House. Trump only needs Pennsylvania if he takes the southern swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona, which are all leaning his way at this point.
If Trump were to take all of those states, he would secure 312 electoral college votes, well above the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. Trump won 304 electoral college votes when he won the presidency in 2016, Joe Biden took 306 when he won in 2020.
For Americans, it appears to be coming down to the economy and whether they were better off four years ago under Trump than they are now under Biden.
Food was cheaper, housing was cheaper, the economy felt like it was doing better for the average American as compared to now. The inflation rate may have cooled off but that doesn’t mean prices have come down — it just means they are rising at a slower rate than before.
Bottom line is that groceries cost a lot more now than they did back in 2020.
One shocking stat from Maricopa County in Arizona where Phoenix and Mesa are located is that housing prices have increased by 47% over the last four years. In 2016, Maricopa County backed Trump, and he won Arizona, in 2020 they backed Biden.
This election, that county appears to be going back to Trump, and affordability and the economy are the big issue.
There is still time for things to change in a campaign that has seen more change than most but at this point, the momentum is with Trump and those fries at the drive thru as the 2024 presidential race nears the finish line.