Last week, just around the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was making his feted and celebrated visit to the United States of America, a couple of politicians from that country happened to be in Mumbai. Jeff Morris, a Democrat, and Joyce Peppin, a Republican, are elected representatives at the state level, the equivalent of Members of the Legislative Assembly here. Their presidential election race is hogging headlines globally, what with the shenanigans of Republican candidate Donald Trump (there are hoardings of him up in Mumbai at this moment) and the clashes in the Democrat party between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Who becomes US president is a matter of interest and concern to the whole world. It is, after all, the world’s sole superpower. The visiting US politicians offered some clues on the way the race is going.
A coalition of people who feel disenfranchised have powered Bernie Sanders, according to the Democrat from Washington, Mr Morris. A similar group of blue-collar workers and the unemployed is powering Trump, he reckons. He sees Trump’s rise to the Republican nomination as akin to a hostile takeover of that party. This is not refuted by the Minnesota Republican, Ms Peppin, who says she had supported Marco Rubio for the nomination. She is uncomfortable with Trump’s position on several issues, and says people are waiting for him to step away from the theatrical and start talking about actual policy.
There are strong constituencies against Trump and Hillary Clinton, Mr Morris points out. The pressure from Sanders has pushed Clinton towards the Left, according to Ms Peppin, and she suspects that many Sanders supporters may not come out to vote at all if Clinton tries to move away from their positions on issues.
So which way is it going to go
Well, the elections themselves are in November, which is still some way off. Before that, the candidates will have to try and consolidate the different strands of their respective parties behind themselves.
At some point, the choice will come down to two candidates, and voters will have to choose one of the two, Ms Peppin says. She reckons that Trump has a chance, though she feels Rubio would have been a stronger candidate against Hillary.
Nonetheless, the parties will work for their respective nominees in the end, she says.
The fact that Trump is not a career politician helps him to an extent, according to Ms Peppin. Trump’s background as a “somewhat successful” businessman has also boosted his chances, Mr Morris says, but at some point people are going to start asking him how he proposes to get to the outcomes he has been talking about. For instance, how will be build that wall on the border with Mexico
“He will build the wall and send the bill to Mexico. Simple”, jokes Ms Peppin.
It’s possible that many of the less thoughtful voters in the US may not be too interested in the details anyway.
The US famously has “Red states” which traditionally vote Republican, and “Blue states” that traditionally vote Democrat. There are also a few “Purple states” that have mixed voting records. The state of Minnesota where Ms Peppin is the House majority leader – the equivalent of the leader of the majority party in a state legislature in India – is one that votes Republican at the local level and Democrat at the national level. It is, in that sense, a “Purple” state.
It’s not a state Ms Peppin expects Trump to win.
The American presidential election is an indirect one, somewhat like the Indian presidential election. Each state has a certain number of electors who represent the state in the presidential poll. The key difference with India is that all the electors of a given state go to the winning candidate. For instance, California has 55 electors. If Hillary wins California by even one vote, all the 55 seats go in her kitty.
The halfway mark is 270 seats. There are relatively fewer Blue states; most of America other than the east and west coast are at present Red states, or swing states. However, California, on the US west coast, traditionally a Blue state, has way more seats than any other state — 55. Texas, the biggest Red state, is second with 38. The third big state that has a clear preference is New York on the east coast with 29 seats. It’s also a Blue state.
The Democrats will therefore start the race with an advantage. Even though they have fewer states, those states have more electoral college seats. Trump will have to come from behind and win the swing states, which are not committed either way, in order to win. The biggest of these is Florida with 29 seats, which had brought George W. Bush – in a disputed vote – to power in 2000. In the last two elections, the state has voted for the Democrat nominee and incumbent president, Barack Obama. The contest in Florida this time around is fairly evenly poised, according to analysis by statistician Nate Silver’s organisation FiveThirtyEight published December 2015, which gave a 1 percent lead to Hillary over Trump in the state at that time.
The electoral outcome will be decided by what the candidates do in the months from now until November. Hillary Clinton seems to be ahead, but not by much, and if Trump is able to close the gap, the final result may well depend on what is in the news in the days leading up to the vote, and which party is able to get more of its supporters to cast their ballots on voting day.
There is a chance that Trump may knock himself out before that by shooting his mouth off once too often, or some explosive new revelation may torpedo Hillary. If both candidates are left standing till the end, this election may go down to the wire.
At present, the possibility of a Trump presidency cannot be dismissed.
