The writer is in Australia.
Well, there’s little more than a week until the most important election in most of our lives. And yes, I know we live in Australia and this is a U.S. election but if we want to turn back the tides of mass illegal immigration, suicidal Net Zero policies and the enervating of Western culture from within then the U.S. is ground zero. And we need Trump to beat the most left-wing Democrat candidate ever in Californian Kamala. Joe Biden turned out to be the second most Lefty Presidential Democrat ever, despite selling himself as a centrist in 2020. That’s not least because he took office and immediately repealed over 90 of Trump’s Executive Orders that were making the border more secure – in Biden’s first year numbers went up 10 times on a yearly basis. Somewhere between 10 and 20 million illegal aliens have illicitly come into the U.S. under Biden/Harris. And a good chunk of those were not from South America but from the Middle East and China. Then there were the culture war sallies by Team Biden on the transgender athletes in women’s sports front, wokeness in the military, the many attacks on free speech. And don’t forget the steroidal spending under the laughably misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” that has made the dollar you had in your hand the day Biden was sworn in worth less than 80 cents today. Real wages have not come close to keeping up with that sort of inflation. (To be balanced though, the U.S. economy is still doing better than ours what with our six straight quarters of per-person-GDP-decline recession. What with our woeful productivity numbers. What with our democratic world’s near highest electricity prices that back in 2005 were the lowest. What with our also world’s virtually highest minimum wage laws. Put bluntly, yes it is much easier to start a business, grow a business, attract capital and top people, and all the rest in America than here, Sleepy Joe’s administration notwithstanding – which is why all Australians should be mightily grateful to the mining sector and farmers in this country who deliver world class results.)
As I write this the betting markets have the Don at a 60% implied chance of winning the election and the polls look good. That’s about a week before many of you will be reading this. If the trends continue as they have been then, fingers crossed, Trump will be doing even better as you cast your eyes down this column.
One thing readers should remember is that the U.S. does not have a French-style popular vote election. It has a federalism-inspired Electoral College (‘EC’) election. You have to win states. And all but two U.S. States award all of their EC votes or delegates on a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all basis. Win Pennsylvania by a single vote and you get all its EC votes. To win, a candidate needs 270 EC votes. And yes, bizarrely, it is possible – though very unlikely – to end up with a 269-269 final result, throwing the election over to the House. The number of EC votes a state has is linked to its population. So the four biggest states with their EC votes are California (54), Texas (40), Florida (30) and New York (28). The Dems are near-on certain to take California and New York. And thanks to the brilliant Governor Ron DeSantis and his work in turning Florida from a swing state into a near certain Republican one, Trump will take Florida and Texas. That puts the Dems up 12 with 46 States to go. And barring a total landslide by one of the two candidates, only seven of those other 46 are in play. Those are the so-called “swing states”. They are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.
The most important by far is Pennsylvania. Why? Well, first off Pennsylvania is the fifth biggest population state in the entire U.S. It has 19 EC votes. You’ll have to trust me on this but if you could ask for the results of only one of the 50 U.S. States in advance, before guessing who would win the election, then you should ask who won Pennsylvania. If Trump takes Pennsylvania he is a big favourite to win the election. If Harris takes it then she’s a solid favourite to win (because Trump has more paths through the EC than does Harris). Of those seven, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania by themselves win it for Trump. Of course, the three midwestern states have moderately similar demographics and so who wins Pennsylvania has a good chance of taking Wisconsin and Michigan too. But the fact remains that Pennsylvania is very important. It has the two big cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It has lots of medium-size towns. It’s got more small town and rural voters than most other states.
I have been saying in these pages for almost two years that I thought Trump would win and have made bets for a good bottle of wine with four different friends around the world – one Canadian judge, a top Australian journalist, a very senior Canadian lawyer and an academic. All but the last of those are Right-of-centre but don’t like Trump. Their line has been that too many people dislike the Don and simply will not vote for him come what may. I’ve said they’re wrong. Trump’s obvious bravery, his policy track record, his willingness to actually fight and try to do things in office, the total disaster of the Biden Presidency and the sheer dislike many Americans had for the weaponisation of the Department of Justice would get Trump over the line. And let me say that while I’ve thought that for a long while or I wouldn’t have made the bets, I’m more confident right now than I’ve ever been. I now think it’ll be the trifecta – Republicans take the Presidency, the Senate and (most in doubt) the House of Representatives.
I’ve also said the key to this election is whether a legacy media that a recent Syracuse University study showed had only 3.4% of journalists who identified as Republicans (and not all of those would support Trump) could get their preferred candidate Kamala over the line. Could they suppress positive Trump stories enough?Help hide Harris enough? Bogusly ‘fact-check’ Trump enough? Make Kamala seem as though she had an IQ over 75 enough? Suppress news of the massive insurge of illegal aliens enough? Keep black men on Team Dem enough? Focus on the boorish and crass side of Trump enough? Flat out lie enough?
“No”, has been my view from the start. Trust in the legacy media in the U.S. is at an all-time low. The most recent study showed that only 31% of Americans have any sort of trust in them at all, even a lukewarm variety. And for Republicans that number is basically in single digits. Yes, in part the disgraceful, unsceptical, incurious, government PR-type performance of the legacy media during Covid added to this warranted distrust. But the fact remains, I just didn’t think the legacy media could do it in the U.S., could sufficiently move the dial in their favoured direction, any more than they could do it here with the Voice.
In a little more than a week we will see if I’ll have four really nice bottles of wine winging their way to me. Or whether I’m just a loser.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.
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