US Election: How Trump wins… maybe

The first 36 hours or so in the US always make for a weird adjustment. For a start there are the TV ads, which to the eye and ear of a Brit are initially difficult to distinguish from a spoof in The Simpsons.

Soothing voiceover: “Zanuflux… the answer to all your bowel problems.”

Cut to portly man in late middle age, wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap, sitting watching Fox News on television in a bar in Michigan: “Before my doctor recommended Zanuflux, I couldn’t watch Hillary Clinton or hear about her emails without something terrible happening to my underwear. Something very bad. Really bad. Now, I can watch television, eat shrimp and drink beer safely, with confidence. All thanks to Zanuflux.”

Urgent voice, very fast: “Zanuflux may cause seizures, heart attacks, cancer, impotence, incoherent rage, hatred of Mexicans, a desire to vote for Donald Trump, and certain death.”

But after a while, the Brit adjusts and the bemusement and bewilderment turns – in my case – to a recognition of the power and astonishing endurability of the American democratic machine for all its human imperfections.

I know. This has, to put it mildly, not been the greatest or most edifying US election cycle. But it is a lot more open, democratic and fair than anything put on by the Kremlin, whose surrogates have fought so hard to influence tomorrow’s result because they want a Trump victory and US decline. Or China’s elections. Oh, China doesn’t really have any.

The 2016 race is closing in an unusually tense fashion, with fear of worse trouble to come. Previous races have happened against a backdrop of political violence and protest, such as 1968, but this has been a humiliating spectacle for a great country in which the basic fundamentals of the democratic system do not seem to be accepted by one of the candidates, Donald Trump.

Can he win despite this, or perhaps because he offers a supposed “strong-man” Putin-esque alternative? Yes he can, although not easily.

The final polls give Clinton a lead that looks – I stress looks – solid enough. In the respected Real Clear Politics final average of polls, Clinton has a 2.3% lead.

But, as you will get sick of hearing in the next 48 hours, what matters beyond that is the electoral college, the winner takes all model designed by the founding fathers to balance state rights, the involvement of Congress and the popular vote. There are 538 electoral college votes, divided up according to how many Congressmen and Senators a state has. California has 55 votes for example, and a state with a low population such as Idaho only has 4. The District of Columbia is counted as a state for the purposes of the college. The winning post is 270 votes.

That means that what counts most are the swing states, such as Florida (29), North Carolina (15, won by Obama in 2008 and Romney in 2012) and Ohio (18) and Iowa (6).

Demographic change and immigration in some parts of the country has once again reshaped the electoral map in recent years, and made prediction a precarious business. Pollsters have also struggled to formulate reliable samples, it seems, because of the volatility, with some voters jumping backwards and forwards between candidates from week to week, as though this is a reality TV show in which one candidate or another is deemed to have had a bad or less bad week.

For many voters it simply isn’t like that, of course. They have priced in the media hysteria and will vote – or have already voted in early voting – for their typical party of choice regardless of whether or not they are enthusiastic. Although if they are voting states banked by either campaign it doesn’t really matter.

In this context, Trump can win, but his path to victory is narrow. If (a big if) he wins all the states that Romney won in 2012, totaling 206 votes, he then needs another 64 to get to 270. Florida plus Ohio equals 47 more votes in his column. That’s 17 short.

Trump then needs to put together some combination of states that went for Obama in 2012 – perhaps Iowa (6 votes), Wisconsin (10 votes) and Nevada (6). Clinton leads in the polls in all those states, but not by much, and the reliability of polling and volatility makes a shock feasible.

Then there is Michigan, scene of the usually polite Ronald Reagan’s magnificent eve of poll response to a heckler at a rally in the 1980 election: “Ah… shuddup.” This led to wild applause and a standing ovation.

In the last 24 hours, both campaigns have thrown the lot at Michigan. The Democrats have sent in Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, President Obama and Michelle Obama. That is not the act of a campaign that is wholly confident. The polls have tightened, and the fear for the Democrats is that Trump’s protectionist message has connected in a state that is heavily dependent on car manufacturers. The state has had a decent recovery since the slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, but fears about a potential slowdown and concerns about trade give Trump a way in. Team Clinton is trying to ensure it cuts off his path to victory, and having to do so in a state they thought was secure.

Still, remember that the combination of a Trump defeat in Florida and North Carolina – both possible – pretty much cuts off his path to 270, even if those other states come into play.

In essence, Trump needs it all to be aligned on the day, and he needs the polls in pretty much all of those states I mentioned to be wrong by a decent margin. His prospects – and the hopes of those in the Western world terrified by the the thought of a Trump presidency – rest on there being a magical surge, of the kind fans of underdog sports teams hope for and rarely get.

If it happens – unlikely but possible – it will turn American and global politics upside down. A phenomenal Democrat operation using the latest technology and subterranean techniques on voter ID, bolstering a struggling Clinton, will have been overturned and defeated by a bizarre candidate with no governing experience who has tapped into a howl of populist rage. Or, there is no magic hidden Trump surge and women voters and minority voters aided by a vastly superior machine come out to kick him in the crotch, bigly, as he would say. And the US gets its first female President.

See you on the other side…