Sin Chew Daily

November 4 Malaysian time, Americans will come out to vote for their 46th president.

The US presidential election has always been the most watched election for people across the world other than the elections of their own countries.

The US president is sen as the most powerful man in the world, with absolute say in global politics, economy, trade, military, diplomacy, technology, environment and resource distribution, among other things. For a leader of a superpower generating almost a quarter of the globe's GDP, every move and every decision he makes will affect much of the world.

During his past four years in office, Donald Trump has kept reminding the world that the United States is still the Big Brother in many areas. Perhaps many may not be happy with him, such a crude display of power actually resonates very well with lower and middle class Americans. That's why he has been working very hard to campaign for his re-election in hope of overturning sinister poll forecasts.

According to University of Florida's latest estimates, some 65% of eligible voters or about 150 million people will vote this time, the highest turnout since 1908. Thanks to the coronavirus, over 98 million Americans have already voted early either in-person or by postal ballot, and analysts claim this does not augur well for Trump, prompting the president to threaten not to recognize the election results.

As such, Democratic candidate Joe Biden has to win by a landslide to shut up Trump's mouth, or something not so good might happen after the election day.

Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls published on October 29 showed that Biden was leading 51:43, but higher support rate does not mean one gets to become the US president, as under the country's electoral college system, a candidate that secures at least 270 out of 538 elector votes will be the president.

The electoral college is made up of 100 senators and 435 state representatives from the 50 states along with three electors in Washington, DC., in a "winner-take-all" approach. For example, the state of California has 55 elector votes and if Biden wins the state, even by an extremely thin margin of 0.1%, he will take all the 55 elector votes of the state.

In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton won 48.2% of popular votes, higher than Trump's 46.1%, but she only managed  to get 232 elector votes against Trump's 306. In 2000, George W Bush beat Al Gore also in a similar situation.

Results in most states are easily predictable in this year's election with the exception of about a dozen of swing states such as Florida (31 elector votes), North Carolina (15) and Arizona (12). These three states give a total of 58 elector votes, which Clinton lost four years ago.

Clinton also lost by very thin margins (average of 1.6%) in Pennsylvania (19), Michigan (15) and Wisconsin (10), in which Trump is now trailing behind Biden by 5-9% in polls. If Clinton won these three states, she would have beaten Trump 276 to 262.

If in this year's election the trend of elector votes from 45 of the 50 states and DC remains unchanged, but with changes in six other states Trump won in 2016 (total 102 elector votes), Biden will win the presidency if at least 36 votes go to him this time.

In the last election, competition was very stiff in 18 states with under 10% margins, and Trump won 11 of them, grabbing 178 elector votes against Clinton's 49.

US election polls are normally quite reliable with an average of 3 percentage point margin of error, and that 3% margin, unfortunately, went to Trump in almost all the swing states!

Earlier this year, Trump was flushing with confidence he would win the election, but the pandemic and racial tension have subsequently taken a toll on his popularity as demonstrated in the opinion polls.

Not all the swing states are leaning towards him this time, and it is almost inevitable we will have to bid him adieu soon.