It’s just over a month until US elections on November 5. American voters are already enduring a huge social media onslaught, not just from the campaigns and lobby groups but from online trolls and Russian “bot farms” using AI and fake identities to disseminate false claims to help candidates sympathetic to their causes.

Less than four months ago most political commentators, including Democratic Party insiders, believed Donald Trump would be elected for a final, second term in the Oval Office.

Trump’s campaign has been untroubled by a conga-line of senior Republicans, former Cabinet members and White House staff, ex national security and US military leaders claiming their old boss was “unfit for high office“.

Multiple scandals that would have ended the careers of most politicians, a swag of indictments and even his new status as a convicted felon had not put any serious dent in Trump’s rusted-on supporters, who do not seem to flinch from outright lies, policy backflips or tire from the continuing circus. Trump became so cocky that he was vowing revenge against his political enemies, even promising to jail them.

For the Democrats their potential saviour, not just for winning the Presidency again but for crucial downstream races for the Senate, House of Representatives and countless state positions, was Joe Biden.

US President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race against Donald Trump in the aftermath of a poor debate performance. File photo: AAP

If President Biden hadn’t performed so poorly in his debate with Donald Trump in late June, the Democrats would have been stuck with him at the head of their ticket and by now saddled with a nightmare election scenario.

Removing Biden as their candidate was necessary but also gut-wrenching and difficult. Biden is well liked by his Democratic colleagues. He has been around for the long haul as a hard working Senator, loyal Vice President to Barack Obama and best of all he had soundly beaten Trump in 2020.

Joe Biden has also been an effective President. However, as his party faced a hiding in the midterm congressional elections in November 2022, party seniors were already quietly talking about the need to convince Biden not to seek a second term. They wanted him to announce that he would not run again.

This strategy collapsed because the Democrats did much better in the midterms than expected. While the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives, the Democrats actually improved their slim majority in the Senate. So no posse was sent into the White House and an emboldened Biden convinced himself that only he could stop a Trump return to the Oval Office. After all, Joe had done it before!

The US economy, despite similar cost of living pressures that have frustrated the Albanese government, has been going well. Biden has overseen very strong jobs growth and his landmark Inflation Reduction Act is powering the transition to clean energy, investing in new transport infrastructure, lowering pharmaceutical prices and creating a huge number of new jobs.

The problem was that Joe Biden wasn’t communicating effectively. He hadn’t “sold” his achievements to the American public and polling showed that overwhelmingly the President was seen as too old and frail to continue. Democratic Party leaders lived in fear of another public gaffe, slurred speech or “frozen TV moment” and were increasingly concerned about how the President would fare in another bitterly fought campaign.

Biden’s debate paralysis caused a double headed dilemma for the Democrats. They needed to convince a proud man to step away from his candidacy and then manage a quick succession without public bloodletting on the eve of a difficult campaign. In other words, they didn’t want the type of rancorous leadership change that we’ve seen on both sides of Australian politics in the past decade or so, or in the South Australian Opposition in recent months!

It’s true that some senior Democrats didn’t want Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris to step up to become their party’s nominee for President, but they couldn’t agree on who might replace her or how such a process could be engineered. In my view there was never any chance that Harris would step aside, and any attempt to force America’s first woman Vice President, of African American and Asian heritage, to withdraw would have ripped the Democratic Party apart.

Vice President Kamala Harris with running mate Tim Walz.

Miraculously the change went smoothly and Harris got off to a flying start. Trump was thrown off course by not having to run against Joe Biden and even the aftermath of a dramatic, televised assassination attempt wasn’t transformational for him electorally as many pundits predicted.

Now it is Trump who looks like an old man, often blathering incoherently at MAGA rallies while his choice of running mate, JD Vance is seen as a net negative for the Republican campaign. Kamala Harris’ candidacy also compounded Trump’s problem with women and younger voters. So, at the very least, the Democrats are now competitive.

Right now the Presidential election is too close to call. The immigration issue is playing well for Trump and concerns about the Republicans’ extreme positions on reproductive rights are helping to build a solid lead for Harris with women and young voters.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump after a July assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. Photo: AP

Trump remains well positioned to win. Harris’ nomination has energised her party but the Democratic Convention in Chicago, despite its jubilant atmosphere, didn’t really move the dial electorally. Premature celebration is always a mistake in politics. While there was no post-Convention bump for Harris, her televised debate with Trump has given her a narrow edge in the polls.

As I write this article in New York, Harris remains ahead in nationwide polling and, in my view, is most likely to win the majority of votes on election day. But winning the most votes doesn’t guarantee victory. Al Gore won 543,895 more votes than George Bush in 2000, but a month of legal battles contesting the result in Florida led to a highly controversial 5/4 Supreme Court decision in Bush’s favour. In 2016 Hillary Clinton won 2.8 million more votes than Trump but still lost the election because Trump won more Electoral College votes.

And there’s the rub. There are 50 states but this election is being fought over a small group of “battleground” states such as Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and very importantly Pennsylvania, which has 19 Electoral College votes.

All states, except Maine and Nebraska, have a winner take all policy. Why is that important? If a state with a big population, such as Pennsylvania, records 50.1% for one candidate against 49.9% for the other, then the candidate with the most votes collects all of that state’s electoral college votes.

The Democrats know they will win in states like California and New York, just as the Republicans know they will win in states such as Idaho, Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee. For both parties the focus will be elsewhere. The objective of both parties is to secure at least 270 of the 538 “electors” in the archaic Electoral College system.

In 2020, Biden won 306 Electoral College votes compared to Trump’s 232. In the popular vote Biden had a four point lead, winning 81,283, 501 votes compared to Trump’s 74,223,975. The latter’s persistent claim that he really won the election is fantasy. However, Harris’ lead is not as strong as it was for Biden at the same time four years ago. Right now this is a much tighter contest.

This week (Wednesday morning ACST), Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Ohio Senator J.D Vance, will debate his Democrat opponent Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Vice Presidential candidates are seldom influential in deciding presidential elections, although Lyndon Johnson certainly helped deliver Texas for JFK in 1960. Walz has a much better favourability rating than Vance and his folksy, common sense, family man image will likely be helpful to Kamala Harris in key midwest states.

Whilst national polls today show Harris with a 3% lead, there’s a much messier picture when looking at state by state results, most within the margin of error. Critically, it’s still neck and neck in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by 0.72% in 2016 and Biden won by 1.17% in 2020.

Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, is known as “the Keystone State”. It certainly will be in this election. Its Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, who was actively considered as a serious alternative to Walz as Harris’ running mate, will be mobilised to barnstorm around his state. Biden will no doubt be deployed to spruik for Harris in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the city of his birth, and in union strongholds where he is popular. I’m sure Barack Obama will also be on his way to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

In addition to Pennsylvania and the key midwest states(where Harris is a whisker ahead) and sunbelt states (where Trump has a narrow lead), there be another battleground. Both major parties have squadrons of lawyers lined up to contest any claims of election irregularities before, during and after the election. I believe multi-state, post-election legal dramas are much more likely than not. Judges, not voters, could decide this election.

Any case that goes all the way to the Supreme Court is unlikely to go well for the Democrats, given the court’s hyper-partisan composition that underpinned its recent decision providing Presidential immunity. That decision has shocked constitutional and legal experts in a nation that has long cherished the principle that no-one, not even a President, is above the law. That’s why Nixon resigned in 1974 because of his involvement in Watergate. That’s why his successor pardoned him “for any crimes he had committed or may have committed…”

And then, win or lose, Trump will be sentenced on November 26 by a New York Court following a unanimous jury decision in May to convict him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to an adult film star.

Whatever happens in this election the Trump carnival will continue, but Australian observers should keep their eyes focused on the results coming in from Pennsylvania. If Kamala Harris wins there most observers believe she will be sworn in as the United States’ first woman President. Without Pennsylvania, the Vice President’s pathway to victory will be much more difficult.

Mike Rann is a former SA Premier and Chair of the Climate Group, which hosts Climate Week New York City in September each year. He is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and Chair of the South Australian Film Corporation.