New York, Monday
1. How many votes will be cast before Election Day?
The number of Americans casting early, absentee or mail-in ballots could top 50 million this year, up from 46 million in 2012, the Pew Research Centre estimates. That means about 40 per cent of votes could already be in before November 8. Thirty-seven states, plus the District of Columbia, now permit all properly registered voters to cast their ballots early, no questions asked.
2. Who will be helped by early voting?
According to some theories, Clinton in particular, and Democrats in general, are poised to benefit from early voting because of their advantage in organisation — the so-called ground game. Plus, if WikiLeaks still has some bombshell November surprise in the works that will wound Clinton’s chances, she’d benefit from the fact that millions of votes already are cast.
3. What are the candidates’ Election Day strategies?
Clinton’s intensive get-out-the-vote effort will start days early, deploy union workers, college students and Jay Z, and make use of her huge cash advantage. Trump and his campaign, by contrast, never really bought into such traditional efforts to get voters to the polls — not prioritising, for instance, making sure the non-college-educated men who are drawn to Trump’s message are actually registered to vote. Trump’s staffers say they’ve developed tools for targeting and motivating voters through Facebook and Twitter.
4. What’s it with Utah?
McMullin, a former Central Intelligence Agency operations officer and Republican staffer on Capitol Hill, stepped forward in August as an independent candidate for president, carrying the hopes of some establishment Republicans desperate for an alternative to Trump. While stuck at about two per cent in national polls, McMullin has a genuine chance in Utah, where he was born and where a majority of residents share his Mormon faith.
5. Does that matter?
While the practical effect of a McMullin win in Utah would most likely be just a slap at Trump, there’s talk on the fringes of how McMullin could ride his one-state victory all the way to the White House, if neither Trump nor Clinton gets an Electoral College majority and the election is thrown into the hands of Congress.
6. What about Trump’s talk of the election being “rigged”?
He’s still at it, and still asking supporters to volunteer as “Trump Election Observers.” According to the Washington Times, “County-level Republican Party officials in several states are reporting a surge in the number of citizens signing up to be poll watchers on Election Day amid concerns over voter fraud and intimidation.”
One possible headache: The Republican National Committee remains under court supervision because of a 1981 “National Ballot Security Task Force” initiative in New Jersey that was found to have been an effort to intimidate minority voters. -Bloomberg
The post US election day will be different in many ways appeared first on Mediamax Network Limited.