Between louse and double louse

The two major candidates in America’s upcoming presidential election have the highest unfavourable personal ratings in the eyes of their countrymen in a long time. Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, former senator from New York and what Nigerian newspapers call “immediate past US Secretary of State,” is viewed favourably by 44 […]

The two major candidates in America’s upcoming presidential election have the highest unfavourable personal ratings in the eyes of their countrymen in a long time. Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, former senator from New York and what Nigerian newspapers call “immediate past US Secretary of State,” is viewed favourably by 44 percent of her countrymen while 55 percent of Americans have an unfavourable view of her.
Bad as that sounds, she is better regarded than her Republican opponent, the real estate and reality television billionaire Donald Trump. Only 36 percent of American voters have a positive opinion of Trump while 63 percent say they have an unfavourable view of him. That is the worst rating of an American presidential candidate since David Duke in 1992. Duke, described by Wikipedia as a “white nationalist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier and former Grand Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,” had a favourable rating of less than 1% when he contested for president that year.
What is a voter supposed to do when faced with such a choice? A similar scenario happened during the US elections of 1972. As soon as it became clear that Democrats would field Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War, to run against Republican incumbent Richard Nixon, reporters rushed to the office of George Meany, the powerful President of the American Federation of Labour/Congress of Industrial Organisations, AFL-CIO. Meany was known to dislike both men, so he was asked who he will vote for between Nixon and McGovern. Meany thought for a minute and said, “McGovern is a louse.” After a long pause he said, “But Nixon is a double louse.” It was no surprise that Meany, whose union had 14 million members, ended up near the top of the Nixon White House’s secret “Enemies List.” If current opinion polls are to be believed, a majority of American voters find themselves in George Meany’s shoes today.
From all indications, American voters see Mrs Clinton as the louse and Mr. Trump as the double louse. According to all the major opinion polls last week, Clinton leads Trump by between seven and fourteen percentage points nationally. That, however, is not the most important thing. State by state breakdown of opinion polls is a much more relevant indicator of the likely winner than the national polls. To understand why this is so, it is necessary to remind our younger readers why America’s election system differs from those of most other countries, including Nigeria’s. In most countries a candidate wins an election if he garners the highest number of votes cast, sometimes with additional provisos such as the spread requirement in Nigeria. In the US however, a candidate can theoretically score the highest number of votes and still lose the election. It is more than theory; this happened in 1876 and again in 2000AD.
An American presidential election is won not so much by popular votes as by Electoral College votes. Each state has an assigned number of Electoral College votes equal to the number of its representatives in the US Congress. While all 50 American states have two senators each, the number of Congressmen [i.e. House of Representatives members] is proportional to a state’s population. As a result, states such as California, Texas, New York, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania are electoral giants. Other states are electoral medium powers while still other states are electoral minors. In most cases a candidate wins all the Electoral College votes of a state if he wins that state on Election Day. The candidate who gets 270 Electoral College votes or more wins the election.
For this reason, as soon as a person wins a major party’s nomination, his campaign strategists and himself or herself take a close look at the map, identify which states they have a chance of winning in order to get the magic 270 electoral college votes, and proceed to concentrate campaign workers, television ad spending and also campaign visits to those states. Except on rare occasions when one candidate wins in most states, as happened in 1972 and 1984, most American states are known to be either reliably Democratic, the so-called blue states, or reliably Republican, the so-called red states. A few however have a history of swinging between the two parties. These are the so-called battleground states. Both major party candidates usually take the deep red and deep blue states for granted and concentrate their attention on the battleground states.
Therefore, to understand where this year’s race stands at the moment, opinion polls from individual battleground states is more important than the national polls. CNN’s most current map of battleground states posted at the weekend is enough to give Trump strategists sleepless nights.  Based on polls, it identified the deep red states and their electoral college votes as Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), West Virginia (5) and Wyoming (3). These give Trump a guaranteed 158 Electoral College votes on Election Day. In addition, it identified Arizona (11), Georgia (16) and Utah (6), a total of 33 Electoral College votes, as leaning red. This gives Trump an almost guaranteed 191 Electoral College votes, way short of the number needed to win.
Things look much rosier for Hillary Clinton. The CNN map identified these states as solidly Democratic: California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), DC (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12), Minnesota (10) and New Mexico (5), a total of 201 electoral college votes. In addition, CNN identified the following states as leaning Democratic: Colorado (9), Michigan (16), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13) and Wisconsin (10), a total of 72. If Clinton gets these 72 votes in addition to the solid 201, that adds up to 273 Electoral College votes and she has already won the election.
A few states on the electoral map are still a tossup and are this year’s battleground states. CNN identified these as Florida (29), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), Ohio (18) and North Carolina (15), with a total 74 votes. If the elections are held today, Hillary Clinton will win all these five battleground states for a grand total of 347 Electoral College votes, what you can call a landslide victory.
It is important to remember that Hillary Clinton is viewed unfavourably only inside the United States. Most of the world views her favourably, or at least as a “normal” American politician, compared to Donald Trump who the world for the most part thinks is crazy. In other words, Trump is a George Meanyian triple louse, not just a double one. To understand why folks here in Africa have such a dim view of him, you need only to take a look at some polls. Two national polls in the US recently put Trump’s support among African Americans at 1 percent while a Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist survey in Ohio and Pennsylvania found that zero percent of black Americans intend to vote for Donald Trump. We take our cues from them.