Even if Kamala Harris wins the US election, the battle will be far from over

Whatever the eventual result of this presidential election turns out to be, it is fair to say that polling day may prove to be not so much the end of the affair but only the beginning of another acrimonious and uncertain phase in the trauma.

Ideally, the trend to early voting this time round and the introduction of more robust rolls and systems after the experiences of the past will mean that the result will be apparent relatively quickly. Electoral officers, the quiet, conscientious heroes of American democracy, have, by all accounts, made superhuman efforts to ensure the integrity of the vote – and for it to be as free of fraud as possible.

It may be that the contest isn’t quite as close as the polls suggest and that one or other of the candidates scores a result that qualifies as “too big to rig”, as the cynical expression goes. Some of the most distinguished analysts have suggested that the very closeness of the polls may be suspicious – the result of “herding” and flawed weighting adjustments designed to correct past biases.

Others have pointed to the increasingly partisan nature of opinion surveys, mirroring the polarisation of the media organisations who commission them.

And, even if American politics is genuinely as evenly divided as it is polarised, a few thousand votes in a few of the swing states, notably Pennsylvania, could tip the balance decisively in the electoral college, giving Donald Trump or Kamala Harris a more deceptively decisive “victory” than would be justified on the basis of the popular vote (recalling the fact that Hillary Clinton won almost 3 million votes more than Mr Trump in 2016).

The early voting results tell us something about turnout – for example among women voters – and about party preferences; but, again, what this data means is contested.

We also know that the Trump campaign, in particular, has been preparing the ground for challenges, recounts and litigation. Mr Trump has, ever since he refused to accept defeat in 2020, been undermining trust in the system, such that many of his supporters, before even a single vote had been cast, were convinced that the election had long since been “stolen” (unless, illogically, their guy wins).

There is even some dark gossip about the Republicans in some of the swing states and in the new US Congress somehow managing to disrupt the arcane certification process of the electoral college, due to be completed in a ceremony on 6 January – the infamous date of the attempted insurrection in 2021.

Mr Trump’s curious aside at the Madison Square Garden rally that he and the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, have “a little secret” has aroused some anxiety about their intentions.

The upshot is a risk that, as in 2020 and as with the ultra-close Bush-Gore election of 2000, it may be many weeks before the outcome is clear – and even then Mr Trump may not concede, nor attend the inauguration of the candidate we may soon address as President Harris.

So anything could happen, and take an unconscionable time to do so. There is no doubt, though, that from the point of view of America, as well as its friends and allies across the world, a return of Mr Trump to the White House would present challenges that would be, to borrow one of his favourite formulations, “the like of which we have never seen before in our country’s history”.

Mr Trump often says that he is the best president ever, surpassing even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in his statesmanship and achievements. The truth is that he will be the most dangerous ever to come to power, if that indeed again comes to pass.

Trump 47 would be much more dangerous than Trump 45 for reasons that are apparent from his own track record, his own rhetoric – and the testimony of almost everyone who worked with him the first time around. He will, once again, pit Americans against one another, as he did on 6 January 2021, in DC, at Charlottesville and in countless speeches. He will, in his own words, seek “retribution”.

He will put the anti-vaxxer and anti-fluoridation crank Robert Kennedy Junior in charge of America’s health agencies. He will impose swingeing, inflationary tariffs on imports; triggering a global trade recession. He will seek generals who are personally loyal to him rather than the constitution; and be prepared to use the military against his own people, the “enemy within”. He will threaten and bully the media.

He will put Elon Musk in the administration and in charge of “government efficiency”, a chilling prospect. He will undermine Nato, appease Vladimir Putin, weaken Ukraine and give Benjamin Netanyahu a free hand in the Middle East, risking a war with Iran.

America will once again withdraw from the climate change treaties and “drill, baby, drill”. There will be millions of deportations of migrants who have American-born children. And he will permit state legislatures to take women’s reproductive rights away. All of this, then, and more, thanks to the Supreme Court granting him future “qualified immunity” from prosecution, the gift that eluded Richard Nixon.

The so-called Project 2025 indicates that he will stuff his own fanatics into the civil service, regardless of expertise, politicising it more completely than any previous administrations, just as he has the courts. The Federal Reserve and the dollar will be in jeopardy. The “guard rails” will be off.

That, then, is the case against Mr Trump; why, then, will at the very least 40 per cent of those voting, and quite possibly a winning plurality of them, support him? Why is he, if the reports are correct, attracting more young Black males and Arab Americans to his cause?

The plain, unavoidable fact is that Mr Trump has struck a chord with many Americans who feel – as the former president never tires of telling them – that they are worse off than four years ago. They despair of manufacturing jobs going abroad, unaffordable housing, taxes – and, most of all, inflation. They are fearful of the scale of immigration.

The Biden administration patently hasn’t succeeded in meeting their concerns, including on foreign policy; Ms Harris hasn’t always taken the arguments on and won enough of the doubters over. In due course, the outcome of this election will be settled, because it has to be.

It could well require judicial intervention, as it did to install George W Bush in 2000 and to dismiss Mr Trump’s baseless complaints in 2020. But the divisions – and the problems that have given rise to them – will be far from over.