Will Kamala Harris win?

The United States election will be held on November 5, 2024. It is possibly the most important election in US history pitting an enormously accomplished black American woman, Kamala Harris, against a prior president, Donald Trump, convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records alleging he was involved in a scheme that sought to cover up extramarital affairs in advance of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has been repeatedly accused of spreading false and misleading claims.

The Washington Post fact checker posted recently "There's a recurring pattern to Trump's spreading of false information. First, he repeats a false claim endlessly, no matter how often it is debunked. Then, he elevates it every so often with a dusting of new information, usually a falsehood derived from a modicum of fact."

Of the Washington DC newspapers, the Washington Post is the oldest-surviving and currently the most-read daily newspaper in Washington, with a strong reputation across the U.S. It is notable for exposing the Watergate scandal, among other achievements. Its assessment of Trump is believable

Who is Kamala Harris?

Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964. She is the daughter of immigrants. Kamala Harris's father, Donald J. Harris, is Jamaican American of Afro-Jamaican ancestry. He is a Stanford University professor of economics (emeritus) who arrived in the United States from British Jamaica in 1961, for graduate study at UC Berkeley, receiving a PhD in economics in 1966. Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan met at a college club for African American students.

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, immigrated to the US from southern India in the late 1950s. She earned her doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology at Berkeley and became an acclaimed breast cancer researcher before she passed away in 2009. Harris's parents divorced when she was seven. She has said that when she and her sister visited their father in Palo Alto on weekends, other children in the neighbourhood were not allowed to play with them because they were black.

She attended Howard University, a black university in Washington DC, then theUniversity of California College of the Law, San Francisco. She began her law career in the office of the district attorney (DA) of Alameda County, before being recruited to the San Francisco DA's Office and later the city attorney of San Francisco's office. In 2003, she was elected DA of San Francisco. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Harris served as the junior U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021. She defeated Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 Senate election to become the second Black woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the U.S. Senate.

As a senator, Harris advocated for stricter gun control laws, the Dream Act which would permanently protect immigrants who came to the United States as children but who are vulnerable to deportation, federal legalization of cannabis, and healthcare and taxation reforms. She gained a national profile for her pointed questioning of Trump administration officials during Senate hearings,

On January 20, 2021, Kamala Harris was sworn in as Vice President – the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected to this position.

Majorities of Hispanic, Black and Asian voters in the US continue to favour the Democratic Party, while White voters remain more aligned with GOP. For years, the shares of Black, Asian and Latino citizens aged 18 or older signed up to cast ballots have trailed behind that of white adult citizens, according to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey.

And while the estimated registration rate for Black eligible voters has stayed closer to (and, in 2012, even surpassed) the rate for white eligible voters, the rates for Asian Americans and Latinos - who make up the country's top two fast-growing electorates by race or ethnicity - have remained among the lowest of the racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Voting in the US requires you to be registered as such but voting itself is not compulsory. According to a 2012 study, 24% of the voting-eligible population in the United States are not registered to vote, equalling some 51 million U.S. citizens. Research has shown that the majority of those who do not register are not interested or believe that they will not affect the outcome. Such findings suggest that lesser educated people may be the higher nonregistered voters. A voter registration drive for Harris may be highly desirable.

What do the polls say?

CNN report on the polls on Harris vs Trump show that Trump holds 49% support among registered voters nationwide to Harris' 46%, a finding within the poll's margin of sampling error. Whilst Harris has managed to close the gap and is performing better than Biden among key demographics such as young voters and minorities, the RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump leading by 2 points nationally. In Kamala Harris' favour is that the Obamas, Barack and Michelle, have both endorsed Harris.