Donald Trump travels America on the eve of elections

Donald Trump travels America on the eve of elections
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AFP
/ Jim WATSON

Bathing crowds and messages pounded all over the United States: Republican President Donald Trump gave himself unreservedly on Monday in the final hours of the campaign for legislative elections that will determine the control of the US Congress … and the course of its Presidency.

Great uncertainty still reigned over the polls a few hours before the opening of the first polling stations on Tuesday at 6:00 am on the east coast (11:00 GMT).

"Everything we built is at stake tomorrow," Donald Trump told thousands of fans in Indiana, a key state if Republicans want to retain control of the Senate.

The name of the Republican President does not appear on the ballots but he insists for weeks that the vote will be a referendum on his presidency.

US voters were warned on Monday night that foreign entities were trying to disrupt Tuesday's vote in a statement by several ministers and bosses of US intelligence agencies, but said there were indication at this point that the voting infrastructure has been compromised.

After the shock of 2016, Democrats are favored by polls to regain control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans should retain control of the Senate.

Fearing that a congressional victory of the Democrats will paralyze his policies, the American president has thrown all his forces into the campaign.

Cleveland (Ohio), Fort Wayne (Indiana), Cape Girardeau (Missouri): Until the last moment, the billionaire chained Mondays "Make America Great Again" rallies.

Mr. Trump will not be returning to the White House until well past midnight.

Opposite, the Democratic candidates in search of new personalities of national scale relied on the ex-president Barack Obama and his vice-president Joe Biden in campaign meetings.

Strong early vote

"It's going well for us in the Senate and I think we're going to have a very good result in the House," Trump said Monday, while acknowledging the historical trend that the White House party is suffering in the past. mid-term elections.

In both camps, we tried until the last moment to mobilize voters. The votes of young people, minorities and women could be decisive.

Sign of the great interest aroused by these elections: already more than 30 million ballots were deposited Monday in the States allowing the advance vote or by proxy, according to the American media, well more than the some 22 million recorded before the day of the vote in comparable elections in 2014.

Economy and immigration

The loss of the House, despite the excellent figures of the US economy, would be a hard sell for Donald Trump who has become a guarantor of the good economic health of the United States.

The Republican President, who started his presidential campaign by treating Mexican immigrants as "rapists” once again opted for a bleak message about illegal immigration.

"It's an invasion," he says of the Central American migrants who are currently crossing Mexico to the US border as a group.

Democrats have campaigned on defense of the health system. But they also bet on the rejection of Donald Trump, many of whom openly describe as liars and catalysts recent racist and anti-Semitic violence.

According to the latest SSRS poll for CNN, Trump has a particular concern about women's voting: 62 percent of them support Democrats.

"Counter-power"

The pollsters give Democrats the advantage for the House of Representatives, where they have to snatch 23 seats for Republicans to take the majority.

But the investigations are too tight in twenty constituencies to be able to say with certainty who will be the winner, warn the pollsters, scalded by the "surprise” Trump in 2016.

In the Senate, Republicans predict that they will strengthen their majority. The card is in their favor: the renewal by third this year is mainly conservative states.

Of the 35 seats at stake, the most troubled outgoing senators are elected Democrats in North Dakota, Indiana, Montana and Missouri.

The United States could therefore meet, on January 3, 2019, with a 116th divided Congress. This could paralyze the program of the 45th President of the United States, until the next elections of 2020.

"If the Democrats lose these elections, there will be no counter-power” against Donald Trump, entrusted, very worried, to AFP a resident of New Jersey, Jonathan Fritz.

At the heart of one of the most successful races in the elections, Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke was confident Monday morning, despite the gap that separates Republican Ted Cruz in the polls (+6 , 5 points).

"It's up to us to play," he told his fans at a rally in Houston. Voters "will decide not only the future of Texas but also that of this country," continued the forty-year-old, presumptive among the Democratic candidates for the presidential 2020.

06/11/2018 04:03:10 –
Washington (AFP) –
© 2018 AFP