Ten days before the polls will close, millions of Americans have already voted by mail. Contrary to the odd conservative hullabaloo about the evils of early voting four years ago, the practice is gaining ground here in strides. In some states a majority of ballots will be cast early, it is said. Welcome to the club: In my country, Switzerland, 9 out of 10 citizens vote by mail. Often, I am the only one showing up at the poll which is only open between1000 and 1100 hrs on Sunday.

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Voted or not, the public remains subject to the taifun of propaganda. There is no escaping the TV spots, radio ads, interviews, “appearance”, let alone the relentless shelling by email and text messages you receive after commited the grave error of applying for a political event. It is annoying. Measured by messages per day, Donald Trump is the prince of pestering, while Mrs. Harris takes the cake in raking it in. Since her accession to the candidacy, she allegedly has raised 1 billion dollars.

Polling shows the race in the proverbial “dead heat”, with differences “within the margin of error”. Each day, another poll claims to shed light on the opaque electorate, calibrating the moods of the women, the men, the young, the old, the blacks, the Latinos, the educated and the not-so educated, the regular voters and the ones normally not voting, the urban, suburban and exurban ones. Most surprising, they find some that are still not decided and some who are decided but open to change their mind. In one poll, this category of still persuadable voters was one in five.

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Conventional wisdom has it that the race will be decided in the handful of “Swing states”, and there, in a number of split counties. This would mean that either side can the rest of the country for granted. Maybe. Surely, both camps concentrate a lot of their advertising fire on Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. The candidates show up there often, Trump this weekend in Novi outside of Detroit, Harris in Kalamazoo. They work hard shoring up their “base”, making sure that the trusted followers will indeed go to the polls. But not only. Donald Trump held a rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City, where he is sure to lose. Mrs. Harris just held one in holier-than-thou Texas, concentrating on abortion rights. The “get out the vote”mobilizing game is accompanied by efforts to break out of the usual hunting grounds. Trump tries to accentuate the gender gap (he ahead with men, Harris ahead with women) by dog-whistling macho-manliness (the other day he waxed forever on the masculinity of the former golf champion Arnold Palmer, including a reference to his large penis). Harris woos women by hammering on the abortion issue, and she tries to charm Republican folks that are disgusted with their candidate’s personality. Both have enlisted celebrities. Trump has Elon Musk and bis billions in his corner. Harris had Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen and the Obamas on her side in her last rallies.

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The unpredictability of the election leaves the punditry scratching their heads. Some resort to the gut feeling. The guts of Nate Silver of 538 fame point to a Trump victory. Those of Democrat guru James Carville to the opposite.
Abroad, mostly in Europe, the pundits keep scratching their heads vis-à-vis the Trump phenomenon. News outlets haplessly list the numerous untruths, falsehoods, plain idiocies of the Caudillo, thus sharpening the contrast to the kinder, gentler likes of a Chancellor Scholz in Germany or the colorless figures staffing the Federal Council of my country, Switzerland. Why would one half of Americans go with something like Trump?

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I found one clue in Ohio, when I stopped to see a friend, a businessman. He professed disgust with the candidate’s behavior (“too bombastic”), but votes Trump. Why? He replied with one word: “Business”. My friend’s business is cleaning up food processing plants, and he says that the Biden administration significantly harmed his company with a targeted environmental regulation. Biden banned the transportation of hazardous materials on federal land which shut off the supply routes my friend used for getting the raw chemicals needed for his cleaning products. Now, he gets his supplies from Latin America, shipping them on barges from American ports to his production plants. He says that this is not only more expensive than using US-produced materials but also riskier than transport over land. From his point of view, the Biden ban does make no sense, even from an ecologica point of view. He is sure that a President Trump would lift the Biden ban. Case closed.