One could say that tomorrow, November 3, 2020, the US presidential elections will take place.
But that would be largely an erroneous statement.
First, although the presidential race is the main focus of the press and international experts, the citizens of the United States elect not only the head of state, but also members of Congress.
The House of Representatives is fully re-elected, the Senate is partially.
Secondly, to date, more than 90 million people have voted - by mail and in person, at polling stations for early expression of their will.
Considering that the total number of registered voters is 156 million, it can be said that the elections have been in full swing for a long time and the turnout has exceeded 57%.
Third, the American election can be considered valid when the losing candidate called the winner and admitted defeat.
State electoral commissions are still counting votes, the FEC continues to collect protocols from the field, and the name of the man who will lead the United States for the next four years is already known.
This year, apparently, such a call will not follow.
Not on election night, not in the morning, not in the next three to five days.
It will be a great miracle if the issue of power in the United States is resolved within a week or even a month.
There are many ways to try to outplay elections.
There is a lot of time - right up to the second half of January next year.
According to the Constitution and the 20th amendment to it, on January 20, 2021, either a new president or a re-elected president for a second term should be in the workplace in the Oval Office of the White House.
Until that date, both sides have plenty of opportunities to postpone the final resolution of the issue, trying to tip the scales in their favor.
Formally, the name of the president and vice-president of the country becomes known after the electoral college meets and votes, and then the new composition of the Congress at a joint session of both chambers will approve this vote.
Previously, with the exception of special cases, all these procedures were completely formal, a kind of ceremony.
This time they can all be used to clarify the issue of power.
During the already mentioned joint session of the chambers of Congress, the results of the voting of the electoral delegations from the states are approved separately.
There are 51 such delegations: 50 from the states and one from the District of Columbia.
A written protest may be submitted for each of them.
Two signatures are enough for its adoption - one senator and one member of the House of Representatives from the state.
If such a document is submitted, the joint session is interrupted and the legislators disperse to their chambers to discuss and vote on the appropriate protest.
As a result, elections in a particular constituency or even a state could be invalidated and the respective electors' mandates revoked.
This can lead to the fact that no candidate receives the necessary 50% of the electoral votes plus one vote to win.
Voting results can also be challenged at the state level.
Then it can come to a recount of votes in individual districts, as well as in the state as a whole.
This decision is made by the court.
As historical practice shows, the case quickly reaches first to the State Supreme Court, and then to the US Supreme Court.
In 2000, recounts in several Florida constituencies were initiated by the State Armed Forces, and terminated by the US Armed Forces.
One way or another, a situation may arise when the electoral college in a truncated composition will not be able to take the decision entrusted to it.
Then the fate of the presidency must be decided by Congress.
The Senate elects a vice president by a simple majority, while the House of Representatives elects the head of state.
In the lower house, voting is carried out by state delegations.
In its current composition, the Republicans have the advantage (despite the fact that the simple majority belongs to the Democrats) - they control 26 delegations out of 50.
In the new House of Representatives, the balance of power may be different.
But in any case, unprecedented pressure from street activists will be exerted on the judges, and on the congressmen, and on the electors.
However, these activists (mainly left-liberal) can “start the game” earlier - by blocking and establishing their own order at polling stations, capturing election commissions and intimidating voters.
On the evening of November 3, left-wing radicals and the headquarters of the Black Lives Matter movement have already scheduled a rally at the White House with the only slogan - "Trump must leave!"
Protesters in other cities are preparing to have their say.
Apparently, the racial unrest that broke out with renewed vigor on the eve of the elections and the accompanying riots, robberies and pogroms are a warm-up before decisive actions on November 3-4 and in the following days.
The way the Democrats and their friendly left-wing street are preparing for election day is one of the main indicators of the real mood in American society.
Liberals are preparing to take power by force, and not win peacefully.
Apparently, because not everything is as rosy for a candidate from the Democratic Party, as polls published by the mainstream American media report.
According to the synthetic rating of the news aggregator Real Clear Politics, based on the averaging of polls from leading agencies and the media, Trump lags behind Biden by 7%.
However, nationwide indicators never made accurate predictions, since voting is by state (which is why an electoral college is needed), so at times in American history it happened that the candidate who won the national majority lost the election.
This was the case in 2000 and 2016.
Most of the electoral ratings are compiled by order of publications and TV channels that have their own political agenda.
But among the entire array of studies, those that are carried out by reputable research centers, as well as institutes and private analysts, who correctly predicted the outcome of the election campaign in 2016, stand out.
Consider, in particular, the forecasts of the Gallup and Rasmussen Reports agencies, which are part of the so-called big three in the United States.
According to Rasmussen, the gap between Trump and Biden is only 3%, which coincides with the statistical error of the study.
Gallup specialists took a different path.
They tried to find out the political preferences of voters indirectly.
According to a poll conducted in the first half of October, 49% of Americans agree with Donald Trump on major political and socio-economic issues, while only 46% agree with Biden.
Moreover, for the first time in 20 years, a majority of voters (56%, despite the coronavirus and the resulting drop in economic performance) said they are doing better today than four years ago.
And yet the fate of the elections will be decided by several states, to which the main attention of sociologists and experts is directed today.
Much will depend on Florida and South Carolina, as well as the states of the Midwest - Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Arizona and Nevada may also play a role in the presidential race.
Today, the synthetic ratings of Real Clear Politics candidates in these states differ by only 3%, which is also approximately equal to the statistical error of the polls conducted.
In addition, today's figures are very similar to those four years ago, when everyone predicted an imminent defeat for Trump - with the only difference that now Trump's ratings are higher.
And in Iowa, according to a study by the local publication Des Moines Register, the current president is seriously ahead of Biden - by as much as 7%.
Finally, it is worth paying attention to the analytics of those agencies and private researchers who correctly predicted the outcome of the 2016 elections, relying on methods and indicators that were completely ignored by their colleagues.
I'll start not even with an expert assessment, but with a person's private opinion based on his personal experience of communicating with Trump supporters.
We are talking about the liberal documentary film and publicist Michael Moore (we know him from the 2001 film Fahrenheit 911 about the Bush administration).
As an ideological opponent of Trump, he warned Democrats in 2016 that they were losing the election.
He was brushed aside, referring to the ratings, but soon had to admit that he was right.
Recently, Moore again urged the leadership of the Democratic Party not to relax.
He stated that the Midwest will vote for Trump again and that sociologists always underestimate the number of Trump supporters, always underestimate.
Among those research centers that correctly assessed the electoral prospects of candidates in 2016, it is worth highlighting such agencies as Trafalgar Group and Insider Advantage.
Today, specialists from both firms prefer the incumbent president.
One cannot fail to mention the famous American political strategist Douglas McKinnon, who four years ago, a week before the elections, sent an e-mail to the media with an absolutely accurate prediction of the outcome of the presidential elections in all states.
After that, even the "McKinnon Method" meme appeared.
What exactly it is, no one knows for certain, but the expert himself claims that he has found a way to account for the so-called shy (sometimes they say - “hidden”) Trump voters, who so surprised experts in 2016.
Today McKinnon also predicts a victory for Donald - with a score of 278 to 312 electors (compared with 270 needed to win).
Of course, the fact that in the past electoral cycle some researchers correctly predicted Trump's victory, and the party-biased liberal media made a mistake (or simply twisted the poll results for the purpose of election campaigning), does not mean that today it is worth believing Trump's guesses 100%.
In any case, to believe solely on the grounds that once they were right.
It would simply be unscientific.
In the same way, all the statements of liberal experts are unscientific that, they say, 2020 is not 2016, everything will be different this time.
On what basis is this conclusion made?
But the fact of the matter is that the good old scientific methods of studying American electoral reality have died.
They have been buried by the mainstream press and political functionaries under tons of lies and rhetorical agendas of hatred and division.
Note that not only American liberals are to blame for this, but also conservatives.
To justify the latter, one can only say that they did not start it.
The two parts of America, split by cultural, economic and political considerations, today are not just alien to each other, they hate their opponents and consider them the main threat to their way of life and their future.
There are practically no consensus topics left.
In domestic politics - for sure.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons (if not the most important of them) that sociology in the United States stopped working.
Yes, the media and expertocracy nowadays consider objectivity to be superfluous and even harmful, and therefore distort other people's words, statistics, history and even scientific facts in such a way that it serves quite definite political interests.
But this state of affairs is itself generated by division in society and its demand for conflict.
A conflict that "the most perfect democracy in the world" is not able to resolve, but even to dampen or freeze.
Therefore, America will face difficult times.
In states that today are increasingly called not swing states, but battleground states, it is simply impossible for one candidate to have a decisive advantage.
Even more inconceivable is the easy acceptance of the victory of one's enemies.
This means that in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Carolina, Florida, and possibly in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Maine, the dispute about "correct vote count" will begin on election night.
And it will begin against the backdrop of street activity and clashes between Trump and Biden supporters with the police and with each other.
And there, you see, the opponents and allies of the current owner of the White House in the special services and other law enforcement agencies will catch up ...
The end of the political season - 2020 without much bloodshed and without the introduction of a military dictatorship in the city on the hill, will be a huge success for the United States and the whole world.
But even if these risks are cut off, and after the inauguration of the new-old (or old-new) president, the split in America (and with it the whole world) will continue.
We are only at the very beginning of a great and terrible time of change.
This time its epicenter is in the West, in its heart - in the city on the hill.
But this does not mean that the waves of chaos of this catastrophe will not reach us.
In this sense, preparations should be made not for Trump's second term or for Kamala Harris' coming to power, but for the continuation of the great civil war in the West, which American and European partners will not fail to export outside.
On such days, by God, you somehow begin to perceive the paranoia of John Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy somehow!
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.