America braced as two stark visions collide on election day

America is selecting its path ahead, and the stakes couldn’t be increased.

Each candidates have offered stark visions for the longer term in the event that they lose this election. Donald Trump says the nation will “go to hell” and turn out to be “communist instantly” if he loses, whereas Kamala Harris describes her opponent as a “fascist” who desires “unchecked energy”.

Voters in the important thing battleground states have been bombarded by marketing campaign advertisements, a lot of it designed to induce concern. Given this local weather, it’s no marvel surveyed Individuals are reporting excessive ranges of tension.

“I do consider they’re making us dwell in concern simply to get our vote,” Heather Soucek advised me in Wisconsin as election day loomed. She lives in a swing county in a swing state, and plans to again Trump as a result of, in her phrases, Harris’s financial plans are “scary”.

However simply alongside the road, I additionally met Tracy Andropolis, a registered impartial who stated she would vote for Harris. “It is one of the vital essential elections in my lifetime. There’s quite a bit on the road,” she stated, including that she was involved Trump would refuse to surrender energy if he received.

Each expressed real fears for the longer term if their candidate misplaced, reflecting the existential temper of many citizens on the eve of the election.

Ms Andropolis additionally advised me she didn’t consider the neck-and-neck polls. Not as a result of she has any actual proof, however as a result of she can’t envisage hundreds of thousands of individuals planning to vote for Trump. And he or she is certainly not alone in her struggles to simply accept the closeness of this race.

One of many issues I’ve realized travelling round this nation and speaking to voters is that America does not simply appear remarkably divided, it feels as if two separate nations are awkwardly cohabiting on the identical land mass.

Democrats primarily dwell within the cities and suburbs, with Republicans largely residing in rural areas. Individuals are more and more shifting to locations the place their neighbours share their political outlook. And it’s not laborious to determine these areas in the intervening time, given the yard indicators and placards that so usually mark out Trump and Harris territory.

However it isn’t attainable to dwell in these separate political worlds perpetually. These two sides are about to collide with the cruel actuality of an election.

Nonetheless disputed, nevertheless contested, there must be a winner.

And when some right here study the eventual consequence and realise that tens of hundreds of thousands of their fellow Individuals really feel very otherwise to them, it will likely be a shock.

Each Trump and Harris have charted their very own historic and tumultuous paths to polling day.

I used to be among the many press pack gathered exterior a Manhattan court docket to witness Trump’s arraignment in his felony hush-money trial in April. He was discovered responsible weeks later, changing into the primary former or sitting president to be convicted of a criminal offense. Many requested on the time: might a convicted felon actually reclaim the White Home?

However his authorized troubles and his declare that he was being intentionally focused by the Biden administration solely fuelled his marketing campaign and fired up his supporters. “They don’t seem to be after me, they’re after you,” he would so usually say.

“They’re weaponising the felony justice system towards their political enemies, and it isn’t proper,” one in all his supporters advised me exterior the courthouse. “I’ll struggle for this man till the day I die,” one other stated.

A well-recognized sample emerged: with every indictment, his ballot rankings climbed and monetary donations poured in.

Simply assume again to the second final 12 months when his mugshot was taken as a part of the election interference case in Georgia. It shortly grew to become an iconic picture that now adorns most of the T-shirts I see at Trump rallies.

And it’s unattainable to recount the previous president’s wild journey to polling day with out the second that produced one other iconic picture and virtually ended the competition altogether.

When Trump was shot by a would-be murderer in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, it shook this race and this nation profoundly. As he was helped to his ft by Secret Service brokers, blood pouring from his ear, he raised his fist within the air and urged his supporters to struggle.

When he appeared simply 48 hours later at his occasion’s conference in Milwaukee with gauze over his ear, some within the crowd had been weeping. I might see tears rolling down the face of 1 delegate standing close to to me. It was Tina Ioane, who’d travelled from American Samoa.

“He’s the anointed,” she advised me. “He was referred to as to steer our nation.”

At that stage in the summertime, electorally, Trump regarded unassailable.

On the opposite facet, Democrats had been changing into more and more depressed about their very own prospects. Deeply anxious that their candidate, Joe Biden, was too previous to win re-election.

I used to be within the press room watching his shambolic debate towards Trump in late June. There was surprised silence as we watched Biden’s 50-year profession in politics basically come to an finish in entrance of our eyes.

However even then, many who publicly urged he ought to step apart had been dismissed. The Biden marketing campaign even hit out on the “bedwetting brigade” who had been calling for him to go.

It might, in fact, be a matter of time.

Simply days after that jubilant Republican conference in July, when Trump regarded like he couldn’t lose, Biden introduced he was giving up his re-election bid. The temper amongst Democratic supporters quickly swung from anxious pessimism to excited anticipation.

Any reservations that they had about whether or not Kamala Harris was their greatest candidate had been erased at a joyful conference in Chicago a couple of weeks later. Individuals who had been resigned to defeat had been now swept away on a tide of enthusiasm.

This election represented an opportunity to “transfer previous the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the previous”, she stated to loud cheers.

However this burst of pleasure didn’t final. After an preliminary bump within the polls, Harris struggled to keep up the momentum. It seems she shortly received again conventional Democrats who weren’t backing Biden however discovered it tougher to win over essential undecided voters.

Harris, nevertheless, has repeatedly pushed that extra optimistic message. She has additionally made reproductive rights a cornerstone of her marketing campaign, and is hoping the difficulty will encourage girls to prove in excessive numbers.

However the problem, as in all presidential elections, is to persuade the undecided.

I met Zoie Cheneau at a hair salon she owns in Atlanta, Georgia, lower than two weeks out from the election. She stated she had by no means been so unmotivated to vote.

“It is the lesser of two evils for me proper now,” she stated, explaining that she would finally forged her poll for Harris however felt Trump could show higher for small companies.

“I shall be excited {that a} black lady could be the president of america,” she stated. “And she is going to win, I do know she is going to win.”

Whereas some voters are anxious and consider this race to be shut, Ms Cheneau’s certainty in regards to the eventual result’s one thing supporters on each side repeatedly specific.

Many Harris supporters merely can’t perceive why she just isn’t additional forward of a convicted felony who has been publicly attacked and derided by those that served in his final administration.

Trump supporters are equally aghast that anybody might vote for a candidate who has flip-flopped on coverage and has been within the White Home at a time when unlawful border crossings reached report ranges.

These two tribes exist in what seem like parallel political ecosystems, throughout a deep partisan divide the place opposing views are dismissed and the candidates encourage a loyal loyalty that goes past regular occasion affiliation.

Voters have been given apocalpyptic warnings about what may occur if the opposite facet wins. They have been advised this election is about excess of who sits within the Oval Workplace for the following 4 years. Many consider it’s an existential occasion that might have disastrous penalties.

There isn’t any doubt the tone of this marketing campaign has raised the stakes, ratcheting up anxiousness and pressure, which means the aftermath of this election may very well be explosive. We predict authorized challenges and road protests could be a shock to nobody.

It is a nation break up between opposing visions of what is at stake. However it’s within the polling stations that Crimson and Blue America will meet and be counted.

Regardless of the consequence, roughly one half of the nation is about to find that the opposite half has a totally completely different sense of what America requires.

For the losers, this shall be a stinging realisation.