Democrats will probably win says US election expert

A retired US entrepreneur and US elections expert believes that the presidential Democrat candidate Joe Biden will probably win the US elections.

Patrick Siegler-Lathrop, the President of the American Club of Lisbon and author of his recently published book ‘Rendez-Vous with America’ told the business newspaper Jornal de Notícias that polls did get the predictions wrong in 2016 and that there is no certainty, but that he believes that the “polls in 2020 will be close to accurate”, meaning that Joe Biden is “highly likely to win the election, quite possibly decisively.”
However, the definitive result could only be know as late as December. This, he says, depends on two things, when the votes will be counted and when will they be certified.
“Because of the pandemic, more than half of US voters will vote by mail-in ballots or other early voting, a far greater figure than in the past, and since it takes much more time to count mail-in ballots than in-person voting, some states will not be able to have their results during the night of 3 November,” he says.
Patrick Siegler-Lathrop points out that a state by state analysis shows all but two Swing States (Michigan & North Carolina) will have counted most of their votes during the night of 3 November, so the large majority of votes will be counted by early morning today ( 4 November). However, as most States continue to accept mail-in ballots postmarked by 3 November, but received afterwards, in states where the election result is very close, “We may not know the final result until 5 or 6 November, or even later”.
The ACL president explains that Democrats use mail-in ballots more than Republicans. “If Biden is ahead in a state that has such a close election that it needs to count late-arriving mail-in ballots to decide who won, we can predict a Biden victory, but if Trump is ahead in a state that has not counted its mail-in ballots, we will not know the outcome for many days, for example Ohio counts ballots as late as 18 November and Pennsylvania as late as 23 November.”
According to Patrick-Siegler-Lathrop, even more difficult to predict is the delays for legal challenges in states that have very close elections; these could take weeks to resolve. “Some states have until well into December to certify their election results”.
In conclusion, the US election expert says that if the overall election is so close it will be decided in close elections in a few Swing States, the US will not know who won for several weeks after 3 Nov. However, if either Biden or Trump is clearly ahead in many swing states, Americans are likely to know the winner in the early morning today. (4 November)
And if Trump does win the elections, it will be hard for Europeans to understand why the American electorate supported him.
To make sense of this, one US entrepreneur operating in Portugal, Dana Redford, admits that the US public are more conservative than Europeans.
In an interview with ECO online, the US businessman says that although the polls give Biden the advantage, things could change at the last minute.
Dana Redford, who has been dividing his time between the US and Portugal for 18 years, says that he is more inclined to a Biden win, but says that it is important for the US to reestablish international relations, regardless of who ends up in the White House.
“Whoever wins, Trump or Biden, I want the US to be more open to alliances and value relations with Portugal and Europe more; I think that Biden is more open in this respect,” says Dana Redford.