Swords Raised

Well, it looks like it’s going to be quite a game. 48 hours before Tuesday’s momentous election, the most reliable polls in the U.S. predict a tough battle to become the tenant of the White House for the next four years. Obama moves between having a leading edge and drawing a tie. His rival, Romney, has come back from the drawbacks he had over the summer, but no poll has him in the lead; at the most, some polls predict a tie.

The complex U.S. electoral system seems to indicate that, this year, the state that will decide it all is Ohio, where it is not at all certain that Obama will get the win that analysts have been taking for granted. However, despite this virtual tie, no one believes that Romney can win. Why? Since 1951, when a maximum of eight years in office was approved, there has been a higher incidence of presidents that have run for a second term and won than otherwise. Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr. stayed in office for eight years, while Carter and Bush Sr. did not achieve re-election. Another president, Nixon, also won the nomination twice, but was forced to resign during his second term.

Surely, Obama’s personality, which contrasts with Romney’s, will also help to reinforce the opinion that he will remain in office for another four years. However, Romney knows that the president’s options are very different this year than that fateful night in 2008 when Obama won a crushing victory in the elections, sweeping seven points over McCain and nearly doubling his electoral votes in the different states of the Union.