The early morning view from Athens of the “nail-biter” US presidential election echoed sentiments from around the world, namely, that the race was still too close to call given that a handful of “swing states” were up for grabs.
According to Jonathan Constantine, the chairman of the Republicans Overseas Greece chapter, the biggest surprise he’s discerned in the hours after the polls closed was Donald Trump’s surprise showing in Minnesota.
The contest between the former US President and the Republican contender, and US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ appointed candidate after incumbent Joe Biden bowed out of the race, is deemed as tight, although it appeared that the Trump-Vance ticket had an edge before definite results for “battleground” states were announced.
“We’re slightly ahead and in Wisconsin and possibly Minnesota, so I don’t think Ms. Harris can come back; Pennsylvania is looking like it will go for us, too. But Minnesota is really the big surprise for me,” Constantine said a couple of hours before dawn in the Greek capital, and during a “press night” held by the chapter at its headquarters.
He also said he considers that voter demographics changed with the current election, considering that a surprising portion of black voters preferred Trump, “while white college-educated women are the last bastion for Harris. This was a class-based election, the working classes are with us, and it appears that the so-called intelligentsia are with the Democrats.”
The chairman of the Greece chapter of Democrats Abroad, former US diplomat Brady Kiesling, appeared more guarded, saying “it’s too close to say anything useful at the moment.”
At the same time, he praised Kamala Harris as having mobilized women voters very successfully, “and it looks like Trump has mobilized less educated young men”.
As opposed to previous galas held in Athens on the evening of US presidential elections, with the most memorable being the victory party in 2008 with Barack Obama’s victory, Kiesling said only small private gatherings of Democrat supporters were held on Tuesday night.
“… first of all, there wouldn’t be any resolution (of the election result) by the morning, and, people are now getting their information from the Internet, so you don’t need hotels with satellite feeds,” he said.
On his part, Triantafyllos Karatrantos, an Athens-based senior research fellow specializing on foreign policy and security, also cautioned that a prediction was still too premature, given the possible discrepancy between the popular vote and the electoral college tally.
“However, the trend appears to be towards Trump, but there’s no safe conclusion at this point… If Kamala Harris wins, then Trump will dispute the result, and this will lead to court challenges and recounts, and could even lead to violence. If Trump wins, the Democrats will challenge the result and exhaust all efforts to verify it, but you won’t see Harris giving inflammatory speeches against the system or charging that the election was stolen.”
In terms of Greek interests per se, he said Athens’ relations with Washington were actually upgraded in the latter half of the Trump term, as the administration and American diplomacy increasingly saw Greece as a strategic partner and part of a restructured mosaic in the wider region, essentially abandoning a unilateral “Turkey-only” investment as the strategic regional mainstay of US policy.
However, he also mentioned that if elected, “Trump is a politician who doesn’t maneuver in a traditional manner, he doesn’t have the same opinion of international law and he emphasizes personal relations, characteristically look at the one with Russia. So, there probably will be a strategic pivot by the United States in the Ukraine-Russian conflict, with pressure on Ukraine for a ceasefire and to sit for peace talks, something that will surely not satisfy the Ukrainians.”
