Protests in the United States caused by the death of African American George Floyd as a result of police actions will not affect the chances of President Donald Trump to be re-elected in the upcoming elections, said Alexei Fenenko, associate professor of international security at the Moscow State University’s faculty of world politics.
As the expert emphasized, polls and ratings in the United States do not matter, since the presidential election is indirect, they are not held by a majority of votes, but by the electoral college, that is, the US president is elected by states, not citizens.
“That is, the main thing is not just to have a majority in public opinion, but to win in the right states. Here Trump initially relies on the white states of the Midwest, he does not rely on states in which color minorities predominate. Therefore, the very opposite is the fact that Trump uses stiffness, can very much raise his rating in those states on which he relies”, – Fenenko told the reporters.
He noted that Trump’s use of force against the background of the protests could attract a conservative white electorate, “not only Anglo-Saxon New England, but also Latin American, where there are a lot of passionate Catholics”.
“I do not exclude the possibility that Trump may go to the crackdown on protests in some cities to show his electorate that he is a strong real President who cannot be broken. The image of a tough guy is very impressive to inner America”, – the expert added.
As Fenenko emphasized, all states in the United States have long been divided between parties.
“The so-called Midwest usually remains unshared. Already, in principle, everyone knows that the liberal coast traditionally votes for Democrats, and inland America for Republicans. That Texas has long been a support, for example, of Republicans, and California is stronger than Democrats. That is, the sympathy of the American voter they’ve been separated for a very long time, and there’s practically no way to break this system. We can talk only about hesitating ones, and not about the basic electorate of both”, – the expert concluded.
Riots broke out in Minneapolis and several other cities after the death of African American George Floyd at the hands of the police. Videos appeared on the Internet that showed that the police handcuffed Floyd, knocked him down and fell on him three, one of them stepping on his neck with his knee. Floyd on the video several times says that he can’t breathe, then calms down. He died in intensive care. After the riots started, four policemen were fired, and one of them was accused of negligence.