Barack Obama Will Win

The tone of the press after the first of three planned debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney fills me with astonishment. Not that Romney was not, in fact, better than expected. Not that Obama is not shew, a bit like Sarkozy against Holland, strangely defensive, far from his usual charisma, unprepared. But to say that the first has "taken advantage", proclaiming that the latter has "collapsed", even on the brink of collapse and lost their "favorite status", in other words, to present this debate as the great "event "as the great" shift "could justify a new" card sharing "and cast uncertainty over the outcome of an election that already took for resolute demonstrates an ignorance quite strange mechanism chaired this election.

As Tocqueville noted, and never be said often enough, the U.S. presidential elections are really strange in one votes state by state and nationally. What is at stake in these 51 different choices (one for each state, plus the District of Washington) is still on the chair, but of the 538 electors who, in a second meeting in an Electoral College, chosen President leaving no room for real surprises.

And as each state is given a number of electors variable, because the sum of their representatives in Congress and in the Senate (three by South Dakota, for example, but 55-CA), and the so-called rule of winner -take-all means that, except in Maine and Nebraska, where things are a bit more complicated, the winner Cleaning up all the seats at stake, as well as the corresponding Electoral College votes (and win by one thousand or five thousand votes, both Obama and Romney may have the three constituents of the 55 Dakota or California), the system has political effects should also not lose sight.

There are states (such as California, precisely) where Democrats dominate so clearly and so neither long nor Obama-Romney-or speak of them or just visit them or they spend too much money. There are other states (like Tennessee) in which, on the contrary, the balance tips so for Romney that he and his opponent campaigning bother them and they do not spend but a symbolic part of their resources . In other words, the battle is concentrated only in the swing states, swing states, where nothing is certain and everything can take a sudden turn. And within those 10 or 12 swing states, especially those who, thanks to their demographic weight and therefore political largest voters will report to the victor (obviously, neither candidate will devote the same efforts to the battle for Ohio, with its 18 electors, than New Hampshire, which represents only four).

Although, of course, nothing is written. Not the first time a state addicted to this or that candidate is passed to the other side (in the 30's, the West Coast went from Republicans and Democrats in the 80 southern states walked the opposite way) . And perhaps we are witnessing the transformation of Texas, a state traditionally adept Republicans in a swing state, following its 26% Hispanic (unlike in the previous elections, in these, the battle for this state will be hard).

But this is the beginning. With two consequences, concrete and unequivocal. These national elections (although virtually international, since the whole planet depends on them) often seem local: how to avoid it in Des Moines, Iowa, a city to which both candidates were displaced last summer at least ... 14 times!, All focus primarily on local issues, if not parochial, of Des Moines, Iowa?

And as for those great debates led to the nation, it is clear that, in a similar pattern, they have nowhere near the impact that grow to a Jacobean country like France, which enjoys universal suffrage electoral system "normal". You can go further and imagine situations that could be quite counterproductive and subtract votes instead of adding them. (Suppose, and is a textbook example-that the promise of subsidies to farmers in Minnesota is perceived by the workers of Michigan as a reduction to receive them: one thing to make that promise a low voice in an interview Minneapolis television and other make with fanfare on CNN, true national echo chamber).

Perhaps this is one reason the mysterious restraint of Obama during the debate of Denver. And so I do not think it would jeopardize their chances of winning.

Your victory will be good for America. Whatever they say, will be good news for the rest of the world. And, when I write these lines, there is no reason to doubt that she had four years ago for the same dates. Barack Obama will probably be the next president of the United States.