An apology...and a prediction!!

Happy Election Day!!

Today is the culmination of the greatest show in Western Democracy.

After billions of dollars, millions of hours of volunteer time, thousands of policy commitments, hundreds of interviews, and a limitless number of promises from both candidates…. Kangaroo politics is bringing you something different…the rarest of political acts…an acknowledgement of failure.

With the best of intentions, your author set out a few months ago to do something different.

The plan was to break down the complexity of American politics for an audience of non-Americans.

To introduce the weird and wonderful concepts that make US elections foreign to the rest of the world.

Instead, you have received only a handful of missives, a mere entrée into the tightest race in recent memory.

For that I am sorry…. life took over and this project took a backseat.

But my working philosophy has always been that political authenticity, the rarest of attributes in a candidate, is a winning formula and so I am here to apologize and tell you that this project has not (yet) lived up to its potential.

At the same time, nobody wants to hear about the mirage behind the typeface so let’s move on to what is happening today/tonight…

AMERICANS ARE VOTING RIGHT NOW….

That is right, after all the back and forth, the octogenarian battle that gave way to a contest of two very different perspectives on America’s future, voters are finally getting the chance to have their say….and it is too close to call.

Numerous polls, betting markets and even the friend WhatsApp chats that are probably more reliable than anything else, have the race at a statistical dead heat.

Nobody knows what is going to happen….and if they tell you they do, they are full of shit.

This race is coming down to mere tens of thousands of people in seven states across the breadth of the United States.

Voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona have the future of American democracy in their hands as they head to the polls.

And the rest of us wait with bated breath to see what kind of mood they are in.

If you know someone in these states, call them now, tell them to go vote and then tell them to call their neighbors, friends, acquaintances, dog’s-sisters-cousins-brothers-friend and tell them to go vote…every single vote will make a difference in those seven states.

As I say, nobody knows what is going to happen but because I have underperformed expectations with newsletter delivery, I am going to give you, loyal reader, a gift….an election prediction with which to laud me or beat me over the head tomorrow morning.

I am going to stick my neck out and lay out a predicted outcome, something you won’t see from the networks or newspapers with still 9 hours till polls close on the east coast.

If this proves right, I expect to be carried into the CNN studio on all of your shoulders.

If it is wildly inaccurate, just leave me alone, I will have bigger problems.

Here it goes…

6pm: Party is about to start, champagne goes on ice (whiskey prepared in case), big screen inflated, and projector set up for election-watching.

6:30pm: Nervous energy sets in so sneak a nip of said whiskey.

7:00pm: Polls close in Georgia…networks call a bunch of states that are obvious and then nothing…. we wait.

7:30pm: Polls close in North Carolina, a state where votes are typically counted quite quickly. Distraction of friends arriving for party.

8:00pm: Polls close in Pennsylvania and Michigan…SHIT IS GETTING REAL. These are states where the election outcome could begin to become obvious BUT…. they take time.

Michigan has passed reforms that mean early votes can be counted before election day so we may get an early clue. Pennsylvania will take hours (and even days).

Order the Pizza…and make it Detroit style to honor the most important state in the nation at that moment.

8:30pm: As counting continues in the four states where polls have closed, we start to see some early signs.

My prediction is that about now, a cautious note of optimism will rise within Democratic circles (and the Kangaroo Politics election party) as early tallies show Harris doing better than expected in North Carolina and Georgia.

9:00pm: Polls close in Wisconsin and Arizona and things speed up in the early states. Margins start to edge up to 2/3% in Michigan and North Carolina. Pennsylvania and Georgia remain on a knife edge…the nervous nellies at election party go to a corner and rock themselves back and forth while hugging the emergency whiskey.

10:00pm: Polls close in Nevada and all everything starts to move like a bat out of hell…. things look good but we have been burned before and nobody is willing to be the first to say they are feeling confident.

10:30pm: The networks nervously call Georgia for Trump and Michigan for Harris…and we realize the emergency whiskey bottle is empty.

11:00pm…silence in the party as we just watch Wolf Blitzer and John King zoom in on random towns in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and reflect on whether we should have all moved there 3 years ago…. Wisconsin is called for Harris, Arizona for Trump.

11:15pm….Nervous shuffling around the party as people check their calendars for tomorrow and reflect whether it is too late to cancel their 9am work meeting. Nevada goes for Harris…all eyes on North Carolina and Pennsylvania

Midnight…. champagne is empty, kids and dogs are screaming, why are we still awake…it is probably time to call it and head to bed….but WAIT….what is that…Wolf Blitzer is preparing to make a major prediction….and so is Kangaroo Politics, although Wolf is a bit more sober than KP….North Carolina and it’s 16 electoral college votes will go to….

12:15am…Wednesday 6^th November 2025…. KAMALA HARRIS WILL BE THE 47^th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!

El Fin.

P.S…. Pennsylvania calls it for Harris on Friday but by then nobody cares.

P.P.S…If you have read this far, thank you for indulging me and my obsession with American politics and if you are interested in a non-American take in how the Harris (or eek…Trump) Administration will take shape and impact the world, drop me a reply and please share…Kangaroo Politics will be back!