Reporter Lewis Eyre spoke to Katelyn Lawlor from Rockford, Illinois, a Democrat voter who has been very active during the presidential election campaign, just hours before the polls started closing across the US tonight.
How are you feeling right now, a few hours away from the election result?
Katelyn: I’ve been voting Democrat since 2012. One candidate says they will be dictator from day one, the other tells everybody to be themselves and be American. The Democrats have the better candidate and that’s who’s going to pull ahead, so I’m very optimistic.
Kamala Harris only became the candidate in July, following four years of a Biden administration which is a period that many Republican voters have taken issue with. What are the changes you hope Harris will bring, compared to Joe Biden?
Katelyn: I hate Biden’s stance on Gaza. I think Harris will do a lot better job on that specifically. She is a former prosecutor who has dealt with human rights issues and human trafficking, so she will have a much more iron-fisted approach to foreign policy. She has been attached to Biden through this campaign but she will find freedom from that if she gets into power.
How will Harris, I hesitate to say “make America great again”, but what can Harris do to make America a great place to live, in your eyes?
Katelyn: Harris is trying to make America free, not focusing on titles and getting stuff done. Everybody is tired of the grievances claiming media are creating fake news and finding enemies.
Is there a big proportion of the US which is not ready for a female president? Will that be detrimental to Harris’s chances?
Katelyn: The people who are worried about her race and gender are going to find any reason to not vote for her. If someone thinks gender affects qualifications, they will take no notice of Harris’s policies. Those people will either sit out or vote for Trump.
She hasn’t tailored her campaign around potentially being the first female President, unlike Hillary Clinton.
Katelyn: A much more effective strategy than Clinton, definitely.
Trump is clearly a very convincing public speaker with an incredibly effective rhetoric, but what is it about him that Republican voters feel they can get behind?
Katelyn: He represents the anger and fear in the heart of every American. The fear of being neglected. “They’re taking our jobs, the crime rate’s going up”, it’s always about other people coming to harm you.
A lot of people also know Trump as a celebrity businessman. The economy was good under him, because the first two years of his economy were Obama’s economy. He inherited 75 straight months of job growth.
I think he appeals to people who just don’t understand that he is not a politician but the anti-politician. He’s the cool other guy, or at least what he tries to be.
Harris has managed to create a social media status for herself, becoming the more human candidate, while Trump is out there with a persona that people seem to be getting behind again.
If Trump does get in again, what is the most concerning thing about that for you as a Harris supporter?
Katelyn: Trump is going to claim victory regardless of whether it is accurate or not. He will pull an election subversion strategy again, and January 6 will be a big thing again. This time, though, people will be more prepared. While there were a few hundred police officers the first time around, this time there will be proper security around.
My disdain of Trump is not just against his character. A lot of people like his policies for certain reasons and that is different.
This election season, I have knocked on 400 doors myself and quite a few of them are Harris supporters. A few of them were saying they weren’t sure who to vote for, and a couple were outwardly Trump voters.
Why has it been this election in particular when you have gone out there to try and campaign?
Katelyn: I wanted to speak to people who were not just pro-Harris, but also pro-freedom. Her rallies have such a great energy. Going to one of her rallies is like a concert – there’s music playing all the time, people are doing the wave, there’s beachball! It’s nice to have fun politics, where we can have fun and discuss the issues and solve them but have a good time doing it.
So, we’re calling her the president for the modern age?
Katelyn: My YouTube algorithm probably has a lot of left-leaning political videos but never do I see Trump videos. His crowd sizes are about a tenth of a size and he only gets publicity for saying something gross. People seem to be getting tired of his shtick.
Trump is also the oldest person to ever stand to become President, as Biden was four years ago. Is that going to be challenging for him?
Katelyn: The media seems to hold Democrats to a much higher standard. When Biden was showing his age, there were red flags. The second Trump rants about batteries and sharks for the ninth speech in a row, nobody says anything about it.
People seem to be realizing that he just doesn’t connect with people or understand people, regardless of their age. Harris says a lot of words but she says coherent sentences and people say “We want a leader that can do that”.
When we go to the ballot for the UK elections, we have a bunch of names, a bunch of parties, and it seems quite simple. Does it intimidate you, having to vote for different people into the House of Representatives, the Senate, etc?
Katelyn: We need a popular vote that dismantles the electoral college system and simplifies the process. Streamline the House of Representatives and Senate and make it easier to understand, because this was a few hundred years ago for people who didn’t have cars or modern mindsets.
Will Harris be the one to do that? Our first black women president would be our first step to saying anyone can be anything, and that is what our country can be, but this is a very big country and it will be difficult to solve this problem.
I’ve gotten this far without asking what state you are voting from.
Katelyn: I’m from Illinois, which is not a battleground state. We have voted Democrat every time except for Reagan in the 80s.
I live on the state line with Wisconsin, where I did my door knocking. This is the most swingy of the swing states, so my vote on a technical level doesn’t matter as much because of the electoral college system but I can at least vote for Wisconsin to give Harris at least some chance above some states which can absolutely guarantee a victory.