The primaries season is coming to an end in the United States, and soon the Democratic and Republican Parties will determine their candidates for the post of president of the United States. The director of the Roosevelt Center for American Studies of Moscow State University, Yuri Rogulev, believes that currently it is very difficult to evaluate the chances of candidates. According to the historian, the percentage of voters who view both candidates very negatively is extremely high.
According Rogulev, at the beginning of election race neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton looked to be very popular candidates: "If we evaluate the polls, Clinton's level of support and level of aversion are equal. The percentage of voters who view these two candidates very negatively is very high. It is an alarming fact. He says that the American voter, as the Americans themselves admit, is very angry. In this sense, he does not see Clinton as the absolute candidate from the Democratic Party."
Rogulev believes that another democrat, Bernie Sanders, has little chance of becoming the only candidate from the Democratic Party because of the fact that Clinton constantly talks about the votes of superdelegates, who have not voted yet: "In other words, she put them in her pocket before they even voiced their opinion at the party congress. Actually, her situation can be very difficult at the party congress. She is not entering the congress of the Democratic Party as the winner on a white horse, her position is not absolute. There was information that President Barack Obama called Clinton and Sanders. He congratulated Clinton on becoming prime candidate, and he plans to meet with Sanders. It is an important factor. We are talking about the electorate of Sanders, and if you look at how many votes he received from delegates, the difference is not that big. So they will talk about a large group of the electorate that supports Sanders and that may not vote for Clinton."
According to Yuri Rogulev, there is a different situation in the Republican Party. "Donald Trump secured advantage for himself in advance, he became the only candidate. But we can't say that all republicans support him right now. Although no one expected that the leadership of the Republican Party and leaders in Congress would find common ground with him so quickly. But the campaign of the Republicans against Trump continues. There are people like Senator McCain, who cannot stand him and continue to agitate against him. It also shows that the situation in the Republican Party is not simple. If the party doesn't split, then at least there will be some serious contradictions at the congress. If even President Obama joined here in order to unite Democrats, I do not know who could play this role in the Republican Party. They don't have an absolute leader. In this sense, the prospects are not cloudless for either Trump and Clinton. So the situation is actually really difficult," the expert concluded.
