Democrats Disburse 100 Thousand Dollars To Get Swingvoters Abroad For Kamala Harris

JAKARTA - The National Democratic Party Committee disbursed more than US$100,000 (equivalent to Rp1.5 billion) in its first attempt to register 9 million Americans living abroad.

This effort is in order to win the votes for vice president candidate from the party, Kamala Harris, in the United States presidential election on November 5, 2024.

Funding for Democrats Abroad, which represents Democratic Party members living outside the United States, will be used to pay voter registration fees and disseminate information on how to vote from abroad, a DNC official said on Monday, August 12.

DNC officials said there were more than 1.6 million Americans from the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin living abroad, and they would struggle to get each vote.

These states are important for Harris or former Republican President Donald Trump to win the election.

President Joe Biden defeated Trump's vote to win the presidency in 2020 by only winning 44,000 votes across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

"DNC did nothing to ensure that Kamala Harris would be the next president of the United States," he said in a statement.

It is recorded that only 8 percent of Americans living abroad have registered to vote in the 2020 elections.

This election will be won marginally, and with just three months ahead of the election, every important vote includes the voices of those on duty or living abroad.

The largest American voter living abroad lives in Mexico, a DNC official said, and the next largest number lives in various countries in Europe.

Harris and his partner, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, last week visited several states on the battlefield for political battles, campaigning with thousands of people and building momentum that has pushed him since he took over the top position of the Democratic Party after President Joe Biden resigned.

Harris are ahead of Trump each with a percentage four-point difference in separate polls in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania conducted by the New York Times and Siena College.

This is a major change from polls in those states carried out before Biden withdrew from presidential candidacy last month.

Nationally, Harris outperforms Trump by a difference of five percentage points, which is 42% compared to 37%, in the Ipsos poll published on Thursday.

This figure extends its lead from the Reuters/Ipsos survey on July 22-23, which showed that Harris rose 37% to 34%.

Martha McDevitt-Pugh, chairman of the Democratic Party Abroad, called DNC funding a strong affirmation of our work and the importance of overseas voters, who voted in their home state and have become a margin for victory in key elections, such as delivering Georgia in 2020.