Forget what the so-called experts are telling you about this election. Nobody knows anything.

Trump must win or he’s looking at jail for one of his four felony criminal cases. If he wins, the Supreme Court will give him four more years of immunity from his past crimes and all the future crimes he will commit while in office. If Trump loses, his first sentencing hearing will be in three weeks after the election where Judge Merchan will sentence citizen Trump to either jail or probation. Then citizen Trump gets to sit through three additional felony cases.

This election will be close and will come down to seven battleground states: the Great Lakes states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and the Sunbelt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. The margin of victory will be less than 1% of each state’s total votes. Trump has to take North Carolina or it’s a long night for the red team. Harris must take Pennsylvania, which we won’t know who won that state for three-to-four days.

Just like 2020, expect Trump to have a red mirage lead on Election Night as states count Election Day voter ballots that night, while Vote By Mail ballots must have the voter’s signatures verified before scanning the ballots and that takes some time. Trump being Trump, will claim victory on Election Night, even though there are still millions of ballots to be counted. MAGA, being easily manipulated rubes, will believe anything their orange cult leader tells them. And here we go again. “I went to bed that night and Trump had a huge lead. Then I wake up in the morning and it’s gone!” It’s called counting the votes.

It may be Friday or Saturday until our country knows who’s our 47th President. Depending on each candidate’s lead in those seven battleground states, it will take days to count the vote-by-mail ballots as Trump’s Election Night red mirage will be shrinking by the hour. As each of those states finalizes their vote count, either Trump’s huge Election Night red mirage will hold up to an Electoral College win, or Harris will eventually overtake Trump with enough Electoral College votes.

If Harris takes Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, she will have 270 Electoral votes and it’s over — she wins. Do you think Trump will concede if he loses again? Hell no! This time he’ll try to stop the certification of the vote in red counties and states by getting Republican county supervisors and state legislatures not certify any election that Harris won. They know they will be breaking the law, but they don’t care. Their loyalty is to their orange god, not the U.S. Constitution. Trump! Trump! Trump’s U-S-A! U-S-A!

To put things in perspective, in 2012 Mitt Romney’s internal polling had him winning enough Electoral College votes to win the election. Didn’t turn out that way. In 2016, Hillary thought it was gonna be a landslide and so did Trump. Trump didn’t even have an election night victory speech as he thought he was gonna lose bigly. In the 2020 pandemic campaign, many Republicans thought there’s no way Joe Biden can win from his basement. Turns out 81 million Americans really hated Trump. In other words, we have no idea who will win this election until ALL the votes are counted.

We don’t know how those seven states will break. I’ve heard the arguments on both sides. It will come down to the female vote. Trump took away a woman’s autonomy over their own bodies and Project 2025 wants to take away contraception. However, there’s still one place in America where women have a right to choose — the voting booth. You can end Trump’s presidential immunity and subject him to the same laws that you and I must live by.

It will come down to the male vote as men are gullible (just ask any woman) and will support an authoritarian leader who promises them whatever they want to hear. Four years in office and Trump only built 81 miles of new border wall and Mexico paid zip. Trump told us over and over that he was going to end the A.C.A. (Affordable Care Act) and replace it with something better. Nine years later, he has “concepts of a plan.” If Trump wins, this might be our last presidential election as dictators don’t allow voting.

North Carolina and Pennsylvania. That’s where this election will be won or lost.

Matthew Owen resides in Eureka and believes the First Amendment allows for free speech. He can be reached at mowen707@gmail.com.