Fergus Finlay: Tonight has the potential to change the history of the world

I even stayed up to watch Tim Walz take on JD Vance. Walz was decent but clunky and awkward, Vance was polished but astonishingly oily and more than a bit creepy.

Then, of course, I had to stay up all night for the British general election. That was demanding, but ultimately completely rewarding. It’s funny, isn’t it, how sometimes you can get a bigger kick out of someone being eliminated than you do out of someone you admire being declared elected. Liz Truss was a particular highlight that night.

I’ll have to do it again, won’t I, at the end of this month for our own election. It’s no wonder I’m not the man I used to be — all this obsessing about political outcomes would age anyone.

But — and no disrespect to our own election — tonight is the big one. Tonight is one of those nights that has the potential to change the history of the world. 

It could affect the economic development of the entire world in at least the medium term. It could turn crucially important strategic relationships on their head. It could finally condemn the Palestinian people to destruction while the rest of the world watches on. 

It could spell the death knell of any efforts to combat climate change. So yeah, I’m staying up. And I’m guessing you will too.

Let me tell you now, though. None of that bad stuff is going to happen. Donald Trump is going to lose tonight.

From the moment she debated Trump, I have been confident Kamala Harris would beat him in the election. I’ve watched him ever since, flailing and lashing out, and I know in my heart of hearts he knows he’s up against someone immeasurably better than he is. The more he lashes out, the more you know his needy narcissism is kicking in.

And boy is he lashing out. There’s never been a candidate for public office in the history of democracy so ugly, so intemperate and vulgar, so offensive in his language and behaviour. Tonight is the night it will all catch up with him.

I first got to know America in the late 1960s — I arrived there on a student visa the year after Woodstock. I’ve been back in every succeeding decade (except this one, sadly). At a crucial moment in our struggling peace process, I witnessed first-hand what America’s politicians can do for others when they set their minds to it.

It’s funny. We all hate what America has done to the world at its worst, but it’s impossible to go there without falling in love with the country, and indeed with an awful lot of its people. And it’s been difficult to watch that country becoming more and more divided, by economics and alienation, by education and class, by colour and by gender.

It is probably more divided by race now than it was in the 60s when I knew it first. Most of all in recent years, and especially since the Trump cult took hold, it has been divided by hate and fear, stoked by Trump himself and by social media, the place where truth goes to die.

They are the reasons why this contest seems so close. But underlying that, I believe, there is a huge longing to do things differently. That’s where the hope is, and that’s why Harris will win.

From our perspective, those of us sitting in front of the telly on this side of the water, here’s what to watch out for. The first six states where polls will close will be Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia, Vermont and Georgia. That will happen at 7pm their time, which (thanks to our clocks going back an hour) will be midnight ours.

Georgia is the first one to watch (the others are predictable and will give Trump an early lead in the electoral college). Half an hour later, North Carolina polls will close — another battleground. So will Ohio and West Virginia, but Trump will have those.

I don’t know when those states will declare, but trends will be clear (unless it really is tight) pretty quickly. If Kamala Harris wins North Carolina and Georgia, you can probably get an early night. She’s going to win handsomely.

But you may have to wait another hour or so for the trends to emerge in Pennsylvania. You’ll be getting tired now, probably in need of strong coffee. But if Pennsylvania goes okay, I guarantee you’ll be wide awake.

Because of the time zones and the way the entire thing is structured, it will be well into the following morning our time before we know it all. But we already know how an awful lot of the big states are going to go. 

The experts over there say they can’t predict right now where 93 of the electoral college votes will end up. Of those that are predictable, 219 are expected to favour Trump, while 226 are expected to favour Harris.

But suddenly this weekend, one of the predictable ones — Iowa favouring Trump — has blown wide open with a new and heavyweight opinion poll suggesting Kamala Harris has taken the lead there. Sadly for us, if we have to wait for Iowa trends, it will be five in the morning before we know.

I don’t believe we will have to wait that long. By 3.30am (or thereabouts) Kamala Harris will have taken Michigan and Wisconsin, and it will all be over bar the shouting.

Of course, it won’t be as easy as that. Some of the so-called battleground states may be won or lost by a whisker, and there could be endless recounts, not to mention a lot of chicanery. 

The only thing we can be certain of is that there will never be a moment when Donald Trump picks up the phone and offers his congratulations to president-elect Harris. No matter the outcome, he doesn’t have that in him.

But it won’t matter. Neither, ultimately, will the endless trouble he causes now. I was utterly wrong the last time when Joe Biden beat Trump and I confidently predicted that Trump would fade away after his loss. 

Hate doesn’t fade away, and if Kamala Harris wants to rebuild America she needs to start by recognising the enormity of her task. Based on what she has achieved in the last six months, I for one won’t be underestimating her.