Las Vegas

Leaving the great prairie behind you, you arrive in the southwestern states: New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and here you once again come across the contradictions of a polarized and deeply divided nation. Incredibly, in this semi-desert triangle even the landscape is in tune with the fractured soul of America. Las Vegas, the Disneyland of gambling, is a glittering metropolis that rises in the centre of the desert, a few hundred kilometers from Monument Valley where time has stopped in prehistory, and from the Navajo Indian reservation, where the future has vanished since the mid-19th century.

You get to Las Vegas from one of the main roads that cross the desert, without realizing you transition from the scorched earth of early autumn to the windows of the designers, the drive from a slice of the country that electorally does not exist to a city that represents an electoral metropolitan beacon is sudden and runs along one of deep existential fractures of this nation.

Trump is in town when I arrive and MAGA is everywhere, a loud, vulgar red wave that makes Las Vegas look like a red city. A brightly lit billboard showing Trump and Harris in profile, two gladiators facing each other, displays election bets in real time, with Trump naturally the favourite. But then you notice that the win/loss percentage never changes. Is it an ad? you wonder.

The board is from Kalshi, the first non-academic prediction market to be officially legalised in the United States - the company won a court battle against regulators who tried to stop it from allowing election betting. Kalshi's total betting volume is now more than $50 million, indicating that Trump has a 61 percent chance of winning over Harris. But is it true? you wonder again. The electoral betting market is inflated by billionaires aligned with both candidates who with millions of dollars try to change the winning percentages of the betting market

Super modern and futuristic, Las Vegas has no charm, everything appears fake and kitsch; yet, taken individually several of its spectacular buildings, e.g. the sphere or the pyramid, are works of great architecture. As in all of America, harmony is lacking and inequalities are monumental, so frighteningly overwhelming that one has the impression that victims and executioners coexist.

Of course Nevada is a swing state, it became one at the end of the 80s, until then it was a Republican state. But like Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona the population of the Silver State has suddenly grown due to internal migration. Since 1980, it has more than tripled, recording a 35 percent growth between 2000 and 2010. And so internal migration has transformed Nevada into a swing state.

Las Vegas is also a city balanced between red and blue, polarized. It is supported by a labor-intensive industry, the workforce is registered at 1.2 million workers, but the real figure is much higher, and unemployment is almost zero. An army of valets, croupiers, waiters, chefs, prostitutes and artists entertain tens of millions of tourists every day. In this city there is work for everyone. The strength of the unions is immense and the largest union, The Culinary Union, has said it is in favor of Harris. But this does not mean that all members will vote for her. Trump could win over a part of them with his slogans on the future of the country.

The problem for those who work in Las Vegas is not illegal immigration, so dear to the Trump-Vance duo, on the contrary, unauthorised immigrants are welcome because they do the jobs that others do not want to do. The real problem for those who live and work in Las Vegas is inflation. And Trump on the economic level appears more credible than Harris. According to the latest survey by the Financial Times together with the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, 44 percent of the population believes that Trump is better suited than Harris to manage the economy while 43 percent are rooting for Kamala Harris. A very low margin but in a city like this, the capital of gambling and entertainment, where they want to give visitors the impression that everything is allowed, perhaps Trump's economic message steeped in the American dream has more resonance than Harris' socio-economic one.