Five days from now the American people will have their presidential elections, bringing to an end, hopefully, one of the most acrimonious campaigns in 248 years of United States political history.

We say hopefully because of widespread fears in the country that a close election result could set off another chain of actions that could be worse than those of the 2020 polls, which included the events of January 6, 2021, when a mob supporting losing President Mr Donald Trump stormed the Capitol to overturn the results.

The unprecedented campaign turned uglier with two alleged assassination attempts on the life of Mr Trump, who has faced many legal perils, including conviction on 34 felony counts in a New York fraud case triggered by his alleged attempts to silence an adult film star over an affair he feared could have hurt his chances of winning the 2016 elections.

He was also found guilty of sexual assault in the E Jean Carroll case, and for defaming her even after being slapped with a massive fine.

In Washington, DC, and in Georgia, a Justice Department special counsel and a district attorney are seeking to hold Mr Trump accountable for his actions to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat, and for holding on to classified documents after leaving office.

A Florida judge threw out the classified documents case, but that is being appealed.

As the campaign intensified, public opinion surveys have shown a close race between Mr Trump, the Republican candidate, and Vice-President Mrs Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, especially in the so-called battleground states where American elections are won or lost.

The tightness of the contest has spurred many US Jamaicans who believe they have skin in the game — because Mrs Harris is part-Jamaican and their traditional affinity for the Democratic Party — to leave their own home states to join her hard-fought campaign in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.

Mrs Harris’s campaign has claimed that the closeness is reflecting a plethora of Trump-supporting polls which are skewing the averages in his favour. They are also banking on the support of the Republicans for Harris, a group formed mostly of disaffected Republicans who voted for Mrs Nikki Haley during the party’s primary, even after her name was removed from the ballot.

Latest polls show Mrs Harris leads nationally but is almost inseparable from Mr Trump and within the margin of error in the battleground states. Her supporters insist she has momentum, pointing to the fact that, since becoming the nominee in July, she has erased all of Mr Trump’s leads over President Joe Biden, and is now getting the larger rally crowds. They are also buoyed by claims that in the early and mail-in voting there are more new voters for the Democrats than the Republicans and that the percentage of women voting for Mrs Harris is more than the percentage of men voting for Mr Trump.

Exuding confidence of a win, Mr Trump has found himself now fending off bitter criticisms that a comedian at his triumphal rally at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sunday hurt the feelings of Latinos — a demographic he needs — by describing Puerto Rico as a floating “island of garbage”.

Our hope is that whatever the outcome, American democracy will be the winner.