The gate was closed, the Butler Farm Show was deserted and the emotions had subsided. It was in this Pennsylvania town north of Pittsburgh that history almost took a dramatic turn on July 13, when a young man attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a rally. The bullet grazed his ear. The scene, captured by the many cameras present, became a historic moment, with a furious president shouting "Fight, fight, fight!" to his supporters. At that moment, everyone believed that the campaign for the presidential election scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, had been irrevocably altered due to this twist of fate, which some of Trump's supporters attributed to God. His opponent was an aging Joe Biden. But on July 21, the Democratic president threw in the towel, making way for his vice president, Kamala Harris, and reviving the race for the White House.

Long before July 13, Pennsylvania was the central battleground in the electoral race. As the saying goes, "whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the presidential election." This was the case in 2016 when Republican Trump won this state – part of the Rust Belt, which has faced significant deindustrialization – and its 20 electoral votes with a lead of just 44,000 votes out of approximately seven million voters. The trend continued in 2020, when Biden, a native of Pennsylvania, was declared the winner there after several days of vote recounts, finishing with 81,000 votes more than his rival. This dynamic is expected to persist on the evening of November 5. On the eve of the election, polls indicate that the two candidates are in a virtual tie, making it impossible to predict a winner in advance.

Pennsylvania is a unique state, established in 1681 by the English religious reformer William Penn. Today, with a population of 13 million and an area one-fifth the size of France, Pennsylvania has no unity. The state hosts two major cities: Philadelphia, which briefly served as the capital of the Union and where the American Constitution was drafted in 1787, and Pittsburgh, a city that symbolizes the Industrial Revolution due to its steel-making history. Both cities lean Democratic and are separated by rolling countryside populated by Mormons, Protestant farmers and former coal miners.

In Butler, where early voting was taking place on Monday, October 28, the events from July seemed like a distant memory. Across the street from the site of the attack, a farmer selling pumpkins for Halloween did not want to talk about the incident. "I'm dealing with post-traumatic stress," she said. In contrast, Chelsea Rowe, 33, a reception assistant for farm equipment dealer M&R Power Equipment, expressed a cynicism that is unusual in the US: "The FBI came for a week and then left. For a moment, we thought the shot had been fired from our roof. We had closed up, so it was a day off," she said with a wry smile on her face. Her colleague, Justin Olayer, a deliveryman for the same company, said he believes the attack has strengthened Trump's position. "You won't find many Democrats here. I'm on the road every day. All you see are Trump signs, very few Kamalas. Only Pittsburgh and Philadelphia vote Democrat, everything else is Republican."

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