Seeking to sway the remaining few undecided voters and rally their supporters to the polls, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump trekked Sunday to political battleground states two days ahead of Tuesday’s national election for a new White House term starting in January.
Harris, the Democratic candidate, headed to Michigan in the upper Midwest, one of seven states where polling shows the contest is exceedingly close and the outcome uncertain. Political math shows that whichever candidate captures four or more of the seven battleground states is likely to become the country’s 47th president.
Trump, the Republican candidate looking to become only the second president to serve two non-consecutive terms, headed to three other battleground states, staging rallies in smaller cities where he hopes to run up big vote counts in rural areas to offset Harris’ expected large margins in Democratic-dominated cities.
Trump started his day in Lititz, Pennsylvania, before heading to Kinston, North Carolina in the afternoon and ending with an evening rally in Macon, Georgia.
It was the first day since last Tuesday that the two candidates had not campaigned in the same state. The focus on the battleground states is so pronounced that on Saturday, their planes shared a stretch of tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina, where both candidates held rallies.
Harris attended a Black church service in Detroit, the hub of the U.S. auto industry in Michigan, before heading to stops in Livernois and Pontiac and a rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing in the evening.
More than 76 million people have already cast early ballots by mail or at polling stations, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, and early voting extends throughout much of the U.S. on Sunday and Monday. The total is nearly half the 158 million who voted through Election Day in 2020.
Both Trump and Harris sought in the closing days of the campaign to portray the other as unfit to govern the country over the next four years.
On his Truth Social media platform, Trump told voters, “Every problem facing us can be solved—but now, the fate of our nation is in your hands. On Tuesday, you have to stand up, and you have to tell Kamala that you’ve had enough, you can’t take anymore, “Kamala Harris, You’re Fired!”
At her rallies, Harris has sought to convince voters that she will cut the cost of living, which polling has shown to be the top concern across the country. She has also characterized Trump as dangerous and erratic and urged Americans to move on from Trump’s chaotic approach to politics.
“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We’re done with that,” she said in Charlotte on Saturday.
Trump has contended that Harris, as the sitting vice president for nearly four years, should be held accountable for rising consumer prices and the tens of thousands of migrants crossing the Mexican border into the United States for the past several years. He has portrayed the migrants as a consequential political threat to the country and their presence damaging financially to state and local governments throughout the U.S.
“The only free aid they are going to get is a free ride back home,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina on Saturday.
Harris made a surprise cameo appearance on NBC’s comedy sketch show “Saturday Night Live,” where she met up with actor Maya Rudolph, her doppelganger persona on the show.
Rudolph told Harris at the end of the skit, “I’m going to vote for us.”
“Great. Any chance you’re registered in Pennsylvania?” Harris asked, reflecting on the importance of the large eastern state to the national outcome.
“Nope, I am not,” Rudolph said.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” Harris replied, before the two delivered the show’s signature, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung belittled Harris’ appearance on the show, saying, “Kamala Harris has nothing substantive to offer the American people, so that’s why she’s living out her warped fantasy cosplaying with her elitist friends on Saturday Night Leftists as her campaign spirals down the drain into obscurity.” Trump hosted the show during his first run for the presidency in 2015.
Last-minute polling shows the Harris-Trump race all but tied in the battleground states, within the margin of statistical error.
ABC News polling shows Trump winning five of the seven battleground states, but The Washington Post says its aggregation of polls has Harris ahead in four. The New York Times says Trump is ahead in four, Harris two and the race tied in Pennsylvania.
The importance of battleground states cannot be overstated.
U.S. presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but through the Electoral College, which turns the election into 50 state-by-state contests, with 48 of the states awarding all their electoral votes to the winner in those states. Nebraska and Maine allocate theirs by both statewide and congressional district vote counts.
The number of electoral votes in each state is based on population, so the biggest states hold the most sway in determining the overall national outcome, with the winner needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to claim the presidency.
Polls show either Harris or Trump with substantial or comfortable leads in 43 of the states, enough for each to get to 200 electoral votes or more. Barring an upset in one of those states, the winner will be decided in the seven remaining battleground states, where both Harris and Trump have staged frequent rallies, all but ignoring the rest of the country for campaign stops.
Polling in the seven states is easily within the margins of statistical error, leaving the outcome in doubt in all seven.
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