By Steve Peoples, Related Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The 2024 presidential contest speeds into its closing weekend with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a razor-thin contest.
At this late stage within the marketing campaign, day-after-day issues. And whereas few voters would possibly change their minds this late in a typical election, there’s a sense that what occurs in these closing days might shift votes.
Harris and Trump are crisscrossing the nation to rally voters within the states that matter most. They’re attempting — with various levels of success — to remain targeted on a transparent and concise closing message. On the similar time, all sides is investing large assets to drive up turnout for the ultimate early voting interval. And in these vital days, the stream of misinformation is intensifying.
Right here’s what we’re watching on the ultimate weekend earlier than Election Day, which is Tuesday:
The place will Harris and Trump be?
You solely want to have a look at the candidates’ schedules this weekend to know the place this election will probably be determined.
Notice that schedules can and sure will change with out warning. However on Saturday, Trump is anticipated to make separate appearances in North Carolina with one eyebrow-raising cease in Virginia in between.
No Democratic presidential candidate has carried North Carolina since Barack Obama in 2008, though it has been determined by lower than 3 factors in each election since. Trump’s choice to spend Saturday there suggests Harris has an actual alternative within the state. However Trump can also be attempting to convey confidence by stopping in Virginia, a state that has been safely within the Democratic column since 2008.
There’s maybe no extra necessary swing state than Pennsylvania, the place Trump is anticipated to marketing campaign Sunday. However he additionally has one other look scheduled for North Carolina along with Georgia, one other Southern state that has leaned Republican for nearly three many years — that’s, till Joe Biden carried it by lower than a half share level 4 years in the past.
In the meantime, Harris is anticipated to marketing campaign in North Carolina and Georgia on Saturday in an indication that her crew is sensing real alternative within the South. She’s planning to make a number of stops in Michigan on Sunday, shifting to a Democratic-leaning state within the so-called Blue Wall the place her allies consider she is susceptible.
Do they keep on message?
Trump’s marketing campaign management desires voters to be targeted on one key query as they put together to solid ballots, and it’s the identical query he opens each rally with: Are you higher off right now than you had been 4 years in the past?
Harris’ crew desires voters to be enthusiastic about one other: Do they belief Trump or Harris to place the nation’s pursuits over their very own?
Whichever candidate can extra successfully hold voters targeted on their closing arguments within the coming days might in the end win the presidency. But each candidates are off to a difficult begin.
Trump opens the weekend nonetheless going through the fallout from his current New York Metropolis rally wherein a comic described Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of garbage.” Issues received more durable for Trump late Thursday after he raised the prospect of Republican rival Liz Cheney’s demise by gunfire.
It was precisely the sort of inflammatory remark his allies need him to keep away from at this vital second.
Harris’ marketing campaign, in the meantime, remains to be working to shift the dialog away from President Biden’s feedback earlier within the week that described Trump supporters as “garbage.” The Related Press reported late Thursday that White Home press officers altered the official transcript of the decision in query, drawing objections from the federal employees who doc such remarks for posterity.
The highlight of presidential politics all the time burns brightly. However it’s going to burn brightest, maybe, this closing weekend, leaving the campaigns nearly no margin for error. In what either side consider is a real tossup election, any final-hours missteps might show decisive.
How will the gender hole play out?
Trump’s graphic assault in opposition to Cheney was particularly troublesome given his allies’ heightened considerations about ladies voters.
Polling exhibits a big gender hole within the contest with Harris typically having a significantly better score amongst ladies than Trump has. A part of which may be the results of the GOP’s battle to limit abortion rights, which has been disastrous for Trump’s social gathering. However Trump’s divisive management has additionally pushed ladies away.
Trump isn’t serving to his trigger. A day earlier than his violent rhetoric about Cheney, the Republican former president made waves by insisting that he would shield ladies whether or not they “like it or not.”
Harris, who can be the nation’s first feminine president, stated Trump doesn’t perceive ladies’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”
It stays to be seen whether or not the Democrat’s argument can break by way of on this packed weekend. However Harris’ crew believes there’s nonetheless a big chunk of persuadable voters on the market. And so they say the undecideds are disproportionately Republican-leaning suburban ladies.
What occurs with early voting?
Greater than 66 million folks have already solid ballots within the 2024 election, which is greater than one-third the whole quantity who voted in 2020.
They embrace considerably extra Republicans in contrast with 4 years in the past, largely as a result of Trump has backed off his insistence that his supporters should solid ballots in particular person on Election Day.
And whereas early in-person voting has led to many states, there will probably be an enormous push for final-hours early voting in not less than three key states because the campaigns work to financial institution as many votes as doable earlier than Election Day.
That features Michigan, the place in-person early voting runs by way of Monday. Voters in Wisconsin can vote early in-person by way of Sunday, though it varies by location. And in North Carolina, voters have till 3 p.m. Saturday to solid early ballots in-person.
The early voting interval formally ended Friday in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
In the meantime, questions stay in regards to the Trump marketing campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation, which is relying closely on well-funded exterior teams with little expertise — together with one group funded largely by billionaire Elon Musk that’s going through new questions on its practices.
Harris’ marketing campaign, in contrast, is working a extra conventional get-out-the-vote operation that options greater than 2,500 paid staffers and 357 places of work in battleground states alone.
Will misinformation intensify?
Trump’s allies seem like intensifying baseless claims about voter fraud, and a few are being amplified by Trump himself. He has spent months sowing doubts in regards to the integrity of the 2024 election within the occasion he loses — simply as he did 4 years in the past.
His unfounded accusations have gotten extra particular, in some instances, as wild claims start to indicate up on social media.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a marketing campaign rally Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photograph/Morry Gash)Earlier this week, Trump claimed on social media that York County, Pennsylvania had “received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail-In Ballot Applications from a third party group.” He has additionally pointed to Lancaster County, which he claimed had been “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person. Really bad ‘stuff.’”
Trump was referring to investigations into potential fraud associated to voter registration purposes. The invention and investigation into the purposes present proof the system is working because it ought to.
The Republican nominee has additionally raised baseless claims about abroad ballots and noncitizens voting, and prompt with out proof that Harris may need entry to some sort of secret inside details about election outcomes.
Count on such claims to surge, particularly on social media, within the coming days. And keep in mind that a broad coalition of high authorities and business officers, a lot of them Republicans, discovered that the 2020 election was the “most secure” in American historical past.”
AP writers Jill Colvin and Michelle Worth in New York; and Zeke Miller and Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
