In the last hours before Election Day in the United States, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have undertaken a final campaigning blitz with a number of rallies in key battleground states as polls show the candidates deadlocked.
Trump opted for the crucial swing-states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan, while Harris decided instead to expend her efforts entirely on three rallies in Pennsylvania.
This comes as polls show the leading candidates neck-and-neck, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll over the weekend showing Harris leading in Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia, while Trump eliminated her lead in Pennsylvania and strengthened his own in Arizona.
A Des Moines Register/Iowa poll found Harris leading in a state that had long been considered a safe bet for Trump. However, the poll of 808 Iowa voters has a margin of error of plus/minus 3.4 percentage points, casting doubt on the certainty of its 47 percent to 44 lead for Harris over Trump.
On the final day of campaigning before Americans decide whether to return Trump to the White House or give the US its first female president, the former president said that he was going to win by a “landslide that is too big to rig”, while Harris claimed the momentum was with her.
Trump used the first rally of the day to double down on his immigration stance, saying that if he is elected president, he would impose a 25% tariff on Mexican imports unless the southern neighbour put stricter border controls in place.
“We will not be invaded, we will not be occupied, we will not be overrun, we will not be conquered,” Trump told his supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina. “We will be a free and proud nation once again. Everyone will prosper, every family will thrive and every day will be filled with opportunity and hope and the American dream itself.”
Harris’s star-studded schedule for the day features such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, who posted to social media ahead of her Pennsylvania performance to share that she’d cast her vote for the vice president.
The pop star shared an old video of herself with Harris, captioned, “She’s gonna be… well… We’re the only ones who can finish this sentence…VOTE!”
As the election comes to a close, over 77 million Americans have already cast their ballots in 47 states across the country, according to CNN, who suggest that early voting turnout is down from 2020 levels, when over 110 million people voted early in person or by mail — approximately 70% of everyone who voted in the election four years ago.
Republicans were also found to have raised their pre-election vote share, following an effort from the Trump campaign to encourage early voting among his supporters.
This comes as the former president’s campaign claims that the Democrats aren’t seeing the number of early voters they’d expected, highlighting comments from former Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina, who said on MSNBC that “the early vote numbers are a little scary”.
https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1853498709423907247The final wave of advertisements from both the republicans and the democrats have sought to drive home the platforms each candidate has been running on. Addressing the camera, Harris pledged to “bring a new generation of leadership” and to “build a brighter future for our nation”.
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1852758190074532216A late advertisement from Trump meanwhile praises his first term in office, and sees the former president tell voters that “we’re going to launch a new golden age of American success for the citizens of every race, religion, colour and creed”.
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