NEW YORK – The 2024 presidential contest heads into its last weekend with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a razor-thin contest.
At this late stage of the marketing campaign, day-after-day counts. And whereas few voters would possibly change their minds this late in a typical election, there is a sense that what occurs in these last days might shift votes.
Harris and Trump are crisscrossing the nation to rally voters within the states that matter most. They are attempting, with various levels of success, to remain targeted on a transparent and concise closing message. At the identical time, every social gathering is investing vital assets to extend voter turnout for the newest early voting interval. And in these important days, the movement of misinformation is intensifying.
Here’s what we’ll be watching on the final weekend earlier than Election Day, which is Tuesday:
Where will Harris and Trump be?
Just check out the candidates’ schedules this weekend to know the place this election is more likely to be determined.
Please be aware that hours can and sure will change with out discover. But on Saturday, Trump is predicted to make separate appearances in North Carolina with a cease in Virginia in between.
No Democratic presidential candidate has received 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. But Trump additionally tries to convey confidence by stopping in Virginia, a state that has been firmly within the Democratic column since 2008.
There is maybe no state extra necessary than Pennsylvania, the place Trump is predicted to marketing campaign on Sunday. But he additionally has one other look scheduled in North Carolina along with Georgia, one other Southern state that has leaned Republican for almost three a long time — that’s, till Joe Biden carried it forward by lower than half a degree proportion 4 years in the past.
Meanwhile, Harris is predicted to marketing campaign in North Carolina and Georgia on Saturday, an indication that her staff is sensing actual alternatives within the South. He plans to make extra stops in Michigan on Sunday, shifting right into a Democratic-leaning state within the so-called Blue Wall, the place his allies consider he’s susceptible.
Do they keep on message?
Trump’s marketing campaign management desires voters to concentrate on one key query as they put together to vote, and it is the identical query they open each rally with: Are you higher off in the present day than you had been 4 years in the past?
Harris’ staff desires voters to consider one thing else: Do they belief Trump or Harris to place the nation’s pursuits earlier than their very own?
Whichever candidate can most successfully maintain voters targeted on their closing arguments within the coming days might in the end win the presidency. Yet each candidates have had a difficult begin.
Trump opens the weekend nonetheless addressing the fallout from his latest rally in New York City the place a comic described Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of rubbish.” Things received harder for Trump on Thursday night time after he raised the prospect of Republican rival Liz Cheney’s taking pictures loss of life.
It was precisely the sort of inflammatory remark his allies need him to keep away from at this important 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 describing Trump supporters as “trash.” The Associated Press reported late Thursday that White House press secretaries altered the official transcript of the decision in query, prompting objections from federal workers who doc such remarks for posterity.
The highlight of presidential politics is at all times on. But maybe it should shine brighter this last weekend, leaving the campaigns with nearly no margin for error. In what each side consider to be a very messy election, any misstep within the last hours might show decisive.
How will the gender hole be resolved?
Trump’s express assault on Cheney was significantly problematic given his allies’ rising issues about girls voters.
Polls present a major gender hole within the contest, with Harris typically having a significantly better ranking amongst girls than Trump. Part of this can be the results of the GOP’s battle to limit abortion rights, which has been disastrous for Trump’s social gathering. But Trump’s divisive management has additionally alienated girls.
As the weekend started, Trump allies, together with conservative Charlie Kirk, warned that many extra girls than males seem like voting early. While it is not possible to know who they will vote for, Kirk clearly believes it is dangerous information for Trump.
Trump is not serving to his trigger. The day earlier than his violent rhetoric about Cheney, the previous Republican president made headlines by insisting that he would shield girls, whether or not “they prefer it or not.”
Harris, who could be the nation’s first feminine president, stated Trump doesn’t perceive girls’s proper “to make choices about their very own lives, together with their very own our bodies.”
It stays to be seen whether or not the Democrat’s argument will make its approach this crowded weekend. But Harris’ staff believes there’s nonetheless a major chunk of persuadable voters on the market. And they are saying the undecideds are disproportionately Republican-leaning suburban girls.
What occurs with early voting?
More than 66 million individuals have already voted within the 2024 election, which is greater than a 3rd of the whole quantity of people that voted in 2020.
They embrace considerably extra Republicans than 4 years in the past, largely as a result of Trump has deserted his insistence that his supporters should vote in individual on Election Day.
And whereas in-person early voting has led to many states, there shall be an enormous push for early voting within the last hours in no less than three key states as campaigns work to collect as many votes as attainable earlier than Election Day.
That contains Michigan, the place in-person early voting will final by Monday. Wisconsin voters can vote in individual from early to Sunday, although it varies by location. And in North Carolina, voters have till 3pm on Saturday to vote early in individual.
The early voting interval formally ended Friday in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, questions stay concerning the Trump marketing campaign’s “get out the vote” operation, which depends closely on well-funded and inexperienced exterior teams — together with a bunch funded largely by billionaire Elon Musk that faces new questions on his practices.
Harris’ marketing campaign, against this, is operating a extra conventional get-out-the-vote operation that includes greater than 2,500 paid staffers and 357 workplaces in battleground states alone.
Will misinformation intensify?
Trump’s allies seem like escalating baseless claims of election fraud, and a few are being amplified by Trump himself. He has spent months sowing doubt concerning the integrity of the 2024 election ought to he lose, simply as he did 4 years in the past.
His baseless accusations have gotten extra particular, in some circumstances, as wild claims start to look on social media.
Earlier this week, Trump claimed on social media that York County, Pennsylvania, had “acquired THOUSANDS of probably FRAUDULENT voter registration varieties and absentee poll functions from a third-party group.” He additionally pointed to Lancaster County, which he stated had been “caught with 2,600 pretend ballots and varieties, all written by the identical individual. Really dangerous “stuff.”
Trump was referring to investigations into potential fraud associated to voter registration functions. Application discovery and investigation supplies proof that the system is working because it ought to.
The Republican nominee additionally raised unsubstantiated claims about abroad votes and noncitizen voting, and recommended with out proof that Harris may need entry to some sort of secret inner details about the election outcomes.
Expect such claims to extend, particularly on social media, within the coming days. And do not forget that a broad coalition of high authorities and business officers, a lot of them Republicans, discovered the 2020 election to be the “most safe” in American historical past.”
AP writers Jill Colvin and Michelle Price in New York; and Zeke Miller and Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
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