A pre-election race for the US presidential seat unlike any other in American history is going into the final hours of today, with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fighting for dominance, in an election contest that each of them presents as an existential moment for America itself.
After a spectacular rollercoaster of events in recent months, the electorate is divided, both nationally and in the seven key states expected to determine the outcome. The winner may not be announced until days after the November 5 vote.
Former US President Donald Trump, a 78-year-old Republican, survived two assassination attempts weeks after a New York City jury found him guilty in his criminal trial, becoming the country’s first former president to be convicted of a felony. . Vice President Kamala Harris, 60, topped the Democratic ballot in July—a chance for her to become the first woman to hold the world’s most powerful job after 81-year-old President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy under pressure from his party.
Despite all this turmoil, little has changed in the dynamics of the election race, and polls have shown Harris and Trump in a neck-and-neck battle since the summer.
More than 78 million voters have already cast ballots in early voting, but the next few hours will be a crucial test of whether the Harris or Trump campaigns will be better able to get their supporters to the polls.
Focus on Pennsylvania
“We have it in our hands,” Trump told thousands of supporters gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of seven swing states. “If we mobilize them all and they vote, there’s nothing they can do.”
This was the first of his four, in the context of the election campaign that the former president will do. Meanwhile, Harris plans to tour Pennsylvania, another swing state.
Voters have broken century-old records for turnout in the last two presidential elections, a sign of the passion Trump is evoking in both political parties.
Both sides have flooded online platforms, TV and radio stations with a latest round of ads. Harris’ campaign team believes the scale of its voter mobilization efforts will make a difference and says its volunteers knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors in each of the key states this weekend. “We feel really good about where we are right now,” Gen O campaign manager Miley Dillon told reporters.
Her group says data shows undecided voters, especially women, are turning to her, and she says she’s seeing an increase in early voting among her party’s core groups, including young voters and voters of color.
Trump’s campaign team has outsourced most of the work.
These groups focused more on reaching out to Trump supporters who are not reliably at the polls than to undecided voters.
False allegations of fraud
Donald Trump and his allies, who falsely claimed his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud, have spent months preparing the ground to challenge the result again if he loses the election. He promised “punishment” if elected, talking about prosecuting his political opponents while describing Democrats as the “enemy within.”
Yesterday, Trump complained about gaps in the bulletproof glass protecting him as he spoke at a campaign rally and said an assassin would have to shoot through reporters to get him, adding “I don’t mind that so much”.
Harris has called Trump a danger to democracy, but appeared upbeat yesterday at a Detroit church.
“As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states to so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice,” Harris said.
“The most important thing about living in a democracy, as long as we can continue to do so, is that we have the power, each one of you, to answer that question.”
After the rally in Raleigh, Trump will appear in Reading and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. He then plans to return to Palm Beach, Florida to vote and wait for the election results.
Harris will visit five cities in Pennsylvania and conclude her day with a gathering at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she will be joined by celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and Oprah Winfrey. He plans to spend election night at Howard University in Washington.
SOURCE: APE-ME
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