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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump made their final appeals to undecided voters and sought to rally their supporters in swing states as polls showed the election going down to the wire in the final 48 hours.
Their presidential campaigns are battling for any edge following a bitter White House contest in which the candidates are running neck-and-neck in the key states that will decide the election.
After making a late-night appearance on the Saturday Night Live comedy show in New York, Harris was in Michigan at a Black church on Sunday, to be followed by appearances at a restaurant and a barber shop, and a large rally. Trump started the day in Pennsylvania — and was due to appear in North Carolina, and Georgia later on Sunday.
Over the weekend, the vice-president’s campaign was buoyed by a respected poll in the staunchly conservative state of Iowa, which showed the Democratic vice-president leading Trump by three percentage points in a state that the Republican former president won by nine points in 2020.
According to the poll by the Des Moines Register, her surge was propelled by growing support among women — and older white women in particular, which if replicated across the Midwest could be decisive for Harris.
However, other surveys published on Sunday showed the race to be essentially deadlocked. The closely followed New York Times/Siena poll showed Harris leading in Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin, which would be just enough for her to prevail, but tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan, while trailing in Arizona. The FT’s poll tracker shows Harris holding a 1.3 percentage point lead nationally.
“It’s a choice between whether we will have four more years of incompetence and failure, which is what we have right now, or whether we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country,” Trump told the crowd at his first stop near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “It’s now or never, this is the moment,” he said.
Trump has been counting on voter disapproval of Harris on the economy and immigration to sway the American electorate into backing him for a second term in the White House.
But Trump has struggled to focus on policy in the final week of campaigning, falling back on personal attacks, violent rhetoric, and offensive language that Democrats believe will backfire on his campaign.
He has already cast doubt on the integrity of this year’s election, baselessly accusing Democrats of fraud, as he did in 2020.
“They are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing,” Trump said on Sunday.
As he spoke of his own security arrangements, he added: “To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind that.”
During her first event in Detroit on Sunday, Harris told parishioners that “we have two days until we decide the fate of our nation.” She added that she had seen “faith in action in remarkable ways” from voters during the campaign.
“Let us turn the page and write the next chapter of our history,” she said.
Harris and her allies are seeing evidence of strong support among women due to her support for abortion rights, and their rejection of Trump’s character.
“I believe that this will be a tight race. That’s the nature of our country in this moment. But the momentum is with her,” Raphael Warnock, the Georgia Democratic senator, said on NBC on Sunday.
Trump’s campaign has made a big bet that he can reel in more Black and Latino male voters who do not vote as reliably as other segments of the population, and that widespread American dissatisfaction with the direction of the country will get them to victory.
“We’re not taking anything for granted, but the issues are on our side. People want a secure border. They want a strong economy. They want peace through strength and a stronger national security around the world,” said Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican congresswoman, on Fox News. “On every top issue, Republicans are winning. President Trump is winning,” she said.
On Monday, Harris is expected to campaign solely in Pennsylvania, which is the biggest prize of all the swing states, and one that Trump won in 2016 but Democrats won back in 2020.
Trump will also appear in Pennsylvania, before holding a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to close out his campaign.
