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Harris, Trump head to political battleground states

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump headed to political battleground states on Wednesday in search of any edge they could find six days before the presidential election that may be the closest in decades.

Harris, the Democratic candidate, and Trump, her Republican challenger, both appeared in the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina before heading to the Upper Midwest state of Wisconsin, with Harris also campaigning in another key state, Pennsylvania in the East.

The three states are among seven, along with Michigan in the Midwest, Georgia in the Southeast and Nevada and Arizona in the Southwest, that both candidates consider crucial to their chances of winning next Tuesday’s election.

Polls show the outcome in the election in the seven states and nationally as too close to call. Nearly 57 million people have already voted at polling stations or by mail, and tens of thousands are continuing to cast early ballots, even as a sliver of voters remains undecided.

Retired Green Bay Packers football quarterback Brett Favre, a popular figure in Wisconsin, is scheduled to join Trump at his rally in Green Bay. Downstate, several musicians popular with younger audiences — Mumford & Sons, Gracie Abrams, Remi Wolf and members of the rock band The National — are scheduled to appear with Harris at her rally in the state capital, Madison.

During a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, Harris repeated her promise to be “a president for all Americans.”

“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” the vice president said, echoing themes from the speech she gave Tuesday night near the White House in what her campaign described as the “closing argument” for her campaign.

Trump rallied with supporters in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, pledging to end inflation in consumer prices, while vowing, “I will stop the massive invasion of criminals into our country,” his favored description for migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“And I will bring back the American dream,” he said. “Isn’t that nice?”

Tens of thousands of supporters watched Harris on Tuesday night on the Ellipse in Washington, while Trump held a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Harris pledged to work to improve people’s lives and said she would show up to work at the White House with a to-do list, while saying Trump is focused only on himself and would begin a new term starting in January with an enemies list.

Her speech was given in the same area where Trump addressed his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to in an attempt to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

“Look, we know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” Harris said.

Polls show the contest in a virtual dead heat.

Before heading to Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a Latino-majority population, Trump spoke Tuesday at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He described Harris as “grossly incompetent … a total trainwreck.”

On the campaign trail, Harris and Trump have traded frequent insults.

Trump has described Harris as someone with a “low IQ” and said she would be like “a play toy” for other world leaders. “They’re going to walk all over her,” he said.

Some of Trump’s former top aides from his 2017-2021 term in the White House described him as a fascist with the intent to govern in a second term as an authoritarian. Harris said she agreed with the characterization.

Trump returned the taunt to describe Harris the same way.

The importance of the seven battleground states cannot be overstated.

U.S. presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but rather through the Electoral College, which turns the election into 50 state-by-state contests, with 48 of the 50 states awarding all their electoral votes to the winner in their states. Nebraska and Maine allocate theirs by both statewide and congressional district vote counts.

The number of electoral votes in each state is based on population, so the biggest states hold the most sway in determining the overall national outcome, with the winner needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to claim the presidency.

Polls show either Harris or Trump holds substantial or comfortable leads in 43 of the states, enough for each to get to 200 electoral votes or more. Barring an upset in one of those states, that leaves the outcome to the remaining seven battleground states, where both Harris and Trump have staged frequent rallies, all but ignoring the rest of the country for campaign stops.

Polling in the seven states is easily within the margins of statistical error, leaving the outcome in doubt in all seven.
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