EGN NEWS DESK
NEW YORK — The 2024 presidential contest speeds into its last weekend with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a razor-thin contest.
At this late stage within the marketing campaign, every single day issues. And whereas few voters may change their minds this late in a typical election, there’s 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’re making an attempt — with various levels of success — to remain targeted on a transparent and concise closing message. At the identical time, either side is investing huge sources to drive up turnout for the ultimate early voting interval. And in these crucial days, the movement of misinformation is intensifying.
Here’s what we’re watching on the ultimate weekend earlier than Election Day, which is Tuesday:
Where will Harris and Trump be?
You solely want to have a look at the candidates’ schedules this weekend to know the place this election will doubtless be determined.
Note that schedules can and sure will change with out warning. But on Saturday, Trump is anticipated to make separate appearances in North Carolina with one eyebrow-raising cease in Virginia in between.
No Democratic presidential candidate has carried 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 can be making an attempt to convey confidence by stopping in Virginia, a state that has been safely within the Democratic column since 2008.
There is maybe no extra necessary swing state than Pennsylvania, the place Trump is anticipated to marketing campaign Sunday. But he additionally has one other look scheduled for North Carolina along with Georgia, one other Southern state that has leaned Republican for nearly three a long time — that’s, till Joe Biden carried it by lower than a half proportion level 4 years in the past.
Meanwhile, Harris is anticipated to marketing campaign in North Carolina and Georgia on Saturday in an indication that her crew is sensing real alternative within the South. She’s planning to make a number of stops in Michigan on Sunday, shifting to a Democratic-leaning state within the so-called Blue Wall the place her allies consider she is weak.
Do they keep on message?
Trump’s marketing campaign management desires voters to be targeted on one key query as they put together to forged ballots, and it is the identical query he opens each rally with: Are you higher off right this moment than you had been 4 years in the past?
Harris’ crew desires voters to be desirous about one other: Do they belief Trump or Harris to place the nation’s pursuits over their very own?
Whichever candidate can extra successfully hold voters targeted on their closing arguments within the coming days might in the end win the presidency. Yet each candidates are off to a difficult begin.
Trump opens the weekend nonetheless dealing with the fallout from his latest New York City rally by which a comic described Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of rubbish.” Things bought tougher for Trump late Thursday after he raised the prospect of Republican rival Liz Cheney’s loss of life by gunfire.
It was precisely the form of inflammatory remark his allies need him to keep away from at this crucial 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 that described Trump supporters as “rubbish.” The Associated Press reported late Thursday that White House press officers altered the official transcript of the decision in query, drawing objections from the federal employees who doc such remarks for posterity.
The highlight of presidential politics all the time burns brightly. But it’ll burn brightest, maybe, this last weekend, leaving the campaigns just about no margin for error. In what each side consider is a real tossup election, any final-hours missteps might show decisive.
How will the gender hole play out?
Trump’s graphic assault in opposition to Cheney was particularly troublesome given his allies’ heightened considerations about ladies voters.
Polling exhibits a big gender hole within the contest with Harris usually having a significantly better score amongst ladies than Trump has. Part of which may be the results of the GOP’s battle to limit abortion rights, which has been disastrous for Trump’s party. But Trump’s divisive management has additionally pushed ladies away.
Going into the weekend, Trump allies, together with conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, are warning that way more ladies than males seem like casting early ballots. While it is unattainable to know whom they’re voting for, Kirk clearly believes that is dangerous information for Trump.
Trump is not serving to his trigger. A day earlier than his violent rhetoric about Cheney, the Republican former president made waves by insisting that he would shield ladies whether or not they “prefer it or not.”
Harris, who can be the nation’s first feminine president, stated Trump would not perceive ladies’s rights “to make selections about their very own lives, together with their very own our bodies.”
It stays to be seen whether or not the Democrat’s argument can break by way of on this packed weekend. But Harris’ crew believes there’s nonetheless a big chunk of persuadable voters on the market. And they are saying the undecideds are disproportionately Republican-leaning suburban ladies.
What occurs with early voting?
More than 66 million folks have already forged ballots within the 2024 election, which is greater than one-third the entire quantity who voted in 2020.
They embody considerably extra Republicans in contrast with 4 years in the past, largely as a result of Trump has backed off his insistence that his supporters should forged ballots in individual on Election Day.
And whereas early in-person voting has resulted in many states, there will probably be an enormous push for final-hours early voting in no less than three key states because the campaigns work to financial institution as many votes as doable earlier than Election Day.
That consists of Michigan, the place in-person early voting runs by way of Monday. Voters in Wisconsin can vote early in-person by way of Sunday, though it varies by location. And in North Carolina, voters have till 3 p.m. Saturday to forged early ballots in-person.
The early voting interval formally ended Friday in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, questions stay in regards to the Trump marketing campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation, which is relying closely on well-funded outdoors teams with little expertise — together with one group funded largely by billionaire Elon Musk that’s dealing with new questions on its practices.
Harris’ marketing campaign, in contrast, is working a extra conventional get-out-the-vote operation that options greater than 2,500 paid staffers and 357 workplaces in battleground states alone.
Will misinformation intensify?
Trump’s allies seem like intensifying baseless claims about voter fraud, and a few are being amplified by Trump himself. He has spent months sowing doubts in regards to the integrity of the 2024 election within the occasion he loses — simply as he did 4 years in the past.
His unfounded accusations have gotten extra particular, in some instances, as wild claims start to indicate up on social media.
Earlier this week, Trump claimed on social media that York County, Pennsylvania had “acquired THOUSANDS of probably FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail-In Ballot Applications from a 3rd party group.” He has additionally pointed to Lancaster County, which he claimed had been “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the identical individual. Really dangerous “stuff.””
Trump was referring to investigations into potential fraud associated to voter registration purposes. The discovery and investigation into the purposes present proof the system is working because it ought to.
The Republican nominee has additionally raised baseless claims about abroad ballots and noncitizens voting, and recommended with out proof that Harris may need entry to some form of secret inside details about election outcomes.
Expect such claims to surge, particularly on social media, within the coming days. And do not forget that a broad coalition of high authorities and trade officers, a lot of them Republicans, discovered that the 2020 election was the “most safe” in American historical past.”
