Trump and Harris make final appeals as US election goes down to the wire

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 US presidential 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.
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 1.2 percentage point lead nationally.
“If Kamala wins you are three days away from the start of a 1929-style economic depression,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, early on Sunday before his events began. “If I win you are three days away from the best jobs, the biggest paychecks, and the brightest economic future the world has ever seen.”
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.
“Make no mistake, we will win!” Harris said in Atlanta on Saturday. “We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who spends full time trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” she said.
While Harris is seeing evidence of strong support among women due to her support for abortion rights, Trump’s campaign has made a big bet that he can reel in more black, Latino male voters who do not vote as reliably as other segments of the population.
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. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024