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Trump and Harris hold final campaign rallies on the eve of the US elections | News about the 2024 US elections
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Trump and Harris hold final campaign rallies on the eve of the US elections | News about the 2024 US elections

A presidential election unlike any other in American history is entering its final full day, with Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and their campaigns scrambling to get supporters to the polls.

The electorate is split down the middle, both nationally and in the seven battleground states expected to decide the winner on Tuesday.

Trump, a 78-year-old Republican, survived two assassination attempts just weeks after a jury in New York – the city where the tabloids first elevated him to national prominence and notoriety – made him the first former US president to be convicted of a crime .

Harris, 60, was catapulted to the top of the Democratic ticket in July — giving her the chance to become the first woman to become president — after President Joe Biden, 81, had a disastrous debate and left his re-election bid under pressure fall from his party.

Polls show Harris and Trump neck-and-neck, both nationally and in battleground states. More than 78 million voters have already cast their ballots, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

In the final days of this campaign, both sides are flooding social media sites and TV and radio stations with a final round of campaign ads, and rushing to knock on doors and make phone calls.

Harris’ campaign team believes the sheer scale of his voter mobilization efforts is making a difference and says its volunteers knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors in each of the battleground states this weekend.

“We feel really good about where we are right now,” campaign chairman Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters.

The campaign says internal data shows that undecided voters are breaking in their favor, especially women in battleground states, and that they are seeing an increase in early voting among core parts of their coalition, including young voters and voters of color.

Trump’s campaign has its own internal investigative operation, but has effectively outsourced most of the work to outside super PACs (political action committees), which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.

They are more focused on contacting “low propensity” voters, or voters who often don’t go to the polls, rather than appealing to mid-level voters who can switch to either side.

Many in this category are Trump supporters, but they are not normally reliable voters. However, Trump has had success in getting them to do so in the past.

By choosing the voters to contact, Trump and his team say they are sending door knockers to places where it will make a difference and being smart about spending money.

American voters will also cast their ballots before thousands of local, state and federal officials and voice their opinions on crucial referendums.

This includes all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 34 seats or one-third of those in the U.S. Senate, 11 elections for governor, as well as abortion rights in 10 states.

‘Everything will be fine’

Trump has promised “retaliation,” including the prosecution of his political rivals, and has described Democrats as the “enemy within.”

On Sunday, he complained about holes in the bulletproof glass around him as he spoke at a rally and mused that a killer would have to shoot through the news media to get him.

Harris has portrayed Trump as a danger to democracy, but sounded optimistic Sunday at a church in Detroit.

“As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states to so-called blue states ready to bend the arc of history toward justice,” Harris said. “And the beauty of living in a democracy, as long as we can hold on to it, is that we, each of us, have the power to answer that question.”

Voters responding to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from late October named threats to democracy as the second-biggest problem facing the U.S. today, after the economy.

Trump believes concerns about immigration, the economy and high prices, especially for food and rent, will bring him to the White House.

His final day of campaigning on Monday includes stops in three of the seven battleground states expected to determine the winner.

“This is truly the end of one journey, but a new one will begin,” Trump said at his first rally of the day in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Hopefully everything will be fine. We are leading the way,” he said, urging people to “get out and vote.”

Trump will also visit Reading and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the Arab-American vote could be crucial. He then plans to return to Palm Beach, Florida, to vote and await the election results.

Harris began Monday in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where she urged a group of campaign workers to “enjoy this moment” as she thanked everyone for their volunteer work.

‘Let’s postpone the vote. Let’s win. Let’s get to work. Twenty-four hours to go, she said. “We are all in this together. We stand and fall together.”

Harris also plans to campaign Monday in Allentown, Pennsylvania, one of the most competitive parts of the state, where a large Puerto Rican electorate is energized by pejorative comments made at a recent Trump campaign rally. She will then visit a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with progressive New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez before heading to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Her evening rally in Pittsburgh will feature performances by DJ D-Nice, Katy Perry and Andra Day, before converging at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, famous for the “Rocky Steps” and featuring a statue of the fictional Hollywood movie boxer.