With just days left until the election, Kamala Harris made her closing pitch to voters seeking to balance joyful optimism with dire warnings about the threat posed by her Republican opponent.
“This election marks the end of a decade of Donald Trump who has spent his full time trying to divide us and make us fear each other,” the Democratic vice president told an estimated crowd of 12,000 people at the park. This is a chance to finally look back.” Saturday in downtown Atlanta.
This is the message Harris hammered home in the final stages of her presidential campaign, buoyed by a surge of support from women and young voters that seemed impossible at the start of the year.
But after a frantic four months that began with Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and led to her exit in favor of the vice president, Harris now has an even chance to become America’s first female president.
What followed was a frantic fall campaign in which Ms. Harris erased Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls and surpassed her fundraising advantage.
of Financial Times poll tracker Currently, Harris leads the former Republican president by just over a point in the US.
Importantly, the candidates are statistically tied in seven battleground states that are likely to decide the election. This has led many analysts to conclude that the next US president may be decided by thousands of voters in a small number of states. Four years ago, Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a narrow margin of less than 12,000 votes.
Harris and her advisers argue that there is momentum heading into Election Day, with undecided voters leading the way in the final days when they will have to make a choice.
“Every battleground state is absolutely involved,” said a senior Harris campaign official. “There are still multiple paths to 270,” the official added, referring to the number of electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Harris crisscrossed the country in the final days of the campaign, visiting every battleground state at least once.
On Thursday and Friday, Harris drove through Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin. On Saturday, she flew directly from Georgia to North Carolina. She will run through Michigan on Sunday and conclude her final day of campaigning on Monday with three large rallies in Pennsylvania.
“We still have work to do,” Harris told the Atlanta crowd. “But the thing is, we like hard work…and make no mistake, we win.”
Harris’ campaign has been trying for weeks to craft a message that paints an optimistic vision for the country’s future and warns about the threat to American democracy posed by Trump, who has already cast doubt on next week’s election results.
Harris vowed to restore access to abortion and protect reproductive freedom, which was taken away after Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices helped reverse Roe v. Wade in 2022, and protect women’s reproductive freedom. lobbying voters. She’s also extending an olive branch to centrist Republicans who are disillusioned with Trump. , she claimed to be president of “country over party.”
Harris’ senior advisers say Trump has spent the final days of his campaign grappling with backlash over racist and misogynistic comments made by a speaker at a rally at Madison Square Garden. He claims that this strategy is working. He made a series of vulgar and inflammatory comments, including musing about how anti-Trump former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney would react if she had “a gun pointed at her face” and “nine barrels fired.” has been controversial.
By contrast, the atmosphere at Harris rallies is consistently upbeat, with live music and celebrity appearances serving as warm-up acts. At a campaign rally in Atlanta on Saturday, thousands of voters, including many women who showed up with young children, colored handmade signs and assembled friendship bracelets to show their support for Harris. Showed.
On Saturday night, she made an unscheduled stop in New York City, a Democratic stronghold, to appear on the show. saturday night live.
Kamala Harris speaks to Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/AJuW7aO7VM
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) November 3, 2024
“We’re ready for new changes,” said Phyllis Hernandez, 63, an Atlanta voter. “We are not being dragged back to the dark ages. We are moving forward with hope and joy.”
Harris campaign officials said private polling showed Trump’s antics were hurting her support.
“We’re winning over voters in battleground states who have hardened their resolve over the past week by double-digit margins,” the official said.
“We’ve always believed that there are undecided voters here and that it’s really, really important that this race is decided, and we see that to be the case. ”
Harris’ aides were also encouraged by this week’s Gallup poll showing Democrats with a 10-point advantage over Republicans on energy, with 77% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying this year They said they were more enthusiastic about voting. compared to 67 percent of Republicans.
If Harris wins on Tuesday, it could very well be because of women. His campaign cites data showing more women than men are submitting ballots by mail or in person before Election Day. Polls consistently show that while women overwhelmingly support Harris, men also support Trump at a similar rate.
Still, many presidential race veterans warn that polling and early voting numbers in the final days of such a close race are not always predictable.
“We’re all in a dark tunnel. That’s the reality,” said the longtime Democratic Party consultant, who worked on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and John Kerry’s 2004 White House bid. Bob Schramm said. “But there are some new signs that she’s doing very well.”
Harris’ team has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on targeted advertising and a strong “ground game” (a vast network of campaign volunteers and party organizers across the country) to ensure that it has enough on Tuesday. They claim it will help win over voters. Harris crossed the line.
A senior Harris official said the campaign has so far knocked on more than 13 million doors in seven battleground states. According to a Gallup poll, 42% of registered voters nationwide said they had been contacted by the Harris campaign, compared to 35% who said they had been contacted by the Trump campaign.
“She got the job done. She put forward what people needed to hear,” said Brandi Wich, the local Democratic Party chairwoman in DeKalb County, a suburb of Atlanta, who has been working for months to rally support for Harris. spoke. “Now it’s important to make sure people get to the polls to elect her as our next president.”
Additional reporting from Washington by James Politi and Steph Chavez
