What to watch over the final weekend of the 2024 presidential campaign
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[November 02, 2024]
By STEVE PEOPLES
NEW YORK (AP) — The 2024 presidential contest speeds into its final
weekend with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked
in a razor-thin contest.
At this late stage in the campaign, every day matters. And while few
voters might change their minds this late in a typical election, there
is a sense that what happens in these final days could shift votes.
Harris and Trump are crisscrossing the country to rally voters in the
states that matter most. They're trying — with varying degrees of
success — to stay focused on a clear and concise closing message. At the
same time, each side is investing massive resources to drive up turnout
for the final early voting period. And in these critical days, the flow
of misinformation is intensifying.
Here's what we're watching on the final weekend before Election Day,
which is Tuesday:
Where will Harris and Trump be?
You only need to look at the candidates' schedules this weekend to know
where this election will likely be decided.
Note that schedules can and likely will change without warning. But on
Saturday, Trump is expected to make separate appearances in North
Carolina with one eyebrow-raising stop in Virginia in between.
No Democratic presidential candidate has carried North Carolina since
Barack Obama in 2008, although it has been decided by less than 3 points
in every election since. Trump's decision to spend Saturday there
suggests Harris has a real opportunity in the state. But Trump is also
trying to convey confidence by stopping in Virginia, a state that has
been safely in the Democratic column since 2008.
There is perhaps no more important swing state than Pennsylvania, where
Trump is expected to campaign Sunday. But he also has another appearance
scheduled for North Carolina in addition to Georgia, another Southern
state that has leaned Republican for almost three decades — that is,
until Joe Biden carried it by less than a half percentage point four
years ago.
Meanwhile, Harris is expected to campaign in North Carolina and Georgia
on Saturday in a sign that her team is sensing genuine opportunity in
the South. She's planning to make multiple stops in Michigan on Sunday,
shifting to a Democratic-leaning state in the so-called Blue Wall where
her allies believe she is vulnerable.
Do they stay on message?
Trump's campaign leadership wants voters to be focused on one key
question as they prepare to cast ballots, and it's the same question he
opens every rally with: Are you better off today than you were four
years ago?
Harris' team wants voters to be thinking about another: Do they trust
Trump or Harris to put the nation's interests over their own?
Whichever candidate can more effectively keep voters focused on their
closing arguments in the coming days may ultimately win the presidency.
Yet both candidates are off to a challenging start.
Trump opens the weekend still facing the fallout from his recent New
York City rally in which a comedian described Puerto Rico as a “floating
pile of garbage.” Things got harder for Trump late Thursday after he
raised the prospect of Republican rival Liz Cheney's death by gunfire.
It was exactly the kind of inflammatory comment his allies want him to
avoid at this critical moment.
Harris' campaign, meanwhile, is still working to shift the conversation
away from President Biden's comments earlier in the week that described
Trump supporters as “garbage.” The Associated Press reported late
Thursday that White House press officials altered the official
transcript of the call in question, drawing objections from the federal
workers who document such remarks for posterity.
The spotlight of presidential politics always burns brightly. But it
will burn brightest, perhaps, this final weekend, leaving the campaigns
virtually no margin for error. In what both sides believe is a true
tossup election, any final-hours missteps could prove decisive.
How will the gender gap play out?
Trump's graphic attack against Cheney was especially troublesome given
his allies' heightened concerns about women voters.
Polling shows a significant gender gap in the contest with Harris
generally having a much better rating among women than Trump has. Part
of that may be the result of the GOP's fight to restrict abortion
rights, which has been disastrous for Trump's party. But Trump's
divisive leadership has also pushed women away.
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This combination of photos shows Democratic presidential nominee
Vice President Kamala Harris, left, speaking during a rally in
Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 12, 2024, and Republican presidential nominee
former President Donald Trump, right, speaking during a rally in
Warren, Mich., Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo)
Going into the weekend, Trump allies, including conservative
firebrand Charlie Kirk, are warning that far more women than men
appear to be casting early ballots. While it's impossible to know
whom they're voting for, Kirk clearly believes that's bad news for
Trump.
Trump isn't helping his cause. A day before his violent rhetoric
about Cheney, the Republican former president made waves by
insisting that he would protect women whether they “like it or not.”
Harris, who would be the nation's first female president, said Trump
doesn't understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own
lives, including their own bodies.”
It remains to be seen whether the Democrat's argument can break
through on this packed weekend. But Harris’ team believes there's
still a significant chunk of persuadable voters out there. And they
say the undecideds are disproportionately Republican-leaning
suburban women.
What happens with early voting?
More than 66 million people have already cast ballots in the 2024
election, which is more than one-third the total number who voted in
2020.
They include significantly more Republicans compared with four years
ago, largely because Trump has backed off his insistence that his
supporters must cast ballots in person on Election Day.
And while early in-person voting has ended in many states, there
will be a huge push for final-hours early voting in at least three
key states as the campaigns work to bank as many votes as possible
before Election Day.
That includes Michigan, where in-person early voting runs through
Monday. Voters in Wisconsin can vote early in-person through Sunday,
although it varies by location. And in North Carolina, voters have
until 3 p.m. Saturday to cast early ballots in-person.
The early voting period officially ended Friday in Arizona, Georgia,
Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, questions remain about the Trump campaign’s
get-out-the-vote operation, which is relying heavily on well-funded
outside groups with little experience — including one group funded
largely by billionaire Elon Musk that’s facing new questions about
its practices.
Harris’ campaign, by contrast, is running a more traditional
get-out-the-vote operation that features more than 2,500 paid
staffers and 357 offices in battleground states alone.
Will misinformation intensify?
Trump's allies appear to be intensifying baseless claims about voter
fraud, and some are being amplified by Trump himself. He has spent
months sowing doubts about the integrity of the 2024 election in the
event he loses — just as he did four years ago.
His unfounded accusations are becoming more specific, in some cases,
as wild claims begin to show up on social media.
Earlier this week, Trump claimed on social media that York County,
Pennsylvania had “received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter
Registration Forms and Mail-In Ballot Applications from a third
party group.” He has also pointed to Lancaster County, which he
claimed had been “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all
written by the same person. Really bad “stuff.””
Trump was referring to investigations into potential fraud related
to voter registration applications. The discovery and investigation
into the applications provide evidence the system is working as it
should.
The Republican nominee has also raised baseless claims about
overseas ballots and noncitizens voting, and suggested without
evidence that Harris might have access to some kind of secret inside
information about election results.
Expect such claims to surge, especially on social media, in the
coming days. And remember that a broad coalition of top government
and industry officials, many of them Republicans, found that the
2020 election was the “most secure” in American history."
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AP writers Jill Colvin and Michelle Price in New York; and Zeke
Miller and Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
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