Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks throughout a marketing campaign rally on the Salem Civic Middle in Salem, Virginia, on November 2, 2024. (Photograph by Allison Joyce / AFP)
GASTONIA, United States — Kamala Harris and Donald Trump fought it out Saturday within the swing states on the ultimate weekend of the tensest US election of recent instances, with the Democrat urging voters to “flip the web page” on the Republican’s scorched-earth model of politics.
With solely three days left within the marketing campaign, 73 million folks have already forged early ballots, with many extra anticipated to go to the polls on Sunday forward of the Election Day climax Tuesday.
The nation — and the world — might then face a nail-biting wait to know whether or not Harris turns into the primary US lady president or Trump secures a spectacular return to energy after his unprecedented and at instances violent marketing campaign to overturn his 2020 reelection loss to Joe Biden.
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They actually crossed paths Saturday, with Harris’s official vice-presidential Air Pressure Two and Trump’s private jet sharing the airport tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Each held rallies in North Carolina, whereas Harris additionally spoke to supporters in Georgia, one other of the seven swing states seen because the keys to victory in an in any other case dead-even nationwide contest. Trump additionally added in a cease in Virginia.
The rounds of high-stakes speeches earlier than 1000’s of individuals at every cease will proceed Sunday when Harris holds a number of occasions within the swing state of Michigan and Trump rallies with supporters in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
With lower than three days left earlier than final polls shut, Trump, 78, and Harris, 60, are scrapping for a tiny variety of undecided voters and, crucially, making an attempt to energise their bases to get out and vote.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks throughout a marketing campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on November 2, 2024. | Photograph by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP
Girls voters key goal
For Harris, a key voters is ladies voters — partly due to her personal historic function, however principally as a result of widespread fury over the ruling by Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Courtroom to overturn Roe v Wade, ending a decades-long constitutional proper to abortion.
“Donald Trump’s not executed. He’ll ban abortion nationwide. He desires to limit entry to contraception, put IVF remedies in danger and… power states to observe ladies’s pregnancies,” Harris mentioned in Atlanta, Georgia.
She painted Trump as “more and more unstable, obsessive about revenge” and “out for unchecked energy.”
“We’ve a chance on this election to lastly flip the web page on a decade of Donald Trump who spends full time making an attempt to maintain us divided and afraid of one another,” she mentioned.
Trump’s rhetoric has grow to be ever-darker as Election Day approaches.
In Gastonia, North Carolina, he conjured an apocalyptic imaginative and prescient the place Harris would spark “a 1929-style financial melancholy” and “World Struggle III.”
And he doubled down on his central marketing campaign message that unlawful immigration is swamping the nation with violent criminals, telling ladies voters that he would defend them.
“If you’re residence, in your own home alone, and you’ve got this monster that acquired out of jail, he’s acquired, you understand, six fees of murdering six totally different folks, I believe you’d slightly have Trump,” he mentioned.
The candidates’ frantic schedules will run proper into Monday, culminating with late-night rallies — in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Trump and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Harris.
Demonstration in capital
Trump has labored laborious to attraction to males, showing on podcasts with martial artists, spending time in barbershops and assembly with crypto entrepreneurs. With Harris getting a surge in assist from ladies, some predict a dramatic gender hole within the outcomes.
1000’s demonstrated Saturday in central Washington for the Girls’s March.
Sheridan Steelman, a 74-year-old part-time English instructor, mentioned she’d beforehand been on the sidelines however was voting now for Harris.
“There’s an excessive amount of at stake,” she mentioned, noting her worries over reproductive well being points but in addition “being ignored and silenced.”
Earlier, Trump lashed out at a Democratic TV advert depicting wives of his supporters secretly voting for Harris.
“Are you able to think about a spouse not telling her husband who she’s voting for?” he requested on Fox Information.
With Trump refusing to say whether or not he would settle for a loss, companies within the US capital have begun boarding up storefronts as metropolis authorities warn of a “fluid, unpredictable safety setting.”
Trump is already alleging fraud and dishonest in swing states akin to Pennsylvania, laying the groundwork for what might be extra unrest, following the violence that erupted on the US Capitol within the wake of the 2020 vote.
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