LITITZ, Pennsylvania/DETROIT — Republican Donald Trump made a last pitch for support in Pennsylvania, the largest of the seven states expected to decide this week’s US presidential election, while Democratic rival Kamala Harris focused her energy on Michigan on Sunday.
Opinion polls show the pair locked in a tight race, with Vice President Harris, 60, bolstered by strong support among women voters while former President Trump, 78, gains ground with Hispanic voters, particularly men.
Voters overall view both candidates unfavorably, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, but that so far has not dissuaded them from casting ballots. More than 76 million Americans have already done so ahead of Tuesday’s Election Day, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, approaching half the total 160 million votes cast in 2020, which saw the highest US voter turnout in more than a century.
North Carolina, another swing state, reported setting a record when its early-vote period ended on Saturday.
Control of the US Congress is also up for grabs on Tuesday, with Republicans favored to capture a majority in the Senate while Democrats are seen as having an even chance of flipping Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Presidents whose parties have not controlled both chambers have struggled to pass major new legislation over the past decade.
“Here’s all you need to know: Kamala broke it and we’re going to fix it,” said Trump, beginning his rally in Lititz, in central Pennsylvania, an hour late and his voice raspy. In a speech where he repeatedly criticized the US election process, he added, “It’s a damn shame and I’m the only one who talks about it because everyone is damn afraid to talk about it.”
Trump is later due to speak in Kinston, North Carolina, before ending his day with an evening rally in Macon, Georgia. Those two states are the second-biggest prizes up for grabs on Tuesday, with each holding 16 of the 270 votes a candidate needs to win in the state-by-state Electoral College to secure the presidency. Pennsylvania offers 19 electors.
Nonpartisan US election analysts reckon Harris would need to win about 45 electoral votes in the seven swing states to win the White House, while Trump would need about 51, when accounting for the states they are forecast to win easily.
Harris in Michigan push
Harris is due to speak at a church in Detroit, the largest majority-Black US city, at around noon ET (1700 GMT) on Sunday before heading to East Lansing, a college town in an industrial state that is viewed as a must-win for the Democrat.
She faces skepticism from some of the state’s 200,000 Arab Americans who are frustrated Harris has not done more to help end the war in Gaza and scale back aid to Israel. Trump visited Dearborn, the heart of the Arab American community, on Friday and vowed to end the wars in the Middle East.
Harris, who has met behind closed doors with selected Arab American and Muslim leaders, will focus her energy on Black neighborhoods on Sunday.
Samah Noureddine, 44, a Lebanese American from Grosse Ile, a town near Detroit, said she voted for Biden in 2020 but was casting a ballot for Jill Stein of the Green Party this year.
“I’m upset because Harris is funding the genocide and if we get Trump we’re going to suffer too,” she said. “I’m sick of both of them.”
Cost of living
In the campaign’s final days, Harris has sought to convince voters that she will bring down the cost of living, a top concern after several years of high inflation. She has also portrayed Trump as dangerous and erratic and urged Americans to move on from his divisive approach to politics.
“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We’re done with that,” she said in Charlotte on Saturday.
Trump has argued that Harris, as the sitting vice president, should be held responsible for rising prices and the high levels of immigration of the past several years, which he has portrayed as an existential threat to the country.
The stakes are high, with Harris and Trump having starkly different views of the economy, the role of government in American life and the role of the US in the world.
One illustration of that came from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a Trump supporter and opponent of military aid to Ukraine as it fights off a Russian invasion. Orban said Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Trump wins.
Trump’s public comments have suggested he could seek to wind down US aid for Ukraine if he wins on Tuesday. — Reuters
Be the first to comment