Trump, Harris head to North Carolina in US election campaign’s final weekend

MILWAUKEE – Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump head to North Carolina on Nov 2 to try to clinch support in the south-eastern battleground state just three days before the US presidential election on Nov 5.

It will be the fourth day in a row that Vice-President Harris and former president Trump visit the same state on the same day. This underlines the critical importance of the seven states likely to decide the race, which opinion polls show to be on a knife edge.

More than 70 million Americans have already cast ballots, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida. The number is below the record early-voting pace in 2020 during Covid-19, but still indicates a high level of voter enthusiasm.

Nov 2 also marks the last day of early voting in North Carolina, where more than 3.8 million votes have been cast, while the state’s western reaches are

still recovering from Hurricane Helene’s deadly flooding

.

Ms Harris plans appearances with rock star Jon Bon Jovi in Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina, which is tied with Georgia for the second-biggest prize of the swing states.

Each has 16 votes in the Electoral College, where 270 are needed to secure the presidency.

North Carolina backed Trump in 2020 but elected a Democratic governor on the same day, giving hope to both parties.

“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who has spent full time trying to have the American people point fingers at each other,” Ms Harris said at a rally in Janesville, Wisconsin on Nov 1.

Trump will hold a rally in Gastonia, west of Charlotte, at noon before returning to the state in the evening. He is due to speak at the 22,000-seat First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro.

“This election is a choice between whether we... have four more years of gross incompetence and failure, or whether we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country,” he told a crowd in Michigan on Nov 1.

Ms Harris and Trump have very different policies on major issues including support for Ukraine and Nato, abortion rights, immigration, taxes, democratic principles and tariffs.

The two were both in North Carolina on Oct 30, Nevada on Oct 31 and Wisconsin on Nov 1 – all battleground states – at one point holding events around 11km from each other.

It indicates the enormous effort put on persuading a relatively small number of voters in a few states, because the other states are seen as safely Democratic or Republican.

But Trump will also visit Salem, Virginia on Nov 2 despite polls showing a clear lead there for Ms Harris.

She will also be in the swing state of Georgia on Nov 2, where film director Spike Lee and singer Victoria Monet are due to speak at a rally.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, won Georgia by just 0.3 percentage point in 2020, the first time his party picked up the state since Mr Bill Clinton in 1992.

Democrats will be heavily reliant on Black voters turning out and backing Ms Harris if they want to recreate Mr Biden’s success in a state where Black people make up just over 12 per cent of the population.

Hispanics, who total nearly 19 per cent of Georgia’s population, are also being fought over. Trump holds a narrow 1.6 percentage-point lead over Ms Harris in the state, according the polling average from FiveThirtyEight.

Heading into the final stretch, the Harris campaign on Nov 4 plans to hold simultaneous interconnected events across all seven battleground states to mobilise voters, according to a senior campaign official. REUTERS