Trump-Harris’ Crazy Last Campaign in 2024 Ends, Showing Why North Carolina Matters

• Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will largely close out the 2024 race in Pennsylvania.

• But it is the Trump campaign that is belatedly attempting to widen its path to victory.

• Both sides also play North Carolina.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris talk a lot about their shutdown strategy using the most valuable resource left in the world. 2024 campaign: their time.

The top two candidates will visit or visit each of the seven swing states within last days of the campaign. Harris spent Friday in Wisconsin, Saturday in Georgia and North Carolina, and will travel through Michigan today. Trump spent Friday in Michigan and Wisconsin, Saturday in North Carolina, and will be in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia today. Both contenders spent Thursday in Nevada and Arizona.

Trump is taking the most attractive approach. He spent part of Friday in New Mexico and Saturday in Virginia, neither of which has voted for a Republican president in two decades. His campaign even added a last-minute rally in New Hampshire featuring the GOP vice presidential candidate senator. JD Vance. No major election forecaster considers any of these three states to be a toss-up.

Saturday showed there could still be a surprise in this chaotic race, even if polls and pundits might say otherwise.

Harris might be able to expand his card without even trying too hard. Widely respected Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed her leading by 3 percentage points among likely voters in Iowa. Iowa was once a swing state, but it had tilted heavily toward Republicans in recent elections, and no one thought Trump would be in danger of losing a state he won easily in 2016 and 2020. Another poll showed Trump leading in the state, but the biggest takeaway is that Trump is struggling with older women. If this happens in other parts of the Midwest, he’s in serious trouble.

The state that stands out the most in the graph.

Not surprisingly, Trump and Harris have focused most of their efforts on Pennsylvania, the most important swing state.

Harris would win the race, holding the Blue Wall, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as the so-called Blue Dot, Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. In this scenario, Trump could carry the remaining four swing states and still fail.

On the other hand, if Trump wins Pennsylvania, Harris will be in a difficult position. If Harris had won Michigan and Wisconsin, she would still have had to add Georgia or North Carolina to her column. Even victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona would not be enough to put her in the White House.

That’s why Trump’s decision to spend significant time in North Carolina is significant. In the final days of the campaign, he will spend the second longest stay in the state, second only to Pennsylvania. Harris held a rally in Charlotte on Saturday and then flew to New York for a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”

Major polling aggregators show Trump leading in the Tar Heel State by just over one percentage point. Even though President Obama has been the only Democratic presidential nominee since 2000, Trump barely held off President Biden four years ago.

Some of Harris’ aides ridiculed Trump’s decision.

“Donald Trump is worried about losing North Carolina,” Harris spokesman Ammar Moussa wrote on X under two siren emojis.

Doug Sosnick, a longtime adviser to Bill Clinton and a North Carolinian, doesn’t see Harris going there.

“This is a state that guys like me would have told you 10 years ago would now be a Democratic state like Virginia, but it’s not,” Sosnick said.

North Carolina is not a “level playing field” for Democrats, Sosnick said, pointing to the struggles of Democrats there with the exception of Obama.

“It’s competitive. It’s worth fighting for. If she has the resources, she should hold out, and maybe she can win,” Sosnik said.

The Trump campaign responded that it was Harris who was really concerned.

“President Trump is leading in every battleground state, and he has made attacks in historically Democratic states like New Mexico and Virginia,” Trump spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement to Business Insider. “Meanwhile, Kamala Harris remains on the defensive, devoting more resources to voting in black communities and sending Bill Clinton to New Hampshire.”

Susan Roberts, a political science professor at Davidson College, said one of the wild cards for North Carolina this cycle is the large number of people who moved to the state after 2020.

Only two other states, Florida and Texas, saw their numbers increase in 2023, according to the Census Bureau. Since 2020, an average of about 99,000 people have moved to North Carolina from other states each year, according to the state Office of Public Management and Budget.

Trump also has to contend with the fact that some of his strongest counties were devastated by Hurricane Helen, leaving officials scrambling to move polling places.

“If North Carolina is close, if it looks like Harris is a hair’s breadth ahead, I think a lot of votes in Western North Carolina will be scrutinized within a hair’s breadth of their lives,” Roberts said, adding that she’s not convinced every the vote in Western North Carolina will be scrutinized. the affected areas will be completed on time.

Read the original article at Business Insider