Kamala Harris and Donald Trump dueled across the swing states Saturday on the final weekend of the tensest US election of modern times, with the Democrat urging voters to “turn the page” on the Republican’s scorched-earth brand of politics.
Seventy-five million people have already cast early ballots as the hours tick down to the Election Day climax Tuesday.
The country — and the world — could then face a nail-biting wait to know whether Harris becomes the first US woman president or Trump secures a spectacular return to power after his unprecedented and at times violent campaign to overturn his 2020 reelection loss to Joe Biden.
The rivals literally crossed paths Saturday, with Harris’s official vice presidential Air Force Two and Trump’s personal jet sharing the airport tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Both held rallies in North Carolina, while Harris also spoke to supporters in Georgia, another of the seven swing states seen as the keys to victory in an otherwise dead-even nationwide contest. Trump added in a stop in Virginia.
The rounds of high-stakes speeches before thousands of people at each stop continue Sunday when Harris holds multiple events in the swing state of Michigan and Trump rallies with supporters in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Most polls show Trump, 78, and Harris, 60, within the margin of error from each other across the swing states.
However, there was a surprise boost for Harris when one of the most respected pollsters in the country dropped a new survey in the Des Moines Register that shows the Democrat three points ahead of Trump in Iowa — a state he won easily both in his victorious 2016 presidential campaign and again in his narrow 2020 defeat.
Reflecting Harris’s drive to hit every possible target before Tuesday, her plane unexpectedly took a detour to New York for an appearance on the legendary Saturday Night Live television comedy show.
For Harris, a key electorate is women voters angered over the ruling by justices appointed by then-president Trump to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, ending a decades-long constitutional right to abortion.
“Donald Trump’s not done. He will ban abortion nationwide,” Harris said in Atlanta, Georgia.