Campaign Report
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Harris, Trump pull out all the stops
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Vice President Harris and former President Trump are making their final strides ahead of Election Day this weekend, circling back through the key battlegrounds most likely to decide who will be the next president.
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Harris and Trump are making their last visits to the main swing states over the next couple days to make their closing messages to voters.
They will be visiting multiple states per day, underscoring how both campaigns are going into overdrive in the final days in a race where every vote could make a difference.
Both candidates will travel to Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin between Thursday and Sunday, with Trump holding two rallies in the Tar Heel State. Trump will additionally make a stop in Michigan, and Harris will campaign in Georgia, both states that if they won would be a big blow to their opponent’s electoral prospects.
But Trump will also hold rallies in a few traditionally Democratic-leaning states that Harris is expected to win, possibly a sign of hoping to expand the map and put Democrats on defense. He is holding a rally in New Mexico on Thursday and one in Virginia on Saturday.
Both are states that appeared to be possibly in play when President Biden was in the race and was slipping in the polls in early to mid-summer. But after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, polling began to show those states returning to margins that would be expected for a Democrat’s performance there. Still, polling in these states has been limited since then, with the focus much more on the traditional battlegrounds.
One poll of New Mexico from this month showed Harris up 9 points, while Virginia polls have been a bit of a mixed bag, ranging from double digit to low single digit leads for Harris.
Polling overall continues to paint a picture of a razor-tight race. Harris is just ahead in the national polling average from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ. No candidate leads in the average of any of the seven main battlegrounds by more than 2 points.
The polls being off just a bit, even within the typical margin of error, could result in a more comfortable victory for one of the candidates than is expected, but the extent of it and which way the shift is will remain unclear until all the votes are counted.
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Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, I’m Jared Gans. Each week we track the key stories you need to know to stay ahead of the 2024 election and who will set the agenda in Washington.
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Key election stories and other recent campaign coverage:
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Conservatives blows up over Julia Roberts ad
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A new Harris-Walz campaign ad voiced by actor Julia Roberts encourages women to vote for Vice President Harris in the presidential election, even if their husbands are backing former President Trump. The Roberts ad also alludes to abortion rights, which is seen as a pivotal issue in a race that has seen Trump with big polling leads among male voters and Harris with a large lead among female voters. “In the one place in America …
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Trump, Harris separated by 1 point in Georgia, North Carolina: Polls
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Former President Trump and Vice President Harris are separated by only 1 point in the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina, according to polling released Thursday. The surveys from CNN, which were conducted by SSRS, found that Trump leads Harris by 1 point — with 48 percent support to her 47 percent — among likely voters in Georgia, while Harris sports the same margin among North Carolina’s likely voters, with …
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Hungarian prime minister says ‘fingers crossed’ for Trump victory
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Thursday he had just spoken to former President Trump and was rooting for him to win the election Tuesday. “Just got off the phone with President @realDonaldTrump,” Orbán said in a post on the social platform X. “I wished him the best of luck for next Tuesday,” he continued. “Only five days to go. Fingers crossed.” Orbán, a right-wing populist, has been vocal in his support for the …
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Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
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- 5 days until the 2024 general election
- 81 days until Inauguration Day 2025
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2024 election set to break fundraising records
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The 2024 presidential election is on track to be the most expensive ever. The experts over at OpenSecrets think that this race could almost top $16 billion — surpassing what was spent four years ago in the White House race.
Vice President Harris and her affiliated teams have spent more than a billion dollars, while former President Trump’s supporters have poured nearly the same amount into the race.
Flashback: The 2020 race between Trump and President Biden was the most expensive, even as it had the hurdle of the COVID-19 pandemic looming over it.
Harris took the reins of Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign in July, when he announced he would drop his reelection campaign.
But Biden was a demonstrably strong fundraiser before he bowed out. FEC filings show that between April 1, 2019 and October 14, 2020, his campaign raised more than $950 million.
With the exception of 2016, every presidential election has been more expensive than the previous one, The Brennan Center reports.
“In 2016, Trump scrambled campaign finance expectations when he — the candidate who raised less money — won the presidency against a better financed Hillary Clinton,” the Brennan analysts wrote.
— Liz Crisp
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Branch out with a different read from The Hill:
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Rove: ‘Fence-sitters’ will decide whether Trump, Harris win election
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Republican strategist Karl Rove argued that “fence-sitters” who fall into one of three categories will decide whether former President Trump or Vice President Harris will win the 2024 presidential election. Rove said that Americans, outside of third-party voters, who have not decided whom they are going to vote for can be divided into three groups: the first being low-information voters; then those who agree with Trump on …
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Nearly half of NC’s registered voters have cast a ballot
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Nearly half of all registered voters in North Carolina have cast a ballot in the 2024 general election already, according to a Thursday update from the state. Of the roughly 7.82 million registered voters in the state, about 3.62 million have voted, in a tally that includes votes through Wednesday. North Carolinians are casting their ballots in person at early-voting locations at a rate that far outpaces the rate at which people …
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Local and state headlines regarding campaigns and elections:
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Election news we’ve flagged from other outlets:
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- Election officials are outmatched by Elon Musk’s misinformation machine (CNN)
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Uncomfortable Nikki Haley backers weigh their options with Election Day looming (NBC News)
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Trump takes vague, shifting stances. Many supporters fill in the blanks. (The Washington Post)
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Key stories on The Hill right now:
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Democrats start to point fingers even as they hope for Harris win
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Vice President Harris could win the presidential election next week. But fingers in Democratic circles are already being pointed behind the scenes, in the event that she falls to former President Trump. While some Democrats say they are increasingly hopeful that Harris will win, others have expressed mounting frustration about a string … Read more
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Watch live: Trump makes play for blue New Mexico
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Former President Trump is campaigning Thursday afternoon in New Mexico, his latest effort to rally up voters in traditional blue states. During his visit to the Land of Enchantment, a slight detour from the battleground states, Trump is expected to target Vice President Harris and the Biden administration over record prices, the border … Read more
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Opinions related to campaigns and elections submitted to The Hill:
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- America’s civil service must remain nonpartisan
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Trump is favored to win, despite his campaign
- Washington Post endorsement debacle exposes our ‘zombie elites’
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You’re all caught up. See you next time!
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