Harris, Trump pull out all the stops

Campaign Report

The Big Story

Harris, Trump pull out all the stops

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.

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.

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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The Countdown

Upcoming news themes and events we're watching:

5 days until the 2024 general election
81 days until Inauguration Day 2025

On Our Watch

2024 election set to break fundraising records

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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Around the Nation

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Trump takes vague, shifting stances. Many supporters fill in the blanks. (The Washington Post)

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