Presidential candidates are homing in on key battleground states in the final stretch.
With just two weeks until Election Day, polls show a neck-and-neck race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in seven battleground states, which are likely to determine the winner of the White House in November.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, maintains a slight national lead over Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, according to RealClearPolitics, but recent polls show that the initial enthusiasm for her campaign is fading as the presidential race enters its final stretch.
In late July and August, the Harris campaign experienced a significant boost in support, making steady gains in key swing states. Those gains appear to have stalled, according to pollsters, indicating that she has mostly consolidated her potential support.
Democratic strategist Theryn Bond notes that further gains will be challenging from this point onward.
She told The Epoch Times that Harris’s challenge arises in part from her campaign’s messaging and inability to distinguish herself from President Joe Biden regarding policies.
“New means different, and so show us how you’re going to be different,” Bond said, referring to her campaign slogan “New Way Forward.”
As early voting begins, she noted that many voters are still uncertain and waiting for something specific that makes the vice president stand out.
“Now, at this juncture, I don’t know what else she could do besides answer questions with clarity,” she said.
The vice president said during an interview with ABC News’ “The View” on Oct. 8 that “there is not a thing that comes to mind” when asked whether she would have done something differently from Biden in the past four years.
Soon after Biden withdrew from the presidential race and Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee in July, she enjoyed a quick ascent in the polls.
After starting at 45.9 percent support two days following Biden’s withdrawal and trailing by nearly 2 percent, the vice president overtook Trump nationally and in the battleground states in August. Her national lead topped out at 2.2 percent on Sept. 22—and at 0.5 percent in the battleground states on Aug. 29. Though she still enjoys a 0.8 percent advantage over Trump as of Oct. 22, the support for her has stalled since the end of September.
Trump, on the other hand, has witnessed a resurgence with two weeks to go until the election.
“He has got the best polling numbers he’s had in his three presidential runs as the Republican nominee,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told The Epoch Times.
In 2016, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by seven points in the national polls two weeks before the election, while in 2020, he was nine points behind Biden.
O’Connell predicts that Trump’s best path to victory would be to win North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
According to the RealClearPolitics average, Trump is pulling ahead in all battleground states as of Oct. 22. He has a 2.5 percentage point lead in Georgia. He also has at least a 1-point lead in two states: Arizona (1.8 percent), and Michigan (1.2 percent). Trump also holds a thin lead in Pennsylvania (0.8 percent), Nevada (0.7 percent), North Carolina (0.5 percent), and Wisconsin (0.4 percent).
According to progressive media personality Cenk Uygur, Harris began to lose momentum when she started shifting her positions on important political issues.
“In the beginning, she did fantastic,” Uygur, host of “The Young Turks,” told NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.
He noted that her strong start was mainly due to her picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and introducing an “economically populist agenda.”
“She then turned around and started being very pro-business, pro-war, pro-Israel, and all those things hurt her,” he said.
With just two weeks remaining, Uygur advises Harris to concentrate on refining her message, especially on economic issues and her plans for the average American, instead of discussing “social issues that divide the country.”
What might be the deciding factor in key battleground states are registered voters who are not firmly committed to any candidate. A new Washington Post–Schar School poll found that 37 percent of registered voters will “definitely” support Trump, and 37 percent will “definitely” back Harris. Ten percent on both sides of the ticket said they would “probably” vote for the candidate, and 6 percent responded with “neither” or “no opinion.” In a razor-thin election, the uncommitted could play a sizable role in the seven swing states.As the presidential contest enters the final stretch, the vice president began the week with campaign events in the suburban communities of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, featuring conversations with former Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican who endorsed Harris last month.
In recent weeks, Harris has been making a play for disenchanted battleground GOP voters, welcoming the support of more than 100 former Republican officials, pledging to appoint a Republican to her cabinet, and appearing on Fox News.
“I want to fix problems, which means working across the aisle,” Harris said at an Oct. 16 rally in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. “It requires working across the aisle. It requires embracing good ideas from wherever they come.”
At another campaign event on Oct. 21 in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Harris said, “Needless to say, mine will not be a continuation of the Biden administration. I bring to it my own ideas, my own experiences.”
Pennsylvania, especially, is a crucial battleground state with 19 electoral votes where both candidates are dedicating a lot of time.
Trump had an eventful Sunday in Pennsylvania.
During a short shift at a McDonald’s restaurant in Feasterville, the former president operated a fry cooker and worked the drive-thru line. Following his McDonald’s shift, Trump was spotted at a nationally televised Sunday night football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Jets at Acrisure Stadium.
The former president has also ventured beyond the conventional battleground states, campaigning in solidly blue states during the final stretch.
Earlier this month, he visited California and held campaign events across the Golden State, including in Coachella, Reno, and Sacramento.
Trump will also visit his hometown of New York City one week before the election. He will hold a highly anticipated rally at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27.
RealClearPolitics averages show he is trailing in both states. In California and New York, he is down by 24 points and 14 points, respectively. But these might be broader efforts to win the popular vote and bolster Republicans’ chances in the lower chamber, according to O’Connell.
“Trump knows it’s not enough to win the presidency,” he said. “You also have to hold the House. Because if you do not hold the House, the Democrats are going to impeach you 10 minutes after you’re sworn in.”
Polls show Democrats hold nearly a one-point edge over Republicans in generic congressional voting.
Harris announced that she would travel to deep-red Texas on Oct. 25 to emphasize her campaign message on abortion access in a state with restrictive abortion laws.
Meanwhile, SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is undergoing a pro-Trump campaign tour of Pennsylvania, starting his venture throughout the state at a town hall in Folsom last week. Musk handed out $1 million checks to attendees during his weekend rallies.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro expressed outrage over Musk’s actions. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Shapiro called the situation “deeply concerning” and “something that law enforcement could take a look at.”
Ahead of Musk’s visit to the swing state, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) issued a warning to his Democratic colleagues.
“[Musk] has a brand, and that’s attractive to a demographic that we need to have, to win in Pennsylvania. And it’s not even about his checkbook,“ Fetterman said in a recent CNN interview. ”He has a lot of appeal for people, a lot of independently minded voters in Pennsylvania.”