Harris urged supporters in Pennsylvania to vote early and briefly responded to protesters about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
PHILADELPHIA—While the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, held a highly-publicized rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, urged supporters to vote early at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 27.
According to the polls published by media organization RealClearPolitics, Harris is currently polling behind Trump in the Keystone State by 0.6 percentage points on average, whose 19 Electoral College votes make it the most influential battleground state in the 2024 election. In September, Harris was one percentage point ahead of Trump in the polling average.
At her rally, where she spoke ahead of schedule and for merely 15 minutes, Harris told supporters that “the path to victory runs through [Philadelphia voters].”
“Now is the time to vote early. Get it done tomorrow if you can,” Harris urged.
A Harris campaign staffer told The Epoch Times they are trying to do what they can to turn out voters before Election Day.
That includes “knocking on doors, text messages, phone calls, flyers daily,” said Cordelia Johnson, a resident of the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. “I work the polls, so I know there are a good percentage of new voters this time around, and hopefully that will be the boost.”
Harris said, “We have an opportunity to turn the page on the fear and the divisiveness that have characterized our politics for a decade because of Donald Trump.
“We have the ability to turn the page on that same old tired playbook because we are exhausted with it.”
The theme of turnout has become a central focus for both the Harris and Trump campaigns in Pennsylvania as the race enters its final stage. Trump addressed turnout at his rally in State College on Oct. 26, asking supporters to vote early in large numbers, invoking the slogan “too big to rig,” as did Harris’s running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) in Scranton.
Harris said “this is going to be a tight race until the very end, so we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work,” Harris said. “Make no mistake: we will win.”
“We have nine days to get this done … nobody can sit on the sidelines,” she said. “There is too much on the line, and we must not wake up the day after the election about what we could have done.” She appeared to be referencing the 2016 election, where low Democratic turnout contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss in Pennsylvania.
Trump meanwhile at his Madison Square Garden told supporters that he was optimistic about early voter turnout among Republicans. “We’re going to have the biggest victory in the history of our country on Nov. 5th,” he said.
Trump also said he hoped to win New York, a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican for president over the past 30 years.
“We also want to win New York, and make it safe and strong and beautiful, and vibrant again. And we’re going to do that,” Trump said. “It would be such an honor to win New York.”
Mail-in-voting—which became prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with a total of 43 percent of ballots cast by mail—is less used this year.
As of Oct. 24, with 12 days remaining before 2024’s Nov. 5 election, it does not appear that mail-in voting will match those 2020 numbers and that early voting will be similar to the past few election cycles.Two pro-Gaza protesters interrupted Harris after she started speaking and waved a Palestinian flag, which prompted her to address Israel’s war against Hamas as the crowd chanted, “We’re not going back,” over the protesters’ chants.
“I’m gonna talk about Gaza for a minute. We can and we must seize this opportunity to end this war and bring the hostages home, and I will do everything in my power to make that happen,” Harris said, addressing an issue that has hurt her campaign in battleground states such as Michigan, where many Muslim voters are opposing her candidacy in protest against the Biden-Harris administration’s military aid to Israel.