‘Are there hidden Kamala voters?’…How Trump & Harris are fighting swing states with polls too close to call
DONALD TRUMP and Kamala Harris made frantic final pushes for votes in swing states yesterday – as the US election remained too close to call.
With less than 24 hours until America decides on its next President, polls indicate the race for the White House is on a knife edge.
Of the seven battleground states likely to decide the outcome, Trump is edging ahead in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, according to the latest from the FiveThirtyEight polling aggregator.
Meanwhile, Harris is hanging on to slim one-point leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, but the candidates are virtually tied in Pennsylvania.
There was an upset in Iowa, where a typically rock-solid Republican stronghold saw Harris pull ahead in a shock poll from the typically reliable Des Moines Register.
But the former US President yesterday blasted the poll as “wrong” during a fiery rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
“They told me I’m down in Iowa – I don’t think so”, Republican Trump declared, before riling up the crowd with his trademark lines on immigration, election fraud claims and the economy.
Rural areas
Appearing on our Never Mind The Ballots US election special in New York, James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, highlighted the unpredictability of the race.
He said: “Our model has gone from a 68-per-cent chance of a Trump win last week to 60 per cent. So we are getting into that too-close-to-call territory.
“One of the big reasons for that is the poll that came out in Iowa by a very respected pollster. Is there a hidden Harris voter out there?”
But Mr Johnson still called Trump the “favourite” due to his strength in rural areas among white men.
Trump packed in rallies across North Carolina and Georgia on Sunday, while Harris zeroed in on Michigan, a key state that is viewed as a must-win for the Democrats.
Cheeky gag
It was the first day since last Tuesday that the two candidates did not campaign in the same state.
On Saturday, their planes shared a stretch of tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina, where both held rallies.
Rock star Jon Bon Jovi gave his endorsement for Harris as he performed two songs at the city’s PNC Music Pavilion.
The Vice President then flew to New York City for a surprise appearance on TV’s Saturday Night Live comedy show.
Harris joined actress Maya Rudolph, who was dressed identically to the presidential candidate, for a sketch at a dressing room mirror.
Giving each other a pep talk, the pair said in unison: “Keep Kamala and carry on-a-la”.
They also took aim at Trump’s recent rally speeches, including wearing an orange and yellow safety jacket and a cheeky mic gag.
But the SNL appearance was accused of violating “equal time” rules governing political programmes, by the Federal Communications Commission.
Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the FCC and Trump appointee, said: “The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct — a broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election, unless the broadcaster offered equal time to other qualifying campaigns.”
Meanwhile, Hollywood’s big guns continued to line up for Harris over the weekend.
Actor Harrison Ford, 82, said in a dramatic black-and-white video: “I’ve been voting for 64 years, never really wanted to talk about it, but when dozens of former members of the Trump administration sound alarms, saying, ‘For God sake — don’t do this again’, you have to pay attention.”
Ford joined A-list Harris fans Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Eminem, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Comeback or historic win?
AS my plane taxied in to land at New York’s JFK Airport last month, my hunch was that Kamala Harris was on the brink of a historic victory.
After all, her only obstacle to becoming the first woman in the White House is sexist felon Donald Trump, who was labelled a “fascist” by his own former chief of staff.
Ex-prosecutor Harris had earlier trounced Trump in their only head-to-head television debate.
Two weeks and 3,000 miles later on America’s Pacific Coast, I have come to believe Trump is set to pull off the biggest recovery since Lazarus.
Why? Because every voter I spoke to already knows exactly the type of man Trump is – and what he will do if elected.
Like cable workman Herbert McKingley, 42, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who told me his biggest worry is the US’s chaotic southern border.
The son of immigrants himself, Herbert trusts Trump on the economy and to slam shut a crossing where a record 2.2million people were apprehended in 2022.
Herbert is far from alone. One survey saw a record 26 per cent of black men say they’d vote for Republican Trump.
Down in another swing state, Arizona, rancher John Ladd, 70, says he knows where the former president stands on the economy and the border.
Harris has made her pitch to the US voters more on upbeat “vibes”.
But after flip-flopping with her views on fracking and the border, voters aren’t sure who she is and what she would do if elected to the Oval Office.
In the privacy of the polling booth, I believe enough undecideds will vote Trump to get him over the line.