Tomorrow is the final showdown in a race for the US presidency that is still very tight and in which today none of the candidates has a clear lead.
But both Kamala Harris (Democrat) and Donald Trump (Republican) have spent the last weekend before Election Day campaigning one-on-one in those key swing states that will definitely play a decisive role in victory.
Both the Democratic and Republican teams say they have laid the groundwork to win and that their arguments are the right ones to claim victory.
According to the Harris campaign, their work on the ground has been most effective and they said that more than 2,500 staffers and volunteers in swing states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada) fostered a strong movement to vote for their candidate.
In addition, they believe that issues such as abortion, along with Harris’s favourability rating, which is several points higher than Trump’s in the Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls, will help catapult her to the White House.
For his part, Trump’s campaign is riding on voters’ views that the country is headed in the wrong direction, the cost of living and the economy in general, The Hill noted.
Republicans point to Harris as a continuation of Joe Biden’s administration, whose approval rating is underwater, the paper noted.
Historically, there is a perception that when an incumbent has a low approval rating (Biden has 40 percent), the opposing party prevails, recalled an article in the political and congressional newspaper.
«I think both sides have valid reasons for how and why a victory is possible,» said a Democratic strategist close to the Harris campaign, quoted in The Hill.
«That’s part of the reason it’s so close and why neither side has the advantage. All the polls are ridiculously close,» he stressed.
A poll released by Gallup this week showed that about 49 percent of Americans have a favourable opinion of Harris compared to 44 percent for Trump.
Meanwhile, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket, also has a higher favourable rating at 45 per cent, while Trump’s Republican running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has 39 per cent.
Such statistics bode well for Harris, Gallup noted, because candidates with higher favourability ratings have generally won recent presidential elections, the newspaper reported.
The United States is closing out one of the most expensive campaigns in history. Data from the ad-tracking firm show that ad spending amounted to nearly $1 billion in the final week leading up to the election, representing nearly 10 percent of the total since the beginning of 2023.
According to the report, cited by NBC News, the $994 million is nearly a tenth of the more than $10 billion spent on political campaigning in all districts since 2023.
And far from the end of the spending, it is estimated that there is still more than $300 million in advertising time running from this Sunday through tomorrow, Election Day.
In 2024, in addition to the nation’s president for the January 2025-January 2029 term, Americans will elect to the federal Congress all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate. There are contests in state legislatures, as well as for governorships and other local offices.
