2024 race ends with swing state barnstorming

Donald Trump before rally in closing days of 2024 campaign — Most polls continue to show the race in a dead heat

(Image credit: Ryan Collerd / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spent the final weekend of the 2024 campaign holding rallies in mostly battleground states, though Trump visited Democratic-leaning Virginia and New Mexico while Harris stopped in New York City to appear on "Saturday Night Live." More than 77 million people have already voted.

Who said what

Trump and Harris have both been "racing through rallies and impromptu appearances in the battleground states," The New York Times said, but "in message and demeanor" their closing events "could not have been more different." Trump, 78, "appeared particularly tired" Sunday morning, and "his voice was hoarse and his pace was slow as he delivered remarks marked by grievances and the occasional vulgarity," saying at one point that things were so great at the end of his term, "I shouldn't have left, I mean, honestly."

Harris, 60, "has mostly stopped mentioning Trump," The Associated Press said. "She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus, while sounding an almost exclusively optimistic tone reminiscent of her campaign's opening days" in July. "We have momentum. It is on our side," she said at a rally in East Lansing, Michigan, last night. "Can you feel it?"

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Watching the two candidates yesterday, "it could feel at times" like "the bottom is falling out" for Trump, Adam Wren said at Politico. But the fact that he's "still in a margin-of-error election" after his "week of unadulterated indulgences on the trail" shows his remarkable political "durability."

What next?

Harris holds events today in Pittsburgh and Allentown before ending the campaign with a late-night Philadelphia rally featuring Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey. Trump will visit North Carolina and Pennsylvania before closing the campaign in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Most polls continue to show the race a dead heat, though some outliers — like a well-regarded Des Moines Register poll that found Harris leading by 3 percentage points in Iowa — suggested the possibility that most polls may be weighing their samples wrong in either direction or missing some other dynamic.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.