Trump and Harris make final pitch in Pennsylvania on eve of historic vote

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both predicted victory as they campaigned across Pennsylvania on Monday in the final, frantic day of an exceptionally close US presidential election.

The campaign has seen head-spinning twists: two assassination attempts and a felony conviction for Republican former President Trump, and Democratic Vice President Harris' surprise elevation to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden, 81, dropped his reelection bid under pressure from his own party. More than $2.6 billion has been spent to sway voters' minds since March, according to AdImpact, an analytics firm.

Nevertheless, opinion polls show Trump, 78, and Harris, 60, in a dead heat. The winner may not be known for days after Tuesday's vote, though Trump has already signalled that he will attempt to fight any defeat, as he did in 2020.

Both candidates converged on Pennsylvania on Tuesday to urge supporters who have not yet cast their ballots to show up on Election Day. The state offers the largest share of votes in the Electoral College of any of the seven battleground states expected to determine the outcome.

"With this election, you can show them once and for all that this nation does not belong to them. It belongs to you," a weary-sounding Trump told a half-full arena in Reading, the second of four stops he had planned for the day. "Together we will fight, fight and we will win, win."

In Allentown, Harris predicted victory and promised to be a president for "all Americans," as she appealed to the city's substantial Puerto Rican community who were outraged by insults from a comedian at a Trump rally last week.

"Do we believe in the promise of America, and are you ready to fight for it?" she asked the crowd. "Because when we fight, we win."

Both campaigns projected optimism.

Harris' campaign team said its volunteers knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors in each of the battleground states this weekend.

The campaign says its internal data shows that undecided voters are breaking in their favour, and says it has seen an increase in early voting among core parts of its coalition, including young voters and voters of colour.

Tom Bonier, head of the Democratic analytics firm TargetSmart, said the early vote showed high enthusiasm among Democratic-leaning groups, especially women. He said there was no indication of a similar surge among young men, a key target of the Trump campaign's outreach.

GENDER GAP

Trump campaign officials said they were monitoring early-voting results that show more women have voted than men. That is significant given that Harris led Trump by 50% to 38% among female registered voters, according to an October Reuters/Ipsos poll, while Trump led among men 48% to 41%.

"Men must vote!" the world's richest person Elon Musk, a prominent Trump supporter, wrote on his X social media platform.

Trump's campaign has outsourced most of the voter outreach work to outside groups, including one run by Musk, which have focused on contacting supporters who do not reliably participate in elections, rather than undecided voters.

Source: Reuters

A Pennsylvania judge ruled that Musk could continue his $1 million voter giveaway in the state, which a local prosecutor said amounted to an illegal lottery.

Trump has vowed to protect women "whether the women like it or not" and said that the decision of whether to ban abortion should be up to individual states, after the conservative majority he cemented on the US Supreme Court in 2022 ended the nationwide right to abortion. In Reading, he vowed to keep transgender athletes out of women's sports, as supporters waved pink "Women for Trump" signs behind him.

One Trump campaign official said they thought the Republican would carry North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, which would still require him to carry one of battleground states in the Rust Belt -- Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania -- to win the White House. Republicans also appeared to be posting strong early-vote results in Nevada, and have been heartened by robust early-voting numbers in the hurricane-ravaged western counties of North Carolina.

"The numbers show that President Trump is going to win this race," senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters. "We feel very good about where things are."

FALSE FRAUD CLAIMS

Trump and his allies, who falsely claim his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud, have spent months laying the groundwork to again challenge the result if he loses. He has promised "retribution" if elected, spoken of prosecuting his political rivals and described Democrats as the "enemy from within."

Source: Reuters

Harris campaign officials said his attempts to allege fraud will fail. "Voters select the president, not Donald Trump," Dana Remus, a campaign legal adviser, told reporters.

Arizona's top election official said an online video alleging that Republicans were being removed from voter rolls was false.

Trump is due to campaign later in Pittsburgh and Grand Rapids, Michigan. He then plans to return to Palm Beach, Florida, to vote and await election results.

Harris is due to campaign in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where she will end the day with a rally in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which will feature Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and Oprah Winfrey.

She is expected to spend election night at Howard University in Washington, a historically Black college that is her alma mater.