It’s been almost two years since Trump first started his campaign to become president again. Now, on Election Day 2024, the American people will decide whether or not to give him another chance.
Vice President Kamala Harris is running against the Republican choice for president. She replaced her boss, President Biden, as the head of the Democratic national ticket just three and a half months ago.
About 75 million votes have already been cast across the country in early voting, and the day-of voting is now underway. Both of the major party nominees are confident in their chances in this historic contest.
She told her fans at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Monday, “Momentum is on our side.” “Can you feel it.”
The vice president said it again at a gathering in Pittsburgh hours later: “Make no mistake, we will win.”
Trump told his fans, “We’ve been waiting for this” while campaigning in Pennsylvania, another key state. This has been four years in the making.
The former president has said, “we have a big lead,” even though the final national polls and studies of key swing states showed that the race was close. We’re way ahead.
On Election Eve, Trump and Harris held opposing events in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes, making it the most important of the seven key battleground states.
At the end of her campaign, Harris held a big event late at night in Philadelphia, near the famous “Rocky Steps” in front of the Art Museum.
At about the same time that Harris was in Philadelphia, Trump held his last rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is where he ended both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
Seven states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada—were very close in the 2020 election, with Trump beating Biden by a very small percentage. These states will likely decide whether Trump or Harris wins the 2024 election.
In the past few months, Harris, Trump, their running mates, and top supporters have been all over the seven battlegrounds. The two campaigns for president and their linked super PACs have spent almost all of the $2.3 billion they have spent on ads in the battleground states.
Both the vice president and the former president sent very different messages to end their campaigns.
Harris didn’t name Trump for the second day in a row. She ended with an upbeat message about how the country can work together for the future.
Because he was against Democratic policies and emphasized the dangers of unchecked immigration, Trump made a bad picture of the country over the past four years while Biden was in office.
Trump’s 2024 campaign has been a very hard two-year run. He launched his run at his Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida, a few days after the midterm elections in 2022. After getting off to a slow start, the former president easily beat a field of GOP primary opponents that briefly grew to over a dozen candidates last year. He also won the Republican presidential primaries earlier this year.
Trump was charged with four different crimes. After becoming the first president or past president to be convicted of a felony in the late spring, he got a lot of support and raised a lot of money.
A month later, Biden had a big setback when he lost a debate against Trump in late June. This brought up old questions about whether the 81-year-old president was physically and mentally ready for another four hard years in the White House, and it led people in his own party to call for him to step down.
In the polls, Trump’s lead over Biden grew. The former president’s popularity also rose after an attempt on his life at a gathering in Butler, Pennsylvania, two days before the start of the Republican National Convention in July.
A few days later, though, the race was turned upside down when Biden dropped his re-election bid and backed his vice president. Democrats quickly united behind Harris, and as her poll numbers rose, so did her funding.
Harris and her husband were still very happy together during the late August Democratic National Convention and into September when most experts said she won the only presidential debate she had with Trump.
In contrast, Trump seemed to get back on track as September turned into October, and polls showed that the former president was getting support.
Karl Rove, an experienced Republican strategist and Fox News contributor, said that the debate between Harris and Trump was a “toss of a coin.”
But Alex Castellanos, a longtime Republican consultant who didn’t agree with the polls, pointed out that Republicans were getting more people to register to vote.
“I don’t think the polls are right on this.” There must be something we’re not seeing because they keep giving us the same question. Someone is lacking something.”
Castellanos, who has been in many presidential campaigns before, said, “What I think they’re missing is a huge change in voter registration going on underneath all of this.” In 31 states, you can register to vote by party. Thirty of them have been changed by Republicans in the last four years.
On Fox News’ “Special Report,” longtime Democratic pollster Mark Penn talked about how Republicans seem to be voting more early now that Trump, who has been a vocal opponent of early voting for a long time, has recently backed the GOP’s long-running effort to make Republicans more open to voting early. Penn said, “The only fact we know is that Republicans have done a lot better in the mail-in and early voting than they ever have.”
She lives in California and voted by mail before Election Day.
The Trump team said that the former president would vote in person on Election Day in his home state of Florida, Palm Beach.
Trump’s team said that he also planned to spend Election Day with family, friends, and staff, as well as holding some televised rallies in specific areas.
His offices for Election Night were going to be at a convention center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Harris was going to do some radio talks on Election Day to make her case. And the vice president was going to hold her headquarters on Election Night at Howard University in Washington, D.C., which is primarily black.
During the last week of the campaign, Trump seemed to be trying to trash the 2024 election. For four years, Trump has said false things about how his 2020 loss was caused by a rigged election.
On Sunday, Trump said again that the Democrats were trying to cheat, but he didn’t show any proof.
The ex-president said on Sunday, “They are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing.”
Source: Harris and Trump Wrap Up Campaigning — Now It’s in the Voters’ Hands as Election Day 2024 Begins