US Election: 2 days to go – What the polls say, what Harris and Trump are doing | 2024 US Election News

Candidates for the US presidential election campaigned in the state of North Carolina on Saturday, seeking to close the majority of votes in the election on Tuesday, November 5.

It marked the fourth day in a row that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump visited the same country on the same day, highlighting how votes from several key states will determine the outcome of the vote.

More than 73 million Americans have voted since Saturday, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.

Harris met in downtown Charlotte with rock star Jon Bon Jovi and R&B singer Khalid, before making a surprise appearance on the popular Saturday Night Live show in New York.

Meanwhile, Trump stopped in the state of Virginia, before heading to Gastonia and Greensboro in North Carolina.

What are the latest updates from the polls?

Nationally, the latest FiveThirtyEight pollster showed Harris ahead by a slim 1 point, within the margin of error. Neither of the top two contenders broke the 50 percent mark. Harris's rating is 47.9 percent compared to Trump's 46.9 percent.

In so-called Blue Wall counties, which tend to lean Democratic but are considered swing states this year, Trump is trailing 47.9 percent to Harris' 47.6 percent in Pennsylvania, while Harris is trailing by 1 percent in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump is ahead of Harris by 1 percent in Nevada, 2 percent in Georgia and North Carolina, and 3 percent in Arizona.

But in a major political shift in Iowa, a state Trump won in 2016 and 2020, a respected pollster showed Harris 3 percentage points ahead of Trump 47-44.

The poll, published jointly by the Des Moines Register and Mediacom, showed Harris gaining support from women, especially older adults and independent voters who did not align with a political party.

At the same time, polls showed that only 89 percent of Republicans support Trump, meaning he is in trouble defending his base.

Other polls from the state, however, showed Trump still leading Harris.

What would Harris do on Saturday?

Campaigning in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, Harris made a strong appeal to young, Democratic-leaning voters to go to the polls. The last election, however, showed that fewer of them showed up to vote compared to older voters.

“I see promise in America every day in young leaders who are voting for the first time,” she said.

“He is committed to living without gun violence, addressing the climate crisis and shaping the world to inherit.”

He also continued to sharpen his attack on Trump, saying that the former president only cares about his own interests, without a comprehensive plan for the future.

“If elected, Donald Trump, on day one, will be in that office looking at his enemies list,” she said. “But once I'm elected, I'll take your place, fix my to-do list.”

As his speech was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, Harris repeated a line he had said at previous rallies, “We all want that war in the Middle East to end.

“We want the hostages to go home. And when I become president, I will do everything in my power to make it so.”

Earlier in the day, Harris also attended a rally in Atlanta where he called Trump “unstable” and “unchecked”.

After campaigning in North Carolina, Harris appeared on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live in New York City alongside her character on the show, Maya Rudolph.

“I'm going to vote for us,” Rudolph told Harris.

What was Trump up to on Saturday?

Trump squeezed a rally in blue-leaning Virginia between two events in neighboring North Carolina. It was the start of his campaign in North Carolina, where he will campaign until Election Day.

Trump used his evening rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, to praise himself for the decline in trust in the United States media.

“Fake news back there, it was at a 92 percent approval rating when we started this campaign in 2015. And now it's down in Congress, at a low of 12 percent,” he said.

“I am very proud of that because I exposed them as liars”.

He then returned to one of his favorite talking points: The fear of undocumented immigration to the US.

“I will save American communities for American citizens. We're going to have Americans in our communities,” Trump said, repeating the traditional rhetoric that has become a lesson in his “America First” position.

He also made an effort to make his anti-immigration message resonate with non-white voters in the US, warning for example that unrestricted immigration would harm Black communities.

“If this continues, he will have no political power left,” Trump said. “Their communities will have more immigrants.”

Trump repeated a false claim about Congolese migrants coming to the US.

Harris, he said, “broke his oath, abolished our independent border and unleashed an army of gangs and criminal migrants in jails and prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions from all over the world, from Venezuela to the Congo”.

“Oh, Congo. Congo sends a lot of people. They send their people to prison. Think of the money they save and the risk, the risk of it all.”

There is no evidence that the Congolese government is sending people from their prisons to the US.

What's next for the Harris and Trump campaigns?

Harris is headed to Michigan and Pennsylvania

On Sunday, the Democratic presidential nominee will head to Lansing, Michigan, for the final two days of the election season.

Pennsylvania, another key battleground and Rust Belt state, will be where Harris ends his campaign trail on Monday.

He has plans to appear in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Allentown as well as in major urban areas such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia before the election.

Trump is headed to Pennsylvania and North Carolina

On Sunday, Trump will swing from Pennsylvania back south to visit Kinston, North Carolina.

And of course, on Monday – the day before the election – Trump will hit the capital in Raleigh, North Carolina.

It is an important investment in a province that has grown competitively in recent decades.

Recent polls show Trump slightly ahead of Harris in North Carolina.