On the last day of a brutal, wild and tightly contested campaign, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris blitzed voters Monday with their final pleas for turnout.
With the race tied at 49% nationally in an NBC News poll Sunday and battleground surveys showing all of the decisive states within margins of error, millions of Americans will cast their ballots Tuesday. It’s not yet clear how long it will take for those votes to be counted.
The last two elections were decided by historically narrow spreads, with Trump defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton by roughly 77,000 votes across three states in 2016 and Joe Biden beating Trump by about 44,000 spread across the same number of states in 2020.
In other words, the final pitches could be decisive.
Harris sees herself as a candidate on the upswing at the crucial moment. She held her last rally in Philadelphia late Tuesday night, standing on the steps of the city’s art museum made famous by the “Rocky” movies.
“It’s good to be back in the City of Brotherly Love, where the foundation of our democracy was forged,” Harris said. “And here, at these famous steps, a tribute to those who start as the underdog and climb to victory.”
“The momentum is on our side,” she added at her rally, which featured celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and Will.i.am. “Our campaign has tapped into the ambitions and the aspirations and the dreams of the American people.”
Trump told supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he’s ahead and just needs their votes to seal his return to the White House.
“Hopefully everything will work out well; we’re way leading. All we have to do is close, we have to close it,” he said. “I hate the expression, actually, but it’s ours to lose. Does that make sense to you? It’s ours to lose. If we, if we get everybody out and vote, there’s not a thing they can do.”
Trump’s final rally was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the same city where he closed out his past two campaigns. As usual, the former president was running late, and he didn’t take the stage until after midnight.
Trump projected confidence that he would win — saying there was a 95% chance of it — boasted about the size of his crowds and went after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“She’s an evil, sick, crazy, b — Oh no,” he said, silently mouthing the derogatory term. “It starts with a ‘b’ but I won’t say it.”
“I want to say it,” he added, with the crowd urging him to say it.
There were signs, though, that Make America Great Again voters were more exhausted than their candidate. Trump spoke to partially full venues in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and people began leaving in droves before he wrapped up his Pittsburgh remarks after 9 p.m.
The rally was likely Trump’s last one ever, an end he’s acknowledged on the campaign trail with some sentimentality.
“This will be my last rally. Can you believe it?” he said to the crowd in Grand Rapids.
Harris and Trump both put their emphasis Monday on Pennsylvania, suggesting they still believe “Keystone State” is more than just a nickname. Its 19 electoral votes went for Trump in 2016 and Biden, who abandoned his re-election bid this summer, in 2020. Most political analysts say neither side can afford to lose the state.
“This is all about a final attempt at voter mobilization and persuasion, and that so much time is being spent in Pennsylvania by both Harris and Trump tells you how both campaigns see it: Whomever wins the state likely wins the presidency,” Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said.
Harris in particular focused on Pennsylvania, barnstorming the state with all four of her final-day rallies. The vice president also surprised some voters in Reading, going door-knocking in a last-minute push to get out the vote.
Trump held two rallies in the state — hitting Reading and Pittsburgh, like Harris — after the stop in Raleigh and before he wrapped up his tour in Grand Rapids, Michigan, late at night. A person close to Trump said Democrats chose to make a last stand in the state — and predicted that it won’t turn out well for Harris.
“There’s clearly a desperation that’s taken hold in their campaign,” the person said. “This is their Alamo.”
But Harris’ top aide, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, told reporters Monday that camping out in Pennsylvania had everything to do with numbers.
“We feel very good about Pennsylvania and the work that we’ve done,” she said. “Of course, Pennsylvania is a state that has 75% of their vote that will vote on Election Day, so that’s been a big focus as we’ve closed out, to drive our organization to Pennsylvania, uniquely, because of the way people vote there.”
At the same time, Trump signaled urgency with last-minute endorsements from conservative host Megyn Kelly, whom he famously trashed for her performance moderating a 2016 GOP primary debate, and podcaster Joe Rogan. Trump also posted a video on his Truth Social account Monday of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped his independent bid for president this year and is still trying to get his supporters to back Trump.
“It will be too late by 2028,” Kennedy, speaking directly to the camera, said in the video. “Once we’re in the grips of totalitarianism, we’re not going to be able to vote our way out of it. This is our last chance to stop them.”
His frenetic final day on the trail included the unveiling of a new policy proposal. Trump said that if Mexico doesn’t stop undocumented immigrants from crossing the U.S. border, he will slap a 25% tariff on Mexican goods.
In addition to Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan, both campaigns have viewed Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada as the key swing states. Most of the rest of the country is considered safe turf for either Harris or Trump.
One way of looking at the push to 270 electoral votes — the number needed to win the presidency — is through the lens of which states each candidate must win to hit that minimum if no states outside the main battlegrounds flip from one party to the other.
Harris would hit her mark by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which awards its own electoral vote. For Trump, victories in Georgia, North Carolina — which he won in 2020 — and Pennsylvania would get him to 270.
Both campaigns closely monitored state decisions affecting voting integrity in the final hours. In Georgia, the state Supreme Court ruled that Cobb County, a Democratic-leaning mesh of Atlanta suburbs with three-quarters of a million people, won’t be allowed to count absentee ballots received after 7 p.m. Tuesday.
In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner warned in highly charged terms Monday that he wouldn’t tolerate any efforts to intimidate voters.
“We’re not playing,” he said before he suggested there would be consequences for bullying at the polls. “F around and find out.”
Fears about the election’s being free, fair and void of false allegations of fraud have been high throughout the campaign after Trump tried to overturn his 2020 loss in a push that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol and federal charges that he acted illegally.
But with the last rallies of the season signaling the end of a long and winding campaign — one that featured a switch of Democratic candidates, a failed assassin’s shooting Trump in the ear and tight-as-a-tick polling — the candidates now must await the verdict of the voters.
“Getting out the vote is the last crucial step that could make the difference,” Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett said. “Exhausted candidates and campaigns will wonder what they could have done differently and wonder what will happen tomorrow.”
The only real question for each side, he said, is: “Will the road rise up to meet them, or will the car go off a cliff?”
