The tumultuous 2024 U.S. presidential campaign is in its final hours Monday, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump traveling to key political battleground states, in a contest that polls indicate is too close to call.
Both Harris, the Democratic candidate, and Trump, her Republican challenger, are making multiple stops in Pennsylvania, the eastern Rust Belt state that is the biggest electoral prize among the seven battleground states that are likely to determine the national outcome.
Both candidates are staging rallies in Pittsburgh, the heart of the U.S. steel-making region.
Trump is also heading to Reading, a smaller city in eastern Pennsylvania, bookended by a stop in Raleigh, the capital of the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina, and closing out his day with an evening rally in the Republican stronghold of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the former president also concluded his 2016 and 2020 runs for the White House.
Harris is spending the entire day in Pennsylvania, starting in Scranton, the hometown of President Joe Biden, the Democrat she replaced at the top of the party’s ticket in July when he dropped out of the contest after a poor debate performance against Trump and falling poll numbers.
The vice president is ending the day with a major rally in Philadelphia, the country’s 6th biggest city and a major Democratic stronghold. Pop star Lady Gaga, other musical groups and former talk show host Oprah Winfrey are accompanying Harris to voice their support.
Harris is also spending part of her day campaigning in majority-Latino Allentown, then, like Trump, also stopping in 95,000-resident Reading, where 70% of the residents are Latino, most of them Puerto Rican.
Trump will come face to face in Reading with anger over a joke comic Tony Hinchcliffe told at a New York rally of his last week that characterized the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” In response, Trump said a day later he did not hear the joke but did not attempt to disown it, although his campaign said it was not reflective of his views.
