WASHINGTON (AFP) – A nail-biting United States (US) presidential campaign headed into its final week yesterday, with polls showing little daylight between the two candidates as they ramp up appeals to their respective bases to turn out and vote.
More than 41 million Americans have already cast early ballots ahead of Election Day on November 5, in what is expected to be one of the tightest elections of modern times.
Outgoing US President Joe Biden joined in and cast his own vote yesterday, the White House said.
On the campaign trail, both candidates return to key battleground states, with Democrat Kamala Harris heading to Michigan, while Republican and former US president Donald Trump, 78, will head to Georgia, where he will address a gathering before holding a rally.
The trips come after Harris, 60, spent last Sunday going neighbourhood to neighbourhood in Philadelphia, in must-win Pennsylvania, with stops at a facility and a Puerto Rican restaurant.
“The election is here, and the choice, Philly, is truly in your hands,” the Democrat said, in her 14th trip to the state since Biden dropped out of the race in July.
Former president Trump packed a crowd into New York’s famed Madison Square Garden arena on Sunday, where – stoking tensions on immigration – speakers made crude remarks about Latinos and advisor Stephen Miller declared “America is for Americans, and Americans only”.
While Trump accused Harris of having “destroyed the country,” his speech was in some ways overshadowed by his openers, including a comedian who called the US territory of Puerto Rico “literally a floating island of garbage.”
Trump and Harris have both pushed hard to bring out their voter bases.
In Georgia, one of the seven swing states that will decide the election, Trump has enraptured conservative voters, having appointed three Supreme Court justices in his previous term.
Harris has warned that Trump “wants to take America back to the 1800s” on the issue as she tries to appeal to women as well as more moderate Republicans.
But the vice president has run into problems with the Democrats’ traditionally more multiracial, multifaith base as civilian casualties continue to mount in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
While Harris has at times been more critical of Israel than Biden, her boss, she has also ruled out any major changes in US support for Israel, including an arms embargo.
