Trump and Harris' frantic final 2024 campaign stops show why North Carolina matters
- Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will mostly close out the 2024 race in Pennsylvania.
- But it is Trump's campaign making a late push to expand his path to victory.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are saying a lot about their closing strategies by deploying the most valuable resource left in the 2024 campaign: their time.
The top two contenders have or will visit each of the seven swing states over the campaign's final days. Harris spent Friday in Wisconsin, Saturday in Georgia and North Carolina, and today will be crisscrossing Michigan. Trump spent Friday in Michigan and Wisconsin, Saturday in North Carolina, and today will be in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Both hopefuls spent Thursday in Nevada and Arizona.
Trump is taking the most eye-raising approach. He spent part of Friday in New Mexico and Saturday in Virginia, neither of which has voted for a Republican for president in two decades. His campaign even added a last-minute rally in New Hampshire featuring GOP Vice Presidential Nominee Sen. JD Vance. No major election forecaster considers any of those three states a "toss-up."
Saturday showed there could still be a surprise left in this chaotic race, even if polling and pundits may say otherwise.
Harris might be able to expand her map without really trying. The widely respected Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed her with 3 percentage point lead among likely voters in Iowa. Once a swing state, Iowa has swung heavily toward Republicans in recent elections, and no one thought Trump might be in jeopardy of losing a state he won easily in 2016 and 2020. A different poll showed Trump leading the state, but the biggest takeaway is Trump's struggle with older women. If that holds elsewhere in the Midwest, he's in serious trouble.
The state that stands out the most on the schedule.
Not surprisingly, Trump and Harris are focusing the bulk of their efforts on Pennsylvania, the most important swing state.
Harris would win the race by holding the "Blue Wall," Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and the so-called Blue Dot, Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. In that scenario, Trump could sweep the remaining four swing states and still fall short.
On the other hand, if Trump wins Pennsylvania, Harris would be in a bind. If Harris won Michigan and Wisconsin, she would still need to add Georgia or North Carolina to her column. Even winning Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona would not be enough to put her in the White House.
It's why Trump's decision to spend significant time in North Carolina looms large. He's set to spend the second-most time in the state in the campaign's final days, trailing only Pennsylvania. Harris held a rally in Charlotte on Saturday before flying to New York to make a surprise appearance on "Saturday Night Live."
The major polling aggregators show Trump with just over a one percentage point lead in the Tar Heel state. Despite President Obama being the only Democratic presidential hopeful to carry the state since 2000, Trump only narrowly held off President Biden there four years ago.
Some of Harris' aides mocked Trump's decision.
"Donald Trump is worried about losing North Carolina," Harris spokesperson Ammar Moussa wrote on X under two siren emojis.
Doug Sosnik, a longtime advisor to Bill Clinton and a North Carolina native, doesn't see Harris' path there.
"It's a state that guys like me would have told you 10 years ago would be a Democratic state now like Virginia, but it's not," Sosnik said.
North Carolina is "not a level playing field" for Democrats, Sosnik said, pointing to Democrats' struggles there except for Obama.
"It's competitive. It's something worth fighting for, if she's got the resources, she should stick it out, and maybe she could win it," Sosnik said.
Trump's campaign shot back that it was Harris that is actually worried.
"President Trump is leading in every battleground state and he's been going on offense in historically Democrat states like New Mexico and Virginia," Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Business Insider. "Meanwhile, Kamala Harris remains on defense, shifting more resources to turn out the vote in Black communities and sending Bill Clinton to New Hampshire."
Susan Roberts, a political science professor at Davidson College, said that one of the wild cards for North Carolina this cycle is the large number of people who have moved to the state post-2020.
According to the Census Bureau, only two other states, Florida and Texas, added more people in 2023. Since 2020, roughly 99,000 people every year on average have moved to North Carolina from other states, per the Office of State Management and Budget.
Trump also has to grapple with the fact that some of his strongest counties were devastated by Hurricane Helene, leaving officials scrambling to relocate polling places.
"If North Carolina is close, if it looks like Harris is a hair ahead, I think many of the votes in Western North Carolina will be scrutinized within an inch of their life," Roberts said, adding she is not convinced that every vote in the affected areas will be in by the deadline.