While Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris fight over handfuls of voters in swing states, millions of Americans have already cast their ballots.
A record 76 million people have voted early so far, including nearly 1.5 million here in Massachusetts, according to the NBC News early vote tracker.
That number includes in-person early voting and mail-in ballots that have been returned. According to the vote tracker, 55% of the early votes were cast in person with 45% mail-in ballots.
As millions of Americans head to the voting booth tomorrow, polls show the race for the White House is as tight as ever. Harris and Trump remain within a few points of each other throughout the past month.
The latest NYT/Siena poll, conducted from Oct. 24 to Nov. 2, shows Harris slightly leading Trump in Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Trump is leading in Arizona with a four-point lead.
The poll’s results are within the margin of error, and a sample of 7,879 likely voters was used to conduct the poll.
A shock also came on Saturday night when the Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll showed Harris picking up support in Iowa, a state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020. The increased support for Harris in Iowa is likely due to the state’s abortion ban going into effect over the summer, which bans most abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy. 59% of Iowans oppose the ban.
Abortion is an issue Harris has campaigned on heavily, saying she would seek to put protections for abortion access into place if elected president. Trump has bragged about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v Wade in 2022, and his running mate JD Vance has previously said he wants abortion to be illegal nationally but has since changed his stance on the issue.
The two candidates have spent the final weeks of the campaign delivering their closing messages to voters.
Some of Harris’s policies include building three million new homes; continuing the Biden Administration’s efforts to negotiate lower prescription drug costs; passing an immigration bill that was tanked by Congressional Republicans in February; and continuing to provide military aid to Ukraine.
Trump has been running on policies including high tariffs, which experts say would lead to cost-of-living increases; eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay, and social security benefits; and deporting more than 11 million immigrants. Trump has also said he would end the war between Ukraine and Russia but has not offered specifics as to how he would do so.
Trump has repeatedly used incendiary rhetoric during the final weeks of the campaign, calling Harris a low-IQ person, saying America is a “garbage can for the world,” and suggesting he may send the military after “far-left lunatics.” Trump has also said he wants to go after his political opponents, including Nancy Pelosi, calling them “the enemy from within.”
Harris, by contrast, has been running a campaign centered around moving the country forward, frequently using the slogan “We are not going back.” She has appeared at campaign stops with numerous anti-Trump Republican officials, including former Representative Liz Cheney. Cheney has been a frequent critic of Trump and his conduct after the 2020 election.
Comments