• Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will essentially close out the 2024 race in Pennsylvania.
• But it is Trump’s campaign that is making a late effort to widen its path to victory.
• Both teams also play a role for North Carolina.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris speak volumes about their fence strategies by deploying the most precious resource left in the world. 2024 campaign: their time.

The top two contenders have visited or will visit each of the seven swing states during the the last days of the campaign. Harris spent Friday in Wisconsin, Saturday in Georgia and North Carolina, and today he will travel through Michigan. Trump spent Friday in Michigan and Wisconsin, Saturday in North Carolina and today he will travel to Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. The two hopefuls spent Thursday in Nevada and Arizona.

Trump takes the most remarkable approach. He spent part of Friday in New Mexico and Saturday in Virginia, where neither has voted for a Republican for president in two decades. His campaign even added a last-minute rally in New Hampshire featuring the senator’s GOP vice presidential candidate. J.D. Vance. No major election forecaster considers any of these three states a “toss-up.”

Saturday showed there could still be a surprise in this chaotic race, even if polls and pundits say otherwise.

Harris might be able to expand his card without really trying. The widely respected Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed him a 3 percentage point lead among likely Iowa voters. Once a swing state, Iowa tilted heavily toward the Republicans in recent elections, and no one thought Trump could risk losing a state he easily won in 2016 and 2020. Another poll showed that Trump was the head of state, but the most important takeaway is Trump’s struggle with elderly women. If this happens anywhere else in the Midwest, it will be in serious trouble.

The state that stands out the most on the schedule.

It’s no surprise that Trump and Harris are focusing most of their efforts on Pennsylvania, the most important swing state.

Harris would win the race by holding the “Blue Wall”, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as the so-called Blue Dot, Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district. In this scenario, Trump could sweep the four remaining swing states and still fail.

On the other hand, if Trump won Pennsylvania, Harris would be in a bind. If Harris won Michigan and Wisconsin, she would still have to add Georgia or North Carolina to her column. Even winning Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona wouldn’t be enough to put her in the White House.

This is why Trump’s decision to spend significant time in North Carolina is of great significance. He is expected to spend the second most time in the state in the final days of the campaign, behind Pennsylvania. Harris held a rally in Charlotte on Saturday before flying to New York to make a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”

Major poll aggregators give Trump a lead of just over a percentage point in the Tar Heel State. Although President Obama has been the only Democratic candidate for state president since 2000, Trump only narrowly held off President Biden four years ago.

Some 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 adviser to Bill Clinton and a North Carolina native, doesn’t see Harris’ path forward.

“This is a state that guys like me would have told you 10 years ago would now be a Democratic state like Virginia, but that’s not the case,” Sosnik said.

North Carolina is “not a level playing field” for Democrats, Sosnik said, noting Democrats’ struggles there, with the exception of Obama.

“It’s competitive. It’s something worth fighting for, if she has the resources she should hold on, and maybe she could win it,” Sosnik said.

The Trump campaign countered that it was Harris who was really worried.

“President Trump is leading in every battleground state and has been on the offensive in historically Democratic states like New Mexico and Virginia,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Business Insider. “Meanwhile, Kamala Harris remains on the defensive, devoting more resources to voting in black communities and sending Bill Clinton to New Hampshire.”

Susan Roberts, a political science professor at Davidson College, said one of North Carolina’s wild cards this cycle is the large number of people who moved to the state after 2020.

According to the Census Bureau, only two other states, Florida and Texas, added more people in 2023. Since 2020, an average of about 99,000 people have moved to North Carolina from other states each year, according to the Census Bureau. the Office of State Management and Budget.

Trump also must contend with the fact that some of his most powerful counties were devastated by Hurricane Helene, forcing officials to scramble to move polling places.

“If North Carolina is close, if it looks like Harris is a hair ahead, I think a lot of votes in western North Carolina will be scrutinized within an inch of their lives,” Roberts said , adding that she was not convinced that every vote in North Carolina was scrutinized. the affected areas will have arrived before the deadline.