LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) — After a summer of historic turmoil, the path to the presidency for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will become much clearer this fall.
The Democratic vice president and Republican ex-president will devote almost all of their remaining time and resources to just seven states. They will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to appeal to voters who, in many cases, have only just begun to pay attention to the election. And their campaigns will try to focus their messages on three familiar issues – the economy, immigration and abortion – even amid heated debates about character, culture and democracy.
The candidates will debate in a week. It will be their first meeting ever. Pennsylvania, the country’s most essential swing state, will begin mail-in voting the following week. By the end of the month, early voting will begin in at least four states, with a dozen more to follow by mid-October.
In just 63 days, the final vote will decide which of them will lead the most powerful nation in the world.
Privately at least, both camps admit that victory is not assured as they begin the eight-week sprint to Election Day. Harris and Trump have been neck and neck in most national polls since President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign.
The Harris team nevertheless released a memo over the weekend in which it portrayed itself as a “clear underdog” in the race.
“There is no easy scenario here,” Harris’ senior adviser David Plouffe said in an interview. “The path to beating Donald Trump, the path to getting 270 electoral votes for Kamala Harris, is extremely hard, but doable. And that’s just the reality.”
Trump, on the other hand, rejects all signs that Harris is ahead, even as he attacks her in deeply personal and at times apocalyptic terms, declaring that “our country will be finished” if she wins.
“After Labor Day, the time begins when voters solidify their minds,” said James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director. “We feel pretty good. We feel motivated. Our people are motivated. But there is certainly still a lot of work to be done.”
The electoral map is based on seven states
Just over a month ago, Trump’s allies suggested that Democratic-leaning states like Minnesota, Virginia or even New Jersey could be in play. Neither side believes that will be the case by Labor Day weekend.
By replacing Biden as the party’s nominee, Harris breathed modern life into the Democrats’ political prospects, particularly in the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. All four states have significant numbers of African-Americans and Latinos, traditionally Democratic voting blocs that opposed Biden nationally but appear to have returned home to support Harris.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was one of the senior Republicans who brokered a peace between Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, whose feud threatened to undermine Republican efforts in the state. Graham told the Associated Press he was concerned about Georgia’s leftward shift.
“Trump was up five or six percentage points, and over the course of a month the competition has become significantly tougher,” he said.
Republican pollster Paul Schumaker, an adviser to North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, said even a slight boost in the black vote could give Harris a lead in North Carolina, pointing to Mecklenberg County, where the Charlotte metropolitan area is located, but also fast-growing counties such as Durham and Wake.
“If Kamala Harris could get Republicans in rural North Carolina to vote in equal numbers, it would be game over for Republicans,” Schumaker said of black voters.
At the same time, Trump remains firmly on the offensive in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the Midwest. These regions form the Democrats’ so-called “blue wall,” which he narrowly won in 2016 and only narrowly lost in 2020.
These seven states – in addition to the swing districts in Nebraska and Maine, each of which will award individual votes in the Electoral College – will receive virtually all of the candidates’ attention and resources over the next eight weeks.
Trump is investing more money in advertising in Pennsylvania than in any other state leading up to Election Day.
A Trump victory in Pennsylvania alone would make it much more arduous for Harris to get the 270 electoral votes she needs to win. Harris’ team insists she has multiple paths to victory.
The Democrats’ organizational advantage
In the battle to televise the election and reach voters in person, the Democrats currently have a decisive advantage.
Harris’ team is on track to spend more on television advertising than Trump’s camp over the next two months, by a ratio of 2:1. And even before Biden made way for Harris, Democrats had superior campaign infrastructure in key states.
Harris’ team, which includes her campaign and an allied super PAC, has more than $280 million worth of television and radio reservations for the period between Tuesday and Election Day, according to media monitoring firm AdImpact. Trump’s team, by contrast, has $133 million reserved for the final stretch, though that number is expected to rise.
Trump’s side is actually spending slightly more on advertising in Pennsylvania than Harris’s. According to AdImpact, both sides will spend more than $146 million between Tuesday and Election Day, a figure that dwarfs all other states. Georgia is spending nearly $80 million on advertising in the final eight weeks of the campaign.
But in the other five swing states, Harris has the airwaves largely to herself – at least for now.
Trump and his allied Super PACs have so far made only marginal ad reservations in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Nevada. Harris’ team, on the other hand, is investing no less than $21 million in each of the five states, according to an analysis by AdImpact.
Harris’ team also has more than 300 offices and 2,000 staffers on the ground in swing states, according to a memo from her campaign over the weekend. Trump’s campaign has only a few dozen of its own offices and instead relies on less experienced outside groups to ensure its supporters are present on Election Day.
Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director, denies that Democrats have as substantial an organizational advantage as those numbers suggest. The outside allies who will support Trump are well-funded, including a modern initiative backed by billionaire Elon Musk.
This is what the polls say
In the seven most essential swing states, both candidates are neck and neck. Democratic pollster John Anzalone said Harris has “brought the Democrats back into the race so that it is now just a neck and neck race.”
But now comes the arduous part, said Anzalone.
“After Labor Day, when the bell rings, there’s a battle for a small universe of – call them whatever you want: conviction voters, swing voters, independent voters – and it’s pretty small, and each side gets a billion dollars for that,” Anzalone said.
According to an AP-NORC poll conducted in August, many independents appear to be dissatisfied with both candidates.
Currently, Harris also has a slight lead among independents on some key metrics, while she and Trump are roughly tied on others.
For example, about three in ten independents say “honest” describes Harris better, while about two in ten say it describes Trump better. About three in ten also say “committed to democracy” describes Harris better, while fewer than two in ten say it describes Trump better.
Independents believed the candidates could win the election, could handle a crisis, and could “take care of people like you,” and that they were about equally likely to win.
Who is the “candidate for change”?
The election could ultimately be decided by which candidate can most successfully portray themselves as the “candidate of change,” since around seven in 10 voters believe the country is moving in the wrong direction, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in tardy July after Biden dropped out of the race.
Trump was the face of change when he won the 2016 election. And even after serving four years in the White House, he continues to inspire millions of frustrated voters who embrace his brash leadership style and refusal to follow the established rules of politics.
Harris has been Biden’s vice president for nearly four years, but the historic nature of her candidacy – she would be the first female president – allows her to make a compelling case that she represents a modern direction for the country, said veteran Democratic strategist James Carville.
Nevertheless, he is concerned about his party’s “significant performance” in the last elections in the so-called “Blue Wall” states.
“I’m going to feel good after the election,” Carville said. “Let’s get the hay in the barn. There’s still plenty of hay out there in the field.”
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Peoples reported from New York and Thomson-DeVeaux from Washington. Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
