Harris, Trump scrap for undecided voters

For Donald Trump, the closing 15 days of the presidential campaign will see a frenetic blitz of splashy events and unconventional media appearances designed to reach voters who might not normally tune into politics.

Kamala Harris, for her part, is zeroing in on defending the Democrats’ “Blue Wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with new targeted messaging aimed at the few remaining persuadable voters who could make or break the 2024 election. She’ll hit all three states on Monday, part of a series of events in critical suburban counties.

The approaches underscore the fundamental differences between the candidates — a Republican whose decade-long grip on the nation’s politics has been fueled by his mastery of spectacle and the press, and a Democrat whose rapid trajectory has been underpinned by her deliberate and methodical approach - but also a shared underlying reality: that the 2024 election appears as close as any in the nation’s history.

Campaign officials and political operatives are anticipating a jump-ball election, decided at the margins in seven battleground states by whichever candidate can turn out the most supporters and infrequent voters.

The final two weeks will highlight Trump’s efforts to lock down the votes of young men, Black men and Latinos — his campaign’s strategy dating back to the Republican primary.

Harris will spend her time trying to shore up her support among suburban women, Black voters and with moderate Republicans, who traditionally have been turned off by Trump’s record and rhetoric.

“The races come down to a point or less in our states and so, of course, the polls are going to show that it’s a point or less. That’s just how it is,” said Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

Shapiro, along with Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin’s Tony Evers - all Democratic governors in the critical Blue Wall - barnstormed the states in a bus tour over the past week. In interviews, all expressed optimism to some degree for Harris: Shapiro said flatly Harris would win his state, Evers said he feels “confident” in his and Whitmer said she’d rather play Harris’ hand than Trump’s in Michigan.

Still, the Harris campaign feels a real sense of urgency as her post-presidential debate polling bump has evaporated. Former House Republican Denver Riggleman, who appeared with Harris last week at an event urging anti-Trump Republicans to back the Democrat, called the race a “dead heat.”

“I don’t think there’s really a lot of undecideds; I think it’s individuals who don’t want to vote for Trump but they haven’t decided to vote for Kamala Harris,” he said.

Voter persuasion

Harris’ campaign has ratcheted up voter persuasion efforts in the past two weeks. Her events Monday will be moderated by former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney and conservative media figures Sarah Longwell and Charlie Sykes, following her interview last week with Fox News.

On Tuesday, former President Barack Obama will hold a rally on her behalf in Wisconsin. On Wednesday, Harris will participate in a CNN town hall taped in suburban Philadelphia.

The governors’ bus tour wound its way on Friday to western Michigan, a bastion of moderate Republican voters that produced former President Gerald Ford.

“It’s pragmatic,” Whitmer said of Harris’ Blue Wall blitz. “The more time she can spend here, the better.”

Public polls have indicated some backsliding for Harris in some key states, particularly in the Blue Wall. But her team bristles at the suggestion and instead sees toss-up races with Harris inching upward across all seven battlegrounds, three campaign officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal polling.

Republicans smell vulnerability, seeing opportunity for Trump but with candidates for the House and Senate, too. The Senate Leadership Fund set aside $10 million in spending last week for the Michigan Senate race.

“Clearly, Kamala Harris had this honeymoon right after they got Biden out, it seemed like it was great relief to the Democrats,” said Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who is running unopposed to serve as Republican whip. “But I think people have now gotten back to, oh yeah, same old Kamala. Nothing’s changed.”

Harris, sensing the weight of the moment, has been asking staff where they should be traveling, whether she should be doing more and if she’s maximizing her time, according to one aide. She has also stepped up attacks on Trump, increasingly needling the former president about his age and behavior.

“There is anger among Democrats about how Trump is still hanging on. I don’t get how 46% of voters are still supporting him,” said Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster. “People understand that it is hard to elect a woman, hard to elect a woman of color and hard to get elected in two months, but the anger and frustration is that he is still holding on.”

Trump momentum

Trump’s allies and advisers want the former president to focus in on the economy, inflation and immigration, where polls show he consistently holds an advantage with voters. He’s expected to highlight those themes at events designed to draw widespread media coverage and national attention, including a rally Sunday at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The event at an iconic venue in a heavily Democratic city will position Trump as a “president for all Americans” and introduce “the closing framing of this race, the choice between the two campaigns,” his campaign spokesman Jason Miller told reporters. “Madison Square Garden, that’s the center of the universe.”

The Trump team’s strategy is to pick off a few percentage points of Latino voters, Black men, Jewish people — all of whom historically have sided more with the Democratic ticket.

Yet Trump often veers into tangents about the outcome of the 2020 election — which he lost — or CEOs who have recently called him and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. That risks hurting his message as he tries to expand his coalition beyond his fervent base.

“At this point, Trump is such a ubiquitous brand. People have formed opinions for, or against him,” said Marc Short, who served as Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff. “To persuade people who are not for him, he needs to focus on the issues in his favor like the border and the economy.”

Still, Trump benefits from broad dissatisfaction with the state of the economy and concern about the nation’s trajectory — as well as structural advantages in the Electoral College.

“In some ways, the race has had a profound change with Harris getting in,” said Doug Sosnik, who served as the White House political director under President Bill Clinton. “But in other ways, nothing has changed.”