Elon Musk leaps on stage with Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, during a campaign rally on Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain locked in a tight race according to public polling, both campaigns projected confidence Thursday.
With the election just five days away, the Democratic and GOP presidential candidates are making their final pitches to voters and zooming in on swing states — with neither showing a measurable advantage in the polls.
A senior Harris campaign official said Thursday on a call with reporters that they “feel very good about what we’re seeing.” And the Trump campaign sent reporters a memo showing Trump with polling leads in five of seven swing states, based on Real Clear Politics polling averages.
The Trump memo, written by pollster Tony Fabrizio, showed Trump with slim leads in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada and larger advantages in Arizona and Georgia.
More than 63.6 million early votes were documented as of Thursday evening, according to the University of Florida Election Lab’s early voting tracker. Across the states that have data on party registration, Democrats remained ahead with more than 12 million voters registered with that party, compared to more than 11.2 million Republicans and more than 7.8 million registered with another party or no party.
Senior Harris campaign officials suggested that Trump is “clearly worried” about losing the race, noting he is “ramping up baseless claims of election fraud and irregularities.”
They referenced a Truth Social post from the former president on Wednesday in which Trump claimed that “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before.”
“REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” Trump wrote.
The former president’s campaign won a lawsuit Wednesday in the Keystone State over claims that voters in Bucks County were turned away when waiting in line to get mail ballots. A judge extended the mail ballot deadline in Bucks County to the close of business on Friday. The statewide deadline was set for Tuesday at 5 p.m.
“Needless to say, Pennsylvania is not cheating,” a senior Harris campaign official said on the call, adding that “a handful of people were allegedly turned away from early voting lines in Bucks County” and “the county responded by agreeing in court to additional days, not just hours, of early voting.”
A senior Harris campaign official said the system is “working just as it should,” referencing three counties in the Keystone State that identified suspicious registrations and declined to process them while also coordinating with law enforcement.
“All of this is cheating only in the mind of someone who wants to claim he was cheated, and it’s yet another example of how Donald Trump tries to sow doubt in our elections and institutions when he’s afraid he can’t win,” the official said.
Elon Musk’s voter sweepstakes
Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania judge on Thursday placed a lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and his America PAC on hold while the fate of a federal court action in the matter is up in the air.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner sued Musk and his super PAC earlier this week over allegations that the Trump ally’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes constitutes an illegal lottery.
Musk’s lawyers argued Wednesday that the state court was not the proper venue for the lawsuit and filed to move the case to a federal court.
Although the world’s richest man was ordered to appear at Thursday’s hearing, he did not show up.
Many voters feeling anxiety, frustration over campaign
Roughly 7 in 10 Americans feel frustrated or anxious about the 2024 presidential campaign, while a little more than one-third feel excited, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday.
Nearly 80% of Democrats feel anxious about the race, compared to nearly two-thirds of Republicans and about half of independents, per the poll.
Americans’ feelings about the 2024 presidential campaign are similar to 2020, when, according to the same pollsters, 3 in 10 felt excited, nearly 7 in 10 were frustrated and almost two-thirds said they felt anxious.
Coming from the Harris, Trump campaigns
Harris is set to hold a campaign event in the Appleton area of Wisconsin on Friday and a rally and concert in Milwaukee later in the day.
The veep’s running mate, Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, is slated to campaign in Nevada and Arizona over the weekend.
Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, is scheduled to hold rallies Friday in Portage, Michigan, and Selma, North Carolina.
Trump is set to hold Friday rallies in Warren, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Harris campaign said Thursday it will host its election night at Howard University in Washington, D.C. — the vice president’s alma mater.