With just a week remaining in the US presidential election, the Republican and Democratic contenders for the White House enter the final stages of their presidential campaigns, appealing to their targeted voters to vote on November 5 and showcase support for their favourite candidates.
As the early voters who have cast their votes in anticipation consist of more than 41 million Americans, the tight contest within American politics further intensifies with time.
The White House officially announced that President Joe Biden will join the voters in casting his vote on the election day.
On the campaign trail, both candidates return to key battleground states, with Democrat Kamala Harris heading to Michigan, where she faces opposition from Arab Americans outraged over US support for Israel.
Republican Donald Trump, 78, will head to Georgia, where he will address a gathering of pastors and faith leaders before holding a rally.
The trips come after Harris, 60, spent Sunday going neighbourhood to neighbourhood in Philadelphia, in must-win Pennsylvania, with stops at a Black church and Puerto Rican restaurant.
“The election is here, and the choice, Philly, is truly in your hands,” the Democrat said, in her 14th trip to the state since Biden dropped out of the race in July.
Former president Trump packed a crowd into New York’s famed Madison Square Garden arena on Sunday, where, stoking tensions on immigration, speakers made crude remarks about Latinos and adviser Stephen Miller declared “America is for Americans, and Americans only.”
While Trump accused Harris of having “destroyed the country,” his speech was in some ways overshadowed by his openers, including a comedian who called the US territory of Puerto Rico “literally a floating island of garbage.”
Firing up the base
Trump and Harris have both pushed hard to bring out their voter bases, with Trump aiming to fire up evangelicals.
As Harris campaigns on abortion rights as central to her message, Trump has taken to extremes to paint her as “radical,” falsely claiming she is in favour of “execution after birth.”
In Georgia, one of the seven swing states that will decide the election, Trump himself not particularly religious, has enraptured conservative Christian voters, having appointed three Supreme Court justices in his previous term who went on to overturn the national right to abortion.
Harris has warned that Trump “wants to take America back to the 1800s” on the issue as she tries to appeal to women as well as more moderate Republicans.
But the vice president has run into problems with the Democrats’ traditionally more multiracial, multi-faith base as civilian casualties continue to mount in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
While Harris has at times been more critical of Israel than Biden, her boss, she has also ruled out any major changes in US support for Israel, including an arms embargo.
That could spell trouble in Michigan, another key swing state and home to large numbers of Muslim and Arab American voters who have declared they will not vote for the Democrat.
