‘they are fighting for inches’

At a Harris Teeter supermarket in Mint Hill, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, shoppers were split this week on how they planned to vote in November’s US presidential election.

Kaitlyn Lackey, a 26-year-old teacher, says she supports the Democratic candidate, vice-president Kamala Harris.

“When I watched the debate a few weeks ago, I thought he was absolutely crazy,” says Lackey. “I’m ready to get rid of Donald Trump, you know?”

But Shane Hartis, 50, who works for a local accountant, is an ardent backer of the former Republican president, who had just held a campaign event at a manufacturing plant down the road. She looks back nostalgically at his days in the White House.

“Trump is not asking for anything other than to make us a great nation again, and that’s what I feel he did,” Hartis says. “In four years, they’ve ruined it.”

Lackey and Hartis are just two of the millions of voters who will cast ballots in North Carolina this November. But their sharply diverging views demonstrate the immovable dividing lines that run through the US electorate.

With just over a month to go until polling day, the election is as close as it possibly could be.

North Carolina is one of seven swing states that forecasters say will determine the outcome of November’s election thanks to the quirks of the US Electoral College system. Yet despite a tumultuous summer that saw a disastrous debate performance by President Joe Biden, an assassination attempt on Trump, and Biden’s decision to pass the torch to Harris, the opinion polls appear locked in a virtual tie.

After an initial surge of support for Harris, the latest Financial Times poll tracker shows her leading Trump nationwide by just three percentage points. She is ahead in four of the key swing states — Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — but only by razor-thin margins.

At the same time, Trump is ahead in the other critical battlegrounds — Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina — also by a whisker. Nearly all major polls show the difference between the two candidates’ levels of support is within the margin of error.

“Harris can win any of the seven swing states. Trump can win any of the seven swing states,” says Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “It is essentially a tied race right now.”

Given the polarised nature of the US electorate, Ayres cautions that there may be little either candidate can do between now and November to pull ahead.

“The last debate didn’t move the needle substantially, even though the overwhelming view was that Kamala Harris did better,” Ayres says, in reference to this month’s presidential debate, when more than 60mn Americans watched as the vice-president repeatedly unnerved Trump, putting him on the defensive.

“But we are not talking about having to move the needle substantially,” Ayres adds. “All we are talking about is having to move a few thousand voters in each of the seven states.”

While both campaigns seek to convey confidence heading into the final stretch, few partisans dispute the election is likely to be close.

We are not talking about having to move the needle substantially . . . [only] a few thousand voters in each of the seven swing states

“We had a great [Democratic national] convention. Harris had a great debate. But the race is going to remain what it is,” says Democratic consultant Mike Lux. “Trump has a very solid base that is sticking with him. We have a very solid base that is sticking with us.”

“Both campaigns are fighting for inches on the Electoral College map,” says Ford O’Connell, a conservative media personality in Trump’s home state of Florida. “We don’t know what it is going to be that tips one ticket over the other at the end of the day.”

“Everybody wants to be able to say she is going to win, or he is going to win,” says a Republican pollster who is close to the Trump campaign. “But it is all up for grabs . . . nobody has a clear advantage by any stretch of the imagination.”

In some ways, a tight race at this stage in a US presidential election cycle is not unusual. The results of the past two contests have come down to the wire in the same handful of swing states. In 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by some 44,000 votes, or less than a percentage point. Four years later, Biden beat Trump in the state by around 80,000 votes, or just over a point.

But previous campaign cycles also had clearer favourites, with Clinton — ultimately wrongly — tipped to win in 2016 and Biden seen as having the edge in 2020. This year, however, a topsy-turvy campaign has served up surprises at every turn.

“When we started this race, people said . . . this is going to be the most boring presidential election we have ever had,” says O’Connell. “We have had more twists and turns in this presidential election than maybe any other election in modern history.”

There is unlikely to be another debate between Harris and Trump that could change the course of the election. While Harris has accepted an invitation from CNN to a second showdown next month, Trump has said he is unwilling to participate.

Still, the vice-president has several advantages heading into the last weeks of her campaign, especially in terms of resources: recent financial disclosures have shown Harris consistently outraising and outspending her opponent.

In filings to the Federal Election Commission last week, the Harris campaign reported raising nearly $190mn in August alone — more than four times the $44.5mn raised by the Trump campaign over the period. When including money from affiliated super Pacs, which can raise unlimited sums to support a candidate, Harris raised $361mn last month, compared to $130mn for Trump.

Trump has a very solid base that is sticking with him. We have a very solid base that is sticking with us

The cash coffers will allow Harris to blanket the airwaves and invest heavily in digital advertising and on-the-ground campaigning in the final stretch. FT analysis of AdImpact data shows the Harris campaign and the Pacs supporting her have already spent over $900mn on television, radio and digital advertising in the year to date, while the Trump campaign and affiliated Pacs have spent just under $500mn.

But the cash advantage has not yet translated into a decisive polling lead. Harris has succeeded in boosting her own approval ratings, which were dismal when she became the candidate, and has consolidated support among key parts of the Democratic party’s base, including young, minority and college-educated voters.

But Democrats acknowledge she still faces an uphill struggle in defining how her presidency might differ from Biden’s, given his unpopularity with the US electorate, particularly when it comes to the economy.

Despite doing more campaign events in recent weeks — including an economy-focused speech on Wednesday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — Harris has also faced criticism for a reluctance to participate in media interviews or unscripted events, leading some allies to call on the vice-president to step out more in the final weeks of the campaign.

“She has to continue to press the case against Trump and make this election really a referendum on him and his horrendous tenure as president,” says Joel Benenson, a Democratic strategist who worked on both Barack Obama’s campaigns and Clinton’s 2016 bid for the White House. He says Harris should be doing more “town hall” style meetings with voters.

“The more you can do things that are unfiltered, where you are talking directly to the people . . . the better it is,” Benenson adds. “She’s strong, she’s confident, she’s honest and she doesn’t spew BS every time she’s on stage, like the other candidate does.”

Trump’s allies insist he has the edge when it comes to the issues voters care about most, namely the high cost of living and an influx of migrants across the US-Mexico border.

But they also privately concede that it can be difficult to keep the former president — who has a tendency to veer away from prepared remarks and launch personal attacks against his opponents — on message.

“Trump is better off when he is not the centre of attention,” says Kyle Kondik, a non-partisan analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “But he loves to be the centre of attention.”

“This has been a campaign of squandered opportunities for Trump,” says Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida who has been critical of the former president.

“It is difficult to understand how someone could survive an assassination attempt, maybe two, and not manage to capitalise on the sympathy and goodwill,” Curbelo added.

Trump has blamed Harris and the Democrats for the repeated threats on his life — including earlier this month, when the US Secret Service stopped a gunman from attempting to shoot Trump on one of his Florida golf courses. He will return to Butler, Pennsylvania — where he narrowly avoided more than a minor injury from another would-be assassin’s bullet over the summer — next week for what is likely to be a triumphant campaign rally.

But concerns remain about both his and Harris’s security and campaign watchers say another threat on either candidate’s life — or a similarly unforeseen seismic event, at home or abroad — could still change the course of this year’s election.

However, others caution that even an “October surprise” could have less impact than might be expected.

“The Access Hollywood tape was a bombshell that felt like it changed the election, and ultimately it didn’t,” says Kondik, referring to the now infamous recording of Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitalia, which came to light just weeks before the 2016 election.

Election veterans are therefore reluctant to make bold predictions — other than that the race is likely to remain too close to call.

“One candidate has circumstances weighing down her competitiveness, trying to overcome the challenge of being in power but needing to project change rather than continuity,” wrote longtime campaign analyst Charlie Cook in a recent memo. “The other candidate seems determined to sabotage his own candidacy, saying things that must have his top campaign pros slapping their foreheads in disbelief. Taken together, it gives us a draw.”