PHILADELPHIA/DULUTH, Georgia--With millions of U.S. voters already heading to the polls, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Wednesday sought support from undecided voters at a televised town hall in battleground Pennsylvania, while Republican Donald Trump swept through Georgia.
Nearly 25 million voters have cast ballots, either through in-person early voting or mail-in ballots, according to tracking data from the Election Lab at the University of Florida. Several states, including the battlegrounds of North Carolina and Georgia, set records on their respective first day of early voting last week. "The votes in Georgia are at record levels," Trump told a religious-themed "ballots and believers" event in Zebulon, Georgia. "The votes in every state, frankly, are at record levels. We're doing really well and hopefully we can fix our country." The robust early turnout comes as Vice President Harris and former President Trump remain neck and neck in the seven most competitive states with less than two weeks to go until the Nov. 5 election.
Pennsylvania and Georgia are among the seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency, and both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns visiting them. Trump in recent days has sought to rally turnout from Christian evangelicals, hoping they will set aside any concerns about his frequent off-colour commentary like his tale about Arnold Palmer's anatomy.
Trump, who made campaign rallies a staple of his political career starting back in 2015, said in Zebulon that "in many ways it's sad" that his time as a political candidate is coming to a close. If he wins on Nov. 5, he would serve his second and final term. "We've been doing this for nine years, and it's down to 12 days," he said. After Zebulon, Trump was speaking in Duluth, Georgia, for a rally with former Fox News star Tucker Carlson and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Also present was country music star Jason Aldean, who encouraged attendees to vote early, a message that Trump is slowly embracing after denouncing the practice for years. Harris was set to participate in a CNN town hall in Chester Township, Pennsylvania, an attempt to persuade the dwindling number of undecided voters to support her and help turn the tide in a closely divided race where even a small percentage of votes could be critical.
On Wednesday, she seized on comments by Trump's former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times that the former president met the "general definition of fascist" and admired dictators. Harris, who has argued that Trump is a threat to U.S. democracy, called Trump's remarks as quoted by Kelly "deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous." Trump's campaign has denied Kelly's account, calling them "debunked stories."
The vice president tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News. Harris held a marginal 46% to 43% lead nationally over the former president in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
