By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will make some of their final election pitches to voters on Wednesday in North Carolina, a swing state with a Democratic governor that has backed Republican presidential hopefuls for over a decade.
North Carolina has 16 Electoral College votes, making it one of the make-or-break battleground states that could decide who wins the Nov. 5 election.
The contest between Harris and Trump is too close to call nationally, and last month’s hurricane damage has made North Carolina’s results especially hard to predict.
On Wednesday, Harris will be in the fast-growing state capital Raleigh, with about 480,000 people, while Trump will hold a rally in Rocky Mount, a city of 50,000 people.
Harris, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican, are battling for a state that Trump won by under 1.5 percentage points in 2020.
Their visits follow Harris’ biggest ever rally, which took place on Tuesday evening in Washington where she warned of the dangers of returning Trump to office. She spoke at the spot near the White House where on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol and to “fight.”
At stake in the election is who will run the world’s richest and most powerful country. Harris and Trump diverge on support for Ukraine and NATO, abortion rights, taxes, basic democratic principles and tariffs that could trigger trade wars.
Talking about trade on Tuesday, Trump explicitly mentioned the European Union. “They’re brutal,” he said. “They sell millions and millions of cars in the United States. No, no, no, they are going to have to pay a big price.”
Meanwhile the Trump campaign late on Tuesday accused President Joe Biden of referring to Trump supporters as “garbage,” after Biden spoke about Trump’s New York rally on Sunday that featured racist and other vulgar remarks made by Trump backers.
According to a transcript posted by a White House spokesperson on X, Biden said: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”
Biden said later he was talking about the language used, not Trump’s fans.
LONG WAIT FOR RESULTS?
Residents in North Carolina, especially in the rural, hard-hit western region, are still trying to put their lives back together after devastating hurricane damage last month.
Many of the counties lean Republican in the region.
While some state officials – including some Republicans – praised federal cleanup efforts, Biden and Harris, his vice president, have been the targets of criticism and false rumors, including ones spread by Trump, over how much aid arrived and how fast it came.
Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, who chairs the hardline House Republican Freedom Caucus, said in an exchange last week that given the destruction caused, the state legislature should preemptively declare that Trump won the state’s 16 Electoral College votes, to avoid “disenfranchised voters.”
The state’s governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, criticized Andy Harris on CNN on Tuesday.
“North Carolina’s electoral votes will be reflected by the votes from the ballot box,” he said. “We want to make sure that everybody… has an opportunity to have their voice heard.”
Trump leads Kamala Harris by just 1 percentage point in North Carolina, according to a polling average by FiveThirtyEight. The last time the state backed a Democratic presidential nominee was Barack Obama in 2008.
If the election is as close as polls suggest, the outcome in North Carolina may remain unclear for a week or more.
Absentee ballots that arrive on Nov. 5, as well as ballots from overseas and military voters, are tallied during the 10-day canvass period that follows Election Day.
In 2020, media outlets did not call North Carolina for Trump until Nov. 13, 10 days after the election.
Over a third of North Carolina’s registered voters have already cast ballots in the 2024 election , according to the state’s board of election.
Later on Wednesday, Harris will travel to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two other states in contention.
Her Madison, Wisconsin rally will feature performances from musicians, including the band ‘Mumford & Sons’. Trump will also be in Wisconsin for a rally with former pro quarterback Brett Favre.
(Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; writing by Costas Pitas; editing by Heather Timmons and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
