What to watch in the final weekend of the 2024 presidential campaign

The 2024 presidential contest heads into its final weekend, with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a slim contest.

At this late stage of the campaign, every day counts. And while few voters might change their minds this late in a typical election, there is a sense that what happens in the final days could swing votes.

Harris and Trump are criss-crossing the country to rally voters in the states that matter most. They try – with varying degrees of success – to stay focused on a clear and concise closing message. At the same time, each side is investing massive resources to increase turnout for the final early voting period. And in these critical days, the flow of disinformation is intensifying.

Here’s what we’re watching in the final weekend before Election Day, which is Tuesday:

Where will Harris and Trump be?

You only have to look at the candidates’ schedules this weekend to know where this election is likely to be decided.

Note that schedules can and likely will change without warning. But on Saturday, Trump is expected to make separate appearances in North Carolina, with an eyebrow-raising stop in Virginia in between.

No Democratic presidential candidate has carried North Carolina since Barack Obama in 2008, though it has been decided by less than 3 points in every election since. Trump’s decision to spend Saturday there suggests Harris has a real opportunity in the state. But Trump is also trying to convey confidence by stopping in Virginia, a state that has been safely in the Democratic column since 2008.

There is perhaps no more important swing state than Pennsylvania, where Trump is expected to campaign on Sunday. But she has another appearance scheduled for North Carolina in addition to Georgia, another Southern state that has tilted Republican for nearly three decades — that is, until Joe Biden carried her by less than half a percentage point in four years ago.

Harris, meanwhile, is expected to campaign in North Carolina and Georgia on Saturday, in a sign that her team senses a real opportunity in the South. She plans to make several stops in Michigan on Sunday, moving into a Democratic-leaning state in the so-called Blue Wall, where her allies believe she is vulnerable.

Do they stay on message?

Trump’s campaign wants voters to focus on one key question as they prepare to vote, and it’s the same question they open every rally with: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

Harris’ team wants voters to think differently: Do they trust Trump or Harris to put the nation’s interests above their own?

Whichever candidate can most effectively keep voters focused on their bottom line in the coming days may ultimately win the presidency. However, both candidates are off to a challenging start.

Trump opens the weekend still dealing with the fallout from his recent rally in New York, where a comedian described Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of garbage.” Things got tough for Trump late Thursday after he raised the prospect of the shooting death of Republican rival Liz Cheney.

It was exactly the kind of inflammatory commentary his allies want to avoid at this critical time.

Meanwhile, Harris’ campaign is still working to steer the conversation away from President Biden’s comments earlier in the week, which described Trump supporters as “garbage.” The Associated Press reported late Thursday that White House press officials had altered the official transcript of the call in question, drawing objections from federal workers who document such remarks for posterity.

The spotlight of presidential politics is always burning brightly. But it will burn brightest, perhaps, in this final weekend, leaving campaigns with virtually no margin for error. In what both sides feel is a real toss-up, any missteps in the final hours could prove decisive.

How will the gender gap evolve?

Trump’s graphic attack on Cheney was particularly galling given his allies’ heightened concerns about voters.

Polls show a significant gender gap in the contest, with Harris generally having a much better approval rating among women than Trump. Part of that may be the result of the GOP’s fight to curtail abortion rights, which has been disastrous for Trump’s party. But Trump’s divisive leadership has also alienated women.

Over the weekend, Trump allies, including conservative brand Charlie Kirk, warned that far more women than men appeared to be voting early. While it’s impossible to know who they’re voting for, Kirk clearly thinks it’s bad news for Trump.

Trump is not helping his cause. A day before his violent rhetoric about Cheney, the former Republican president made waves by insisting he would protect women whether they “like it or not.”

Harris, who would be the nation’s first female president, said Trump does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”

It remains to be seen whether the Democrat’s case can prevail this busy weekend. But Harris’ team believes there is still a significant portion of persuasive voters. And they say the undecideds are disproportionately Republican-leaning suburban women.

What happens to early voting?

More than 66 million people have already voted in the 2024 election, which is more than a third of the total number of people who voted in 2020.

That includes far more Republicans than four years ago, largely because Trump rejected his insistence that his supporters vote in person on Election Day.

And while in-person early voting has ended in many states, there will be a huge push for early voting in the final hours in at least three key states as campaigns work to rack up as many votes as possible before Election Day.

That includes Michigan, where in-person early voting runs through Monday. Wisconsin voters can vote early in person through Sunday, though it varies by location. And in North Carolina, voters have until 3 p.m. Saturday to vote early in person.

The early voting period officially ended Friday in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, questions remain about the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation, which relies heavily on well-funded and inexperienced outside groups — including a group funded largely by billionaire Elon Musk, which faces us questions about its practices.

Harris’s campaign, by contrast, runs a more traditional get-out-the-vote operation that includes more than 2,500 paid staffers and 357 offices in battleground states alone.

Will misinformation intensify?

Trump’s allies appear to be ramping up baseless claims of voter fraud, some amplified by Trump himself. He has spent months sowing doubt about the integrity of the 2024 election should he lose — just as he did four years ago.

His baseless accusations are becoming more specific in some cases as the wild claims begin to appear on social media.

Earlier this week, Trump claimed on social media that York County, Pennsylvania “received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail-in Vote Requests from a third-party group.” He also pointed to Lancaster County, which he claimed was “caught with 2,600 fake ballots and forms, all written by the same person. Very bad “stuff”.

Trump was referring to investigations into potential voter registration fraud. Application discovery and investigation provides evidence that the system is working as it should.

The Republican nominee also raised baseless claims about overseas ballots and non-citizen voting and suggested, without evidence, that Harris might have access to some kind of secret insider information about election results .

Expect such claims to increase, especially on social media, in the coming days. And remember that a broad coalition of top government and industry officials, many of them Republicans, found the 2020 election to be the ‘safest’ in American history.”

AP writers Jill Colvin and Michelle Price in New York; and Washington’s Zeke Miller and Will Weissert contributed.