Former President Donald Trump delivered his closing arguments for the election during a rally in Pittsburgh, promising to end foreign wars, revive the economy, and secure the southern border. “Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal, and humiliation after another,” Trump said. “Kamala Harris has delivered soaring prices and economic anguish at home, war and chaos abroad, and a nation-destroying invasion on our southern border like nobody has ever seen before.”
“My message to Americans tonight is simple: we do not have to live this way. We don’t and we won’t. We do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay,” he declared. “With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America, indeed the whole world, to new heights of glory.” Trump went on to claim that voting for Vice President Kamala Harris would yield the opposite results and later recalled the failed assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Just a few months ago, in a beautiful field in Pennsylvania, not far from where we are tonight, an assassin tried to stop our movement,” he said. “But that brush with death did not stop us—it only made us more determined to finish the job that we had only just started. Many people say that God saved me in order to Save America and with your help, we will fulfill that extraordinary mission together,” he vowed. “To every citizen across this land, I am asking for the honor of your vote. As your president, I will fight for you every single day, with every breath in my body.” He added: “Together, we will save this country, we will defeat the corrupt system in Washington, and America’s future will be an incredible one.”
Following the release of a significant New York Times/Siena College poll indicating a tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the paper’s chief political analyst is cautioning liberal Americans to prepare for a potential surprise on Election Day. Trump has historically outperformed polling predictions in both 2016 and 2020, and Nate Cohn of the Times has pointed to a sign that may suggest another unexpected outcome for Democrats.
The survey, which included 7,879 likely voters across seven key battleground states, shows a closely contested race between Harris and Trump. Conducted via phone, the poll reveals Harris holding narrow leads in several states: three points in Nevada, two points each in North Carolina and Wisconsin, and a one-point advantage in Georgia. In Pennsylvania, the candidates are nearly tied, with Harris having a slight edge. Meanwhile, Trump is leading by a razor-thin margin in Michigan and holds a four-point lead in Arizona.
“Four years ago, the polls were thought to underestimate Mr. Trump because of nonresponse bias — in which his supporters were less likely to take surveys than demographically similar Biden supporters,” Cohn wrote in his analysis. “Across these final polls, white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans. It raises the possibility that the polls could underestimate Mr. Trump yet again. We do a lot to account for this, but in the end, there are no guarantees.”
“The pattern is fairly similar across the battlegrounds: Democrats lead in early voting; Republicans lead with what remains, and in each case it’s not by the sweeping margins of four years ago, when the pandemic upended the usual early voting patterns,” Cohn continued. “There is a little bit of a leap of faith here for Democrats: They’re counting on a lot of people to vote on Election Day who didn’t in 2020 or 2022 … Their track records of voting give plenty of reason to think they will do so, but if not, the result will quickly look very different.”