As Presidential Election Enters Final 60 Days, Both Campaigns Hit Overdrive

Former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Asheville, N.C., on Aug. 14, 2024; Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nev., on Aug. 10, 2024. Grant Baldwin/Getty Images; Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images

An election filled with plot twists is entering its final 60 days as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain locked in a dead-heat race.

Much is on the line as both campaigns lean into the final two months of a historic election cycle, with a much anticipated Sept. 10 debate on ABC, the beginning of early voting in many states, and Trump’s scheduled sentencing in New York looming in the background.

Both candidates have recently expressed a keen awareness of what’s at stake in the remaining weeks. Harris, speaking in New Hampshire on Sept. 4, reiterated how she sees herself as an underdog against the former president.

“New Hampshire, we have 62 days to go. ... I’m going to tell you what you already know. This race is going to be tight until the very end. So please, let’s not pay too much attention to the polls, because we are running as the underdog,” Harris said.

The Trump campaign cited statistician and election analyst Nate Silver’s recent model showing Trump with a slight edge over Harris in Electoral College winning odds and suggested that the former president has the momentum to win in November.

“Three weeks ago, the Democrat’s newly crowned nominee—Kamala Harris—was leading in Nate Silver’s Electoral College modeling. The forecast has since inversed in President Trump’s favor,” the campaign wrote in a statement.

While Harris’s numbers increasingly trended upward after she launched her campaign, recent national and battleground state polling suggests the race is a nail-biter as the candidates remain neck and neck. Harris leads Trump in many Michigan and Wisconsin polls, but the two remain tied in other states, even as some polls show either candidate ahead of the other within the margin of error.

National and Statewide Polling Trends

Harris is ahead by 3.1 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average and leading Trump by 4 percent in recent Outward Intelligence and Emerson College polls, while remaining tied in others.

The race is even closer in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina, with most remaining toss-ups.

In Michigan, Harris was leading by 5 percent in a Sept. 4 CNN/SSRS poll, with Trump up 1 point in a Sept. 3 Glengariff Group poll. Harris holds a 6-point lead in CNN/SSRS’s Wisconsin poll, but trails Trump by 1 percent in an Emerson College poll.

Trump has regained a slight 0.3 percent in Arizona’s polling average after Harris climbed ahead in early August.

In past elections, Republicans have seen hopeful numbers in Nevada ahead of Election Day before losing to Democrats. Harris has pushed ahead in most polls there since mid-August.

In 2020, Biden squeaked by with an unexpected victory in Georgia. Harris is looking to repeat this win, now seeing a slight 1- to 2-point advantage in many recent statewide polls after Trump seemed likely to clinch the Peach State just weeks ago.

Trump, however, leads in many recent North Carolina polls after Harris slashed his margins last month.

Pennsylvania is considered a critical battleground with its coveted prize of 19 electoral votes. Part of the Democrat-leaning “Blue Wall,” Trump won the Keystone State by less than 1 percent in 2016. Four years later, President Joe Biden won it by a similar margin—1.17 percent.

Recent polling in the commonwealth shows neither candidate with an edge over the other outside the statistical margin of error. Some Pennsylvania polls show each candidate up by 1 or 2 percent, while CNN/SSRS and Wick have them tied.

Bill McInturff, the co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the importance of Pennsylvania in a Sept. 4 roundtable discussion with the American Enterprise Institute.

“I think the race is sort of a Pennsylvania race,” McInturff said. “Democrats had a 10-point registration advantage over Republicans. In 2020, it was about 7.5 percent, now it’s 4.8 percent. … Republicans have shifted, and the registration margin is half of the Democratic advantage it used to be,” McInturff said.

McInturff said it would be difficult for Harris to win over voters in places like Scranton and western Pennsylvania after endorsing a ban on fracking in 2019 and walking that position back just a year later.

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Stirewalt called Pennsylvania the “mother of all swing states” and said the state falls in the middle of partisanship among all battlegrounds, making it most likely to swing toward either party.

Race for the Electoral College

Looking at the Electoral College, Harris could lose Pennsylvania, Arizona, and North Carolina and still win the election if she holds onto Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Trump, however, could lose all of the battlegrounds besides Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina and still win the Electoral College. The Trump campaign has sent both the former president and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), to Pennsylvania repeatedly in the past two months, highlighting its significance to Trump’s success.

Harris has also visited the Keystone State since becoming the new Democrat candidate on July 21, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is conducting a “barnstorm” across the state this week.

Stirewalt discussed another Trump path to victory: turning Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania red, “because they move in a [similar] direction.”

However, Stirewalt forecasts a similar win for Harris if the vice president wins Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina.

Joining the Sept. 4 roundtable, Cook Political Report publisher and editor-in-chief Amy Walter said the remaining 60 days of the election are critical for both candidates, but for different reasons.

“[Now] voters are finally going to be engaged with candidates, especially one candidate who they don’t know particularly well, and that’s Kamala Harris, and so the ability for her to basically make her case effectively is the question for the next … 60 days we have left,” Walter said.

“The question for Trump is whether he can undermine that. Opinions of Donald Trump aren’t going to change between now and the election. Opinions of Kamala Harris can change between now and the election. And that, to me, is going to impact not just who wins the presidential election, but the kinds of people who fundamentally show up to vote in those key swing states,” she said.

That factor makes the Sept. 10 debate so critical for both candidates, as between 11 and 15 percent of likely voters in six of the seven battleground states indicated they might change their mind before Election Day, according to the CNN/SSRS poll. Harris and Trump have now agreed to the terms set by ABC, which includes muted microphones while the other candidate speaks—a provision the Harris campaign previously opposed.

Another potential wild card on the horizon is Trump’s sentencing in his Manhattan criminal trial.

The date is currently set for Sept. 18, but the former president’s attorneys are urging the courts to postpone it until after the election. Their push to move the case to federal court was rejected by Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Sept. 3, and Trump has appealed that decision.

Robert Y. Shapiro, a political science professor from Columbia University, said that in the remaining 60 days of the election, “Trump’s campaign has to emphasize that he is a better choice over the poor performance of the Biden administration and that the election is a referendum on that.”

“Harris and the Democrats need to focus on whatever her positions are that make her stand out from Biden on the positive side, and they need to focus on making sure the enthusiasm the Democrats have leads to new voters and her other supporters actually voting on Election Day or earlier,” Shapiro told The Epoch Times.

Tom Ozimek and Sam Dorman contributed to this report.