US election campaigns head into the homestretch

The US presidential election is just over three weeks away – and it’s a close race. According to the 538 election model, Harris is currently projected to win 53 out of 100 times in its simulations compared to Trump’s 47 victories – and in a tiny fraction of the simulations, there is no electoral college winner, the ultimate chaos scenario.

As election day nears, both parties are throwing everything they have into the final stretch of the campaign. For Kamala Harris and the Democrats, that includes a war chest of more than $1 billion that she’s brought in since she rose to the top of the ticket, an amount and pace observers say is likely record-breaking. The Trump campaign, by comparison, has raised roughly $850 million this whole year.

But amid concerns that the initial bump in momentum may be fading, the Harris campaign has undertaken a media blitz, including a series of interviews this week on “60 Minutes,” “The Howard Stern Show,” and the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast. Whether it’s landed well is an open question. She has been criticized for not answering questions directly. The critiques come weeks after the Democratic contender was under fire for not doing any interviews at all.

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, had about $135 million left to spend at the end of August per FEC filings, but Trump is doing more on-the-ground legwork – notching 21 public campaign events in September alone, nearly twice the 13 that Harris and her running mate Tim Walz have done, combined.

The Trump campaign is also deploying a new get-out-the-vote model focused on people less likely to show up at the polls but who are leaning right — and it’s betting big on this approach, particularly in battleground states. Trump’s homestretch strategy has focused on attracting the votes of young men, as well as shoring up small but growing support from Black male voters. The MAGA campaign’s latest headache, however, was a new book by journalist Bob Woodward that claims Trump has kept in touch with Vladimir Putinsince leaving office, and that he sent the Russian president COVID-19 tests at the height of the pandemic when ordinary Americans were struggling to find tests.

Trump and the campaign deny the claims, but no campaign wants to be spending the dying days of the race fending off criticism of what a candidate says – or, in Harris’ case, doesn’t say.