(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump and Kamala Harris concluded one of the most tumultuous and dramatic presidential campaigns in modern political history with dueling rallies late Monday, capping a furious final dash through battleground states that will decide the 2024 race.
Their closing arguments mirrored, in tone and in substance, the competing visions they have offered a deeply divided nation. Harris, speaking before a large and boisterous crowd gathered on the steps of Philadelphia’s art museum, declared the nation “ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward.”
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Trump took the stage at a final rally after midnight in Battle Creek, Michigan, and basked in what he said was his final presidential campaign rally. He said every one of his political events “has been incredible” and told supporters they did “not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay.”
Both candidates opted for sentimental choices for their concluding events. For Trump, Battle Creek pays tribute to a political career that has spanned – and dominated – a decade of American politics: he held the final events of his last two presidential campaigns in the same city, as well as a defiant 2019 rally as members of the House of Representatives voted to impeach him for the first time.
For Harris, the setting made famous in the Rocky training montage underscored the “underdog” mentality she’s professed since launching her campaign just over 100 days ago following President Joe Biden’s exit from the race. The site also underscored a symbolic passing of the torch at the center of her effort — Biden launched his 2019 presidential campaign from the same spot.
The marquee events capped a flurry of campaigning on the eve of the election, which saw Harris crisscross Pennsylvania for events in Scranton, Allentown, and Pittsburgh before arriving in Philadelphia. Trump also held a pair of events in the state, along with an early morning stop in North Carolina. Both were buoyed by celebrity endorsements, with Trump earning a late boost with an endorsement by popular comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan while pop star Lady Gaga and talk show icon Oprah Winfrey joined Harris in Philadelphia.
Now, voters will decide. A spate of surveys released over the waning hours of the race show a race deadlocked both nationally and across swing states, with familiar concerns about the economy still weighing heavily on the minds of Americans as they head to the polls.
Trump will be among those voting in person, planning to visit the polling station near his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Harris, who voted by mail, is planning local radio interviews in a last push to drive supporters to cast their ballots.
Here’s everything that happened on the last day on the campaign trail:
Dixville Notch
The first votes of the 2024 campaign were counted in Dixville Notch, the small New Hampshire township that has garnered international attention with its tradition of midnight voting.
Appropriately enough for an election that has been deadlocked for months, the results were a tie. Both Harris and Trump notched three votes apiece in the town, with six total votes cast.
The results could be read as a positive sign for Harris, with CNN reporting that the community has four Republicans and two unaffiliated voters. But Dixville Notch voted 6-0 for Trump opponent Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary, and 5-0 for Biden in 2020.
Former US Senator Kelly Ayotte, who is running for the state’s governor, won five votes in her race against Democrat Joyce Craig. But Maggie Goodlander, the Democratic congressional candidate - and wife of Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser - took four of the six votes in her race against Republican Lily Tang Williams.
Rogan Endorsement
Rogan announced that he was endorsing Trump on Monday night after recording a podcast with Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become one of Trump’s biggest boosters.
“He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way,” Rogan said. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”
Rogan, widely considered the most popular podcaster in the world — boasting 17.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 15.7 million on Spotify — hosted both Trump and his vice presidential candidate JD Vance on his show in recent weeks. While both conversations were warm, the comedian had previously stopped short of an explicit endorsement.
Trump acknowledged Rogan’s caché at his rally in Pittsburgh. The former president’s campaign has focused its efforts on turning out the male and politically independent audience most likely to listen to Rogan.
“It just came over the wires that Joe Rogan just endorsed me. Thank you Joe,” he said. “That’s so nice and he doesn’t do that,” he added, saying that Rogan “tends to be a little bit more liberal than some of the people in this room.”
Musk, meanwhile, had planned to host a virtual town hall on Monday, but ran into technical problems after arriving 22 minutes late to his event. A moderator called on four people who were queued to ask a question, but none of them responded, prompting the moderator to ask Musk if Republicans will win on Tuesday.
“I think if people vote tomorrow, we’re definitely going to win,” Musk said. “You know, I think, let’s, let’s cancel this, given there are some technical challenges, and I will revert to just doing an X spaces call.”
Musk encountered difficulties in previous events he has hosted on X, including the Republican presidential primary campaign launch of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and an interview the billionaire conducted with Trump earlier this year.
‘Ours to Lose’
“I hate the expression, actually, but it’s ours to lose,” Trump told supporters at his first campaign stop of the day in Raleigh, urging them to head to the ballot box.
North Carolina is a state Trump won in both of his two prior White House campaigns, albeit narrowly over Biden in 2020, making it a top target for Democrats. Trump’s appearance there suggested his campaign may see the state in need of fortifying, though he claimed to be unconcerned about the outcome.
“North Carolina’s reliable for me, I mean I’ve never lost, and I don’t think we’re going to start now,” Trump said.
A New York Times/Siena poll published on Sunday found Harris narrowly ahead of Trump in the state, leading among likely voters by 48% to 46%.
Puerto Rican Outreach
Harris has made a deliberate choice to stop mentioning Trump by name during her closing rallies, but she made clear reference to one of his most prominent campaign controversies while on the stump Monday in Allentown.
The Lehigh Valley northwest of Philadelphia is home to a growing Hispanic population, including a substantial Puerto Rican community — a group the Harris campaign believes could break for the vice president, particularly after a comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally last month labeled the territory a “floating island of garbage.”
Harris on Monday went out of her way to thank Puerto Rican leaders who were in attendance.
“I stand here proud of my longstanding commitment to Puerto Rico and her people and I will be a president for all Americans,” she said.
Later, Harris went to Old San Juan Café, a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading, where she chatted with customers, shook hands and ordered dishes including roast pork, cassava and plantains to go. She was accompanied by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
‘Incredibly Close’
Harris campaign aides on a call with reporters stressed that the election outcome may not be known for days as states finish tallying their votes.
“We believe this race is going to be incredibly close. We may not know the results of this election for several days,” Harris campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said.
O’Malley Dillon stressed that the campaign expects to see new votes being reported for days. While near-complete results from North Carolina, Georgia and northern Michigan are likely by the end of election night, tallies from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will be expected to trickle in through Wednesday.
Harris’ campaign has warned that Trump may try to prematurely declare victory or allege, without evidence, that battlegrounds that are still counting votes are engaged in fraud. The Republican nominee at a rally over the weekend suggested the results might “take weeks,” claiming that Democrats would use the period to steal the election.
Read: Expected Delays Prompt Worry Over Trump Declaring Premature Win
Crowd Size
Trump has fixated on crowd sizes throughout his political career — including, most famously, at his inauguration — and spent his rally in Pittsburgh repeatedly insisting that he continued to draw large and engaged audiences.
“I always like to say, when I come to the arenas, how many times could we have sold it out?” Trump said.
Trump went on to criticize Harris for having musical artists like Beyoncé Knowles Carter speak but not perform at her events. The remarks may have been a response to an article Monday in the New York Times chronicling a a discernible uptick in empty seats at Trump rallies over the past week or so.
The empty seats were evident at recent rallies in Atlanta; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Greensboro, North Carolina; Henderson, Nevada; and Raleigh, North Carolina, with attendance dwindling as the former president repeatedly showed up late and offered hours-long remarks.
But Trump has filled large arenas in New York and Milwaukee, and his event Monday night at the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins was well-attended. Harris has used the topic to her political advantage, needling Trump over crowd sizes during the candidates’ only debate.
‘Trash’
The “garbage” controversy that hung over the campaign’s final days took one final turn Monday night.
The back-and-forth began when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, a warm-up act during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last month, mocked Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
The controversy around his remarks raged for days, until Biden, seeking to denounce the remarks in a video call with supporters, committed a gaffe of his own, calling Trump’s supporters “garbage.”
The former president attempted to stoke outrage over the incident among his supporters, even dressing up as a sanitation worker.
But an attempt by Vance to further capitalize backfired on the campaign trail Monday when he also resorted to name-calling – labeling the vice president as “trash.”
“In two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C., and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris,” Vance said.
--With assistance from Stephanie Lai, Hadriana Lowenkron and Justin Sink.
(Updates throughout including addition of Dixville Notch, ‘Garbage’ sections)
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