In the last few weeks before the 2024 election, past President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are travelling around battleground states.
This has shown a difference: Trump has been to more campaign events than Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, combined in September.
He also does not seem to be slowing down, which is part of his campaign’s plan to focus on counties that could be easily won.
Trump did 21 public campaign events in September, such as speeches, rallies, press conferences, and town halls.
Harris had 13 campaign events, while Walz only had seven, according to campaign plans that ABC News looked at. In September, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, did 14 events on his own, on top of all the events Trump himself had planned.
These numbers do not include short campaign stops at stores and visits where they do not say anything.
Trump’s campaign schedule has stayed busy through the first week of October. An ABC News look at their schedules shows that between October 1 and October 6, Trump has held eight campaign events and Harris has only held two.
Harris has been busy lately with her job as vice president, getting reports from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and checking out the damage caused by Hurricane Helene in Georgia and North Carolina.
In the same way, Trump went to Georgia to look at the damage from the storm and got his own information from local leaders.
People who work for Harris’s campaign have said that those who say she is not campaigning hard enough are wrong, pointing out that she has been to eight events this month as vice president, including a trip to the southern border and helping with the damage from Hurricane Helene.
Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for Harris’s campaign, said in a statement that Trump is “cocooned in a conservative media bubble” and “limiting his time in battleground states,” while Harris and Walz are “taking tough questions and meeting voters where they are.”
Donald Trump is now promoting in California, Chicago, and New York City. Before that, he stayed at Mar-a-Lago to avoid voters. In the letter, Chitika wrote.
However, Trump has been campaigning in several battleground states over the past few weeks.
He has made multiple visits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina, among other places. He is now in a crucial part of his campaign and wants to make one last pitch to voters before Election Day.
“I go to a lot of places; we are working harder than the other side.” In three days, she will go to one place. ‘Why can not I do that?'” Trump made fun of the crowd at a campaign stop in Savannah, Georgia, at the end of last month.
Earlier in this election cycle, Trump was not going to as many campaign events as he did during the 2016 election, when he rallied all the time.
Trump had fewer meetings while he was in court fighting his legal battles, which kept him locked up most of the week. He had early wins in the primary elections.
His pace has sped up in the last few months before the election, though.
The former president has spent most of the last month in Pennsylvania, which is the nearest state on the map between him and the current president.
He held four events there in September. 538’s polls average shows that Harris only has a 0.4% lead over Trump in Pennsylvania.
Trump’s events have mostly been in cities and suburbs in swing states that voted for him both times. His campaign wants to cut into the Democratic lead by winning more votes in these states.
As an example, Trump spoke at a factory last month in Walker, Michigan, which is in Kent County. In 2020, President Joe Biden won that county from Trump.
Later that same day, Trump held a town hall meeting in Warren, Michigan, which is just outside of Detroit. Warren was the only county in the three-county area that voted for Trump in 2020, after Barack Obama won the county in 2008 and 2012.
Trump visited Prairie Du Chien in Crawford County, Wisconsin, two weeks ago. Crawford County is in the southwest of the state and is one of several in the area that voted for Trump instead of Obama.
Now that he lost the state to Biden by only 21,000 votes in 2020, Trump is working to win back voters in these important counties.
Trump held events in Milwaukee and Dane counties last week, which are both Democratic strongholds. It was his fourth trip to Wisconsin in eight days.
After that, he campaigned on Sunday in Juneau, Wisconsin, in Dodge County. Over the last few presidential races, Dodge County has become a stronger Republican stronghold.
Harris has also paid a lot of attention to Pennsylvania, having five events there.
She has spent a lot of time in western and central Pennsylvania, where she has drawn people from both the Democratic-leaning Pittsburgh area and rural counties that have been moving to the right or left.
The difference in schedule comes at a time when the Harris campaign and, before that, Biden’s campaign were criticising Trump for being slow on the road earlier in the campaign, saying he was running from “his country club basement.”
After Biden dropped out of the 2024 election in the first few weeks of August, Trump only had a few events in states that were safe for Republicans.
He spent most of his time at private fundraisers and online interviews, such as ones with Elon Musk, Adin Ross, and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Harris started getting known to the country by holding a lot of events in the first few weeks of her campaign. These events drew big crowds, especially during the second week of August, when Harris and Walz held five rallies across the country together.
But she has not been able to keep up that pace since then. Harris has sometimes focused on her job as vice president instead, or her campaign or vice presidential plans have not been made public.
Also, both Harris and Walz have been criticised for how carefully they run their campaigns. For example, they avoid sitting down with reporters and being available for media talks while on the road, which is something Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, do all the time.
Harris, on the other hand, has been invited to be on a number of media shows recently by the Harris-Walz campaign.
These include “Call Her Daddy” podcast, “The View” on ABC, “60 Minutes” on CBS, and “The Howard Stern Show.” That is right, Walz will be on “Smartless” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” this week to talk.
The most recent poll from 538 shows that Harris is getting support across the country and is now ahead of Trump by 2.6%.
However, a recent poll from the New York Times and Siena College shows that the race is much closer, with the two candidates tied among registered voters in Michigan and Wisconsin.
A week earlier, a poll by the New York Times and Siena College found that Trump was ahead in Arizona and North Carolina, which are both key battleground states.
As the campaign comes to a close, Trump has made it clear that the last few weeks are very important. He often tells his followers that he is not taking anything for granted.
Trump’s campaign said that the former president knows how important the election is and hopes that his message on immigration and the economy, which are two of the most important problems for voters this election, gets through.
At this point, Trump has said that he will leave everything on the pitch.
“We are going to do everything on the pitch and leave nothing to chance…” “We are going to beat Kamala Harris, and we are going to make America great again,” Trump said last week at a campaign stop in Waunakee, Wisconsin.
It looks like Harris is going to win, even though she has said many times that she is the “underdog” in what is turning out to be a close race.
“This race has a small margin of error.” We are not taking the lead. I am running like the underdog because I think I can win this race. “Now we carry on the torch,” Harris said at a dinner in San Francisco at the end of September.
While Harris is behind Trump in formal campaign speeches, they have packed their schedules with retail campaign stops for both candidates.
They see value in creating places where their candidates can spend more time with voters and have also held fundraisers that have erased Trump’s earlier campaign money lead.