At the culmination of a marathon U.S. presidential race marked by criminal convictions, assassination attempts and the unprecedented replacement of a major candidate, the country’s polarized electorate remains evenly divided between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
This means control of the White House in the Nov. 5 election is likely to be decided by turnout, particularly which side is better able to get both its support base and low-propensity voters – those who are eligible to vote but usually don’t – to cast ballots.
Ms. Harris’s Democrats are relying on a classic get-out-the-vote operation, with thousands of paid staff and an army of volunteers fanning out across swing states to knock on doors and reach as many voters as possible.
The Republicans under Mr. Trump, meanwhile, are trying an unconventional strategy of outsourcing their ground game to a network of third-party organizations.
Additionally, both campaigns are banking on making inroads with targeted groups of each other’s usual voters. With the election likely to be decided by a few percentage points in just seven states, small shifts in specific demographics of voters could change everything.
“People know whom they’re going to support,” said Jonathan Mason, pastor of a Philadelphia Black church organizing voter turnout drives, “but they’re not sure if they’re going to go to the polls.”
This city and its suburbs, the largest population centre in the country’s most populous swing state, is ground zero for Democratic voter motivation efforts. The party needs high turnout here to offset Mr. Trump’s advantage in Pennsylvania’s rural areas and small towns. In addition to voter contact operations, the party has been organizing block parties and giving away food outside of early voting stations to drive turnout.
Steve Santarsiero, chair of the local Democratic Party in suburban Bucks County, says his organization is working in co-ordination with Ms. Harris’s campaign to deploy canvassers. Last week alone, he said, they visited more than 57,000 houses in the county of 646,000. The focus is not on trying to find new voters but ensuring anyone who has previously indicated support for the Democrats gets to the polls.
“There may be some persuadable voters left but it’s really a get-out-the-vote operation. That’s where our campaign is going to win,” said Mr. Santarsiero, who is also a state senator.
Mr. Santarsiero said enthusiasm is “through the roof” among volunteers, both because of Ms. Harris’s historic candidacy – she would be the country’s first female president – and because of Mr. Trump’s singularity. “The stability of our democracy is on the line. If that is not a motivator, what is?”
Dan Kanninen, the battleground states director for Ms. Harris’s campaign, told the Washington Post that the Democrats have 350 offices and 2,500 staffers on the ground in the seven swing states. It’s something of a return to normal for the party after the pandemic curtailed in-person canvassing operations four years ago.
In 2020, the Democrats benefited from voter anger over Mr. Trump’s handling of COVID-19 and racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd to both motivate core supporters, including Black voters, and rack up high margins with moderates. Both parties’ turnout surged compared to 2016, but the Democrats’ surged more, allowing Joe Biden to narrowly beat Mr. Trump in six swing states.
This time around, Ms. Harris is banking on abortion rights to be similarly motivating after Mr. Trump’s pivotal role in ending Roe v. Wade. She is also campaigning with former congresswoman Liz Cheney and other anti-Trump Republicans in hopes of attracting conservative voters opposed to Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Casting her ballot at an early voting site at a suburban Philadelphia strip mall, Ashley Maldonado said she usually supports the Republicans but chose Ms. Harris this time for her pro-choice stance. Ms. Maldonado, a 35-year-old school educational assistant, said she was not thrilled with either option – she opposes the Democrats’ push for tighter gun laws, for instance – but said a woman’s right to choose ultimately outweighed other considerations.
“They both suck, honestly,” she said. “But I’m a woman and I don’t believe any man should ever be able to tell women what to do with their bodies.”
She was also bemused that Mr. Trump could even run for president after he was found guilty of 34 felonies. “If we were convicted of a crime, there would be a lot of jobs we couldn’t hold. The same should apply to him.”
Auguring well for Ms. Harris is that the Democrats appear to have an edge among the most consistent voters, possibly born of the party’s gains among centrist suburbanites in the Trump era: lower-turnout gubernatorial elections in 2022 in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona all went for the Democrats.
Ms. Harris has also been out-fundraising Mr. Trump, sometimes by a factor of two to one, and has outspent him on ads in swing states, pouring in more than US$700-million since July.
The former president is leaning on a mix of economic messaging – assailing Ms. Harris over inflation early in the Biden administration’s term – and culture-war appeals. One of his most-played ads takes aim at transgender people: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” a narrator intones.
As in the last two campaigns, Mr. Trump’s central issue is immigration, with a promise to round up and deport 11 million undocumented people, whom he portrays as violent criminals. And as in the last two campaigns, he is counting on core support among white voters outside of major cities.
Troy Heiser, a 55-year-old retired police officer in Reading, Pa., west of Philadelphia, cited migration as one reason he is drawn to back Mr. Trump a third time.
“People are jumping in here the wrong way and getting a free pass,” he said outside a Trump rally last month, as he sported a visor with a wig of Mr. Trump’s trademark blond bouffant hairdo attached.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been stumping for the GOP at events like this one in Butler, Pa., but is also bankrolling America PAC, one of the groups to which Mr. Trump has outsourced his get-out-the-vote efforts. Mr. Musk got in legal trouble for giving out money to voters in swing states.JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Turning Point Action organized campaign events like this one in Las Vegas, but appeared to have retrenched to Arizona and Wisconsin.Ronda Churchill/Reuters
A central strength for Mr. Trump is an ability to excite people who do not normally vote. But it makes his turnout difficult to predict. It also remains an open question whether his campaign’s decision to largely farm out its get-out-the-vote operations will work.
The highest-profile groups working for Mr. Trump have both hit rough waters.
Turning Point Action, the youth organization started by Charlie Kirk, which was originally tipped to run most of Mr. Trump’s ground game, appears to have scaled back to focus on Arizona and Wisconsin.
America PAC, bankrolled by billionaire Elon Musk, for its part, has hired and fired different paid canvassing companies to knock on doors for Mr. Trump. Data leaked to The Guardian appear to show that many of these canvassers, minimum-wage workers who may not necessarily support Mr. Trump, have been faking their routes and not actually speaking with voters.
There are some signs, however, that Mr. Trump’s campaign is trying to harness the enthusiasm of its core supporters for turnout efforts. It has a project called Trump Force 47 to recruit supporters to become grassroots organizers.
Jason Shepherd, a Republican activist in the Atlanta suburbs, said at least three conservative campaign groups have left Trump literature at his door, but there has so far been no evidence of party-run canvasses in his area. “I’ve seen nothing from the local party or the state party. The ground game seems to be lacking,” he said.
Mr. Shepherd, a 48-year-old lawyer, used to run his county party organization but is less involved this year, driven away by the takeover of much of the party apparatus by election deniers.
He said some Georgia Republican groups are putting most of their efforts into recruiting poll observers to thwart what they believe is Democratic cheating instead of recruiting people to go canvassing. “They’re really focusing on what happens at the polls instead of targeting people to get them to the polls,” he said.
Student-made 'I voted' stickers, like these ones from recent contests in Albuquerque, N.M., and Ann Arbor, Mich., encourage young voters to get involved in a process that, increasingly, focuses on casting ballots early.Susan Montoya Bryan/AP; JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Whether either party’s tactics are working is, so far, difficult to gauge.
More than 60 million Americans have voted early, either in person or by mail, a high number but still currently short of the more than 100 million who did so during the pandemic election of 2020. Unlike in 2020, when Democrats dominated early voting amid claims by Mr. Trump that the entire process was fraudulent, Republicans are now taking part, too. In Pennsylvania, for instance, 20 per cent of requests for early ballots have come from registered Republicans.
Some states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, have made it increasingly easy in recent years to vote early. Georgia, meanwhile, adopted a law in 2021 that makes it harder to vote by mail by decreasing the amount of time ahead of the election voters can request a postal ballot. This year, only 5 per cent of voters did so in Georgia, compared to 38 per cent in Michigan.
Another shift that could matter: Arab-Americans favoured the Democrats in previous elections, but many are vowing to sit out this time over the Biden administration’s support for Israel amid its invasion of Gaza. Even losing the percentage point or two that such voters represent in Pennsylvania or Michigan could turn the election.
Amid polling that shows growing support for Mr. Trump with Black and Hispanic men, groups that have traditionally gone Democratic, the former president is also aiming to expand his voter base.
In Philadelphia, Rev. Mason said he has seen signs for the former president around town, which seem to indicate an active ground game trying to make inroads. Mr. Trump’s messaging here has turned partly on economic issues and partly on Ms. Harris’s background as a former prosecutor – somewhat ironic, given that Mr. Trump is also trying to stoke fear of violent crime.
“He’s saying ‘the Democrats haven’t done anything for Black men,’ saying ‘Kamala Harris has put Black men in prison in California,’ ” said Rev. Mason, pastor at Northeast Baptist Church.
Haitian Americans and their allies in Boston pushed back at Mr. Trump on Sept. 24 after the debate where he claimed, falsely, that migrants in Ohio were eating pets.JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
The former president and his campaign may be undermining their own efforts. Mr. Trump’s most-quoted line from his lone debate with Ms. Harris involved falsely accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pet dogs and cats. At Mr. Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, warmup comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” and said that Black people “carved watermelons” for Halloween.
“America still breaks down along colour lines,” Rev. Mason said. “Let a Black man stand on stage and tell you he’s running for president with 34 felony convictions.”
On this day, Rev. Mason was leading a Souls to the Polls event, an election-time ritual for Black churches to bus congregants to vote after service. As the bus rolled up to an early polling station, it was greeted by the 215 People’s Alliance, a progressive group handing out shirts and food to voters.
Nearby, a few Trump supporters waved flags and handed out campaign literature. “We know January 6th was set up by Pelosi and the FBI,” said Moni Mohan, 60, repeating a Trumpian conspiracy.
Ready to debate them was Jesús Baez, 64, a retired airport baggage handler. A native of Puerto Rico, he voted Republican during the era of George W. Bush but said he was put off the party by the increasingly negative campaign styles of Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz.
“With a lady running, I think people want something new and fresh. We’ve already been through the rough hands of Trump,” he said. “But we’re getting too complacent because we think we’ve got it in the bag already.”
The campaign so far: An annotated guide
The 2024 U.S. presidential race has been tumultuous, but the difference in polling between the candidates has barely changed since the summer – a sign of a deeply polarized electorate and of a race that may be decided by voter turnout. The polling average below shows a modest advantage for Kamala Harris nationally, but the numbers are much closer in most of the seven swing states that will likely decide the election.
Average score for each candidate from all 2024 presidential polls,
as of Oct. 30
Harris:
48.1%
49%
Harris
48
47
46
Trump:
46.7%
45
44
Trump
43
Trump
42
41
40
Biden
39
38
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
OCT.
JUNE
JULY
AUG.
SEPT.
adrian morrow and john sopinski/the globe and mail,
Source: graphic news; fivethirtyeight.com
Average score for each candidate from all 2024 presidential polls, as of Oct. 30
Harris:
48.1%
49%
Harris
48
47
46
Trump:
46.7%
45
44
Trump
43
Trump
42
41
40
Biden
39
38
MARCH
APRIL
OCT.
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUG.
SEPT.
adrian morrow and john sopinski/the globe and mail,
Source: graphic news; fivethirtyeight.com
Average score for each candidate from all 2024 presidential polls, as of Oct. 30
49%
Harris:
48.1%
Harris
48
OCT. 17
48.5%
JULY 24
44.9%
47
Trump:
46.7%
46
JULY 24
44.0%
45
OCT. 17
46.1%
44
MARCH 1
41.7%
Trump
43
Trump
42
JULY 21
43.5%
41
JULY 21
40.2%
40
Biden
39
38
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
OCT.
JUNE
JULY
AUG.
SEPT.
adrian morrow and john sopinski/the globe and mail, Source: graphic news; fivethirtyeight.com
1. March 6
Donald Trump’s last remaining Republican challenger, Nikki Haley, ends her presidential bid. While Mr. Trump had already been racking up huge margins in every primary contest, the bowing out of Ms. Haley cemented his re-nomination.
2. May 30
Mr. Trump becomes the first former U.S. president to be criminally convicted when a Manhattan jury finds him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Mr. Trump was attempting to hide a US$130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. The money was meant to keep her quiet about an alleged tryst.
3. June 27
Joe Biden trips over his words, fails to finish sentences and speaks in a low, raspy voice during a debate with Mr. Trump, raising concerns about age-related cognitive decline. The performance kicks off efforts by Democrats to push the President out of the race.
Secret Service agents take a bloody-faced Mr. Trump off the stage in Butler, Pa., after July 13's assassination attempt.Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press
4. July 13
Mr. Trump is shot in the ear in an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pa. A photo of the bloodied former president leaving the stage with his fist raised in the air, shouting “fight!” immediately becomes iconic among his supporters. The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by the Secret Service.
5. July 18
Mr. Trump formally accepts his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. In the first part of his speech, he recounts the assassination attempt in cinematic detail. In the second, he pivots to his usual attacks on migrants. Earlier in the week, he had unveiled Ohio senator and Hillbilly Elegy memoirist JD Vance as his running-mate.
6. July 21
Mr. Biden quits the presidential race after weeks of resisting pressure from his own party. Within days, Vice-President Kamala Harris takes his place on the ticket. Ms. Harris unexpectedly generates major social media momentum, with singer Charli XCX dubbing her “brat” (this is a good thing in this context).
'Brat' is, to young Harris supporters like these ones in Minnesota, a term of approval.Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
7. Aug. 22
Ms. Harris formally accepts the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The event is geared toward social media virality, with a dance party in place of the usual pro-forma nomination roll call, celebrity endorsements from Oprah Winfrey and John Legend, and a memorable mockery of Mr. Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes” by former president Barack Obama. Ms. Harris chooses Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, best known for dubbing Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance “weird,” as her running mate.
8. Sept. 10
Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris meet in Philadelphia for their lone debate. Mr. Trump falsely accuses Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” of local residents in the debate’s most memorable moment.
9. Sept. 15
Mr. Trump survives a second assassination attempt while playing at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla. Secret Service agents notice a rifle barrel sticking out of the bushes along the course and open fire. A man named Ryan Routh is later arrested.
10. Oct. 27
Mr. Trump holds a splashy rally at Madison Square Garden. The event is overshadowed by one of his warmup speakers referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” Mr. Trump’s own rhetoric had also stepped up in the weeks leading up to the event. He described political opponents as “the enemy within” the country and mused that it might be necessary to use the military on “radical left lunatics.”
11. Oct. 29
Ms. Harris holds a “closing argument” rally at the Ellipse park in Washington, the same spot from which Mr. Trump addressed his supporters before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Mr. Trump is 'someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power,' Ms. Harris told supporters at her closing-argument speech at the Washington Ellipse.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
U.S. election: More from The Globe and Mail
The Decibel podcast
To meet swing-state voters where they live, feature writer Ian Brown took the Greyhound bus from coast to coast this summer, chronicling the trip with photojournalist Barbara Davidson. He read The Decibel an excerpt from their story and reflected on how empathy can heal partisan divides. Subscribe for more episodes.
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