Presidential campaign: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump still neck and neck

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump clashed remotely on Sunday in two hotly contested American states: the Democratic vice-president seeking at all costs to further mobilize the African-American and Hispanic electorates and the former Republican president hammering home his anti-immigration statements .

Three weeks before the November 5 vote, the polls are still as close as ever, but several surveys reveal Kamala Harris’ difficulties in attracting votes among black and Latin American voters.

Harris and North Carolina

A New York Times/Siena College poll published Sunday gives him less than 60% of voting intentions in the Hispanic community – in full population growth in the United States – which would represent the lowest level for a Democratic candidate in 20 years.

She is credited with only 19 points ahead of her Republican opponent within this strategic electorate in several pivotal states, notably in the South-West, such as Arizona or Nevada, or seven less than Joe Biden in 2020 and 20 fewer than Hillary Clinton in 2016.

On Sunday, the 59-year-old vice-president chose North Carolina (southeast), in a region with a large black American population in this state won for the last time in 2008 by a Democrat and which has just been devastated by Hurricane Helene. At a meeting in Greenville, she attacked her rival, accusing him of a lack of transparency about her state of health and of refusing to have a second debate with her.

Trump ‘provokes fear’

“Is his (campaign team) afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America?” she asked. For Kamala Harris, “Donald Trump is more interested in scaring people, in provoking fear, in stirring up problems rather than helping to solve them, which is what real leaders do.”

Previously, in a church of African-American faithful, she had saluted “the heroes and angels” revealed by the disaster caused by Hurricane Helen, while castigating “those who divert people’s tragedies and sorrow into resentment and hatred” by “spreading disinformation”.

She was referring to Donald Trump’s allegations that the Democratic government had abandoned the populations of the majority Republican areas of North Carolina. In response, outgoing President Joe Biden, 81, announced Sunday from Florida, also hit by another hurricane, Milton, total aid of $600 million.

“Enemy from within”

His predecessor in the White House, Donald Trump, 78, was in Arizona, a state bordering Mexico: he once again used anti-migrant rhetoric, accusing the Biden/Harris government of having “imported an army of illegal migrants » came “from dungeons all over the world”.

In a speech lasting an hour and a half, he promised that if elected, he would hire 10,000 more border guards and increase their salaries by 10%.

And taking his incendiary rhetoric up a notch, the populist tribune asserted on Fox News that “the National Guard”, even “military”, should be called against the “enemy within” in the United States , against “very bad people (…) crazy people, far-left psychos”.

Obama and Clinton on the campaign trail

In this ultra-tense climate, the authorities announced on Sunday the arrest and release on bail on Saturday of a man for illegal possession of several weapons, while he was near a Donald Trump meeting in California. The former president, who was targeted by two assassination attempts, “was not in danger,” according to the FBI federal police.

Two other former presidents, Democrats Barack Obama (2009-2017) and Bill Clinton (1993-2001), also threw their strength into Kamala Harris’ campaign: the first by urging his African-American “brothers” on Thursday, and the men in general to vote for the woman who could be the first American president. The second was Sunday in a church in Georgia with the black electorate, to whom he is known to be very close.

After these remote duels, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will both be in Pennsylvania (northeast) on Monday, considered crucial for opening the way to the White House.

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