Vice President Kamala Harris homed in on the Southwest this week, spending back-to-back nights rallying supporters in the swing state of Arizona as Election Day inches closer.
The Democratic presidential nominee addressed thousands of supporters in the Gila River Indian Community near Chandler, Arizona, Thursday night, a few hours after Harris participated in a town hall event in Las Vegas that was targeted at undecided Latino voters.
On Friday, Harris hosted an event in Scottsdale at the Grayhawk Golf Club, where she spoke about her work with late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain while in Congress. Her message to the smaller group of supporters focused on her promise to create a “bipartisan council of advisers” if elected into office. She was joined by Mesa Mayor John Giles, who helped to start the Arizona chapter “Republicans for Harris” back in August.
“I think on the fundamentals, we have more in common than what separates us,” Harris said as she wrapped up Friday.
“And on the biggest and most important issues, I think we know that this is a fight that is not against something as much as it is a fight that is for something,” Harris added.
The Grand Canyon State, which President Joe Biden won in 2020 by just under 11,000 votes, is among the handful of battleground states that Harris and her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump, are vying for in the final weeks of the 2024 election.
Former President Barack Obama, who hosted his first campaign event for Harris in Pittsburgh on Thursday, is planning on making stops in Arizona and Nevada next week. He will be in Tucson on October 18 and Las Vegas on October 19, the first day of early voting in the key swing state.
Preliminary polling has largely favored Trump’s chances in the state come November, although the gap between him and Harris remains slim, meaning either candidate could take Arizona and its 11 electoral votes this fall.
According to tracking from FiveThirtyEight, Trump is ahead in Arizona by 1.4 percentage points on average across statewide polls. RealClearPolling gives the former president an even smaller lead, however, finding Trump up by just 0.5 points on average as of Tuesday.
Harris received good news on Friday in the latest swing state poll by The Wall Street Journal, which found Harris slightly ahead in Arizona, leading Trump 47 percent to 45 percent, but the 2 percentage points fall within the margin of error for the poll.
In a poll from Emerson College/The Hill released on Thursday, however, Trump was leading by the same margin (49 percent to 47 percent), a 1-point boost for his campaign in Arizona from the same poll last month that found him leading Harris 49 percent to 48 percent, again within the +/- 3 percentage points of margin of error for the poll.
Harris has improved Democrats’ overall chances in Arizona since launching her campaign. In a poll conducted by AARP in June, Trump was ahead of President Joe Biden by 8 points, leading the then-Democratic nominee 45 percent to 37 percent among likely voters.
In the same poll released on Tuesday, Harris was losing by just 2 points to Trump (49 percent to 47 percent). The Tuesday poll had a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.
Trump will head to Arizona on Sunday, where he is scheduled to host a rally at the Findlay Toyota Center in Prescott Valley.
Newsweek reached out to Harris and Trump’s campaigns via email for comment on the state of the race in Arizona.
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