Harris and Trump teams adjust their strategies as campaign enters the homestretch

The presidential campaign has now entered its final phase. After Tuesday’s tense debate in Philadelphia between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the two parties are adjusting their strategies for the 54-day homestretch, in which the fight to gain the upper hand promises to be a tough one. Democrats want to take advantage of the momentum they feel they have after their candidate’s good performance. Republicans are trying to make up for the bad taste left in their mouth by their candidate’s showing.

Time is running out, and the opportunities to capture new votes — or avoid losing them — are becoming fewer and fewer. In some states, such as Alabama, the period for voting by mail has already started. In Pennsylvania, ballots can begin to be cast starting Monday. Other states will follow in the coming days.

Unless the two parties agree to a second debate in the coming weeks — which remains unclear — there is only one other national event on the horizon leading up to November 5: the October 1 debate between vice presidential candidates Democrat Tim Walz and Republican J. D. Vance. But rhetorical duels between the VP candidates have historically been relatively inconclusive; their television audiences are much smaller.

Tour of the swing states

Democrats were quick to make their move. After participating in a series of events in honor of the victims of 9/11 alongside President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Harris plans to return to the campaign trail and hold a series of rallies in swing states. At the New York event, the vice president met her opponent again, with whom she shook hands for the second time in two days.

On Thursday, Harris is scheduled to visit two locations in North Carolina “to generate more support, boost enthusiasm and reach the voters who will decide this election, as we approach the final weeks of the campaign,” said her campaign team. On Friday, Harris will hold a rally in Wilkes-Barre, an industrial city in northeastern Pennsylvania. There, she will court white working-class voters, an electoral group where she is encountering resistance, but which is highly sympathetic of Trump. Harris needs to win votes at all costs among this group, which is a significant proportion of the total in Pennsylvania. This state is vital for her aspirations to reach the White House: it is the one that contributes the most votes, 19, in the American electoral college (270 are needed to win). Without it, her chances of winning are drastically reduced.

Immediately after the debate, Harris was jubilant. In a surprise appearance at a gathering of supporters in Philadelphia, she said it had been a “great night.” The vice president, who was declared the winner of the debate by CNN in a flash poll with 63% to her rival’s 37%, also received the icing on the cake: the hugely popular American music idol Taylor Swift announced that she would vote for her in November.

Trump, meanwhile, was trying to limit the damage after a debate in which he spread the lie that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets in Ohio, claimed that he had plans to change the current health insurance system implemented by Barack Obama, without providing further details, and lost his temper when his rival questioned the attendance figures for his rallies. He also claimed that Harris wants to carry out sex change operations on illegal immigrants detained in prison.

“We had a great night. We won the debate. We had a terrible, a terrible network,” he lamented on Wednesday on his favorite channel, Fox News, where he blamed ABC News moderators for his poor performance.

But even though time is running out, there are still eight weeks left to go, and neither party can afford to slow down. Harris herself recalled on Tuesday night that the Democrats are still not the favorites. The Republicans, for their part, must send a message of reassurance to their bases. It is not clear whether, despite the expectations, the debate has served to change opinions among those who had already decided their vote, or to motivate the 8% of undecided voters who are still not sure, according to the polls.

Harris still needs to make progress: the latest polls indicate that the momentum she had gained over the summer, after replacing Biden as the Democratic candidate, had stagnated. According to an ABC News poll before the debate, 28% of voters said they did not know enough about the vice president’s positions. Other polls indicate that her support among traditionally Democratic voting blocs, such as African Americans and young people, has grown compared to what Biden received in the months before he gave up the race for re-election, but it still falls short of what the president obtained in the 2020 elections.

“Harris’ strong debate performance doesn’t change the fundamentals of this presidential campaign,” said Amy Walters, director of the respected political analysis firm Cook Report. “Trump’s failure to effectively define on the debate stage what is at stake in a Harris presidency can be offset by an effective ad campaign and an appropriate focus on constituencies.”

But the analyst adds a nuance: “Despite everything, Harris has shown that she can do what Biden failed to do: turn this election into a referendum on Trump.”

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