President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden are holding a number of competing rallies on Monday, the day before Election Day.
Trump’s whirlwind schedule continues with a mid-morning flight from Florida, where he spoke into the early hours of Nov. 2 to cap off a frantic five-state tour in a bid to drum up votes, to North Carolina.
Trump, 74, will hold a rally in Fayetteville before speaking in Avoca, Pennsylvania; Traverse City, Michigan; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The Republican’s official schedule has him leaving Grand Rapids just before midnight for Washington, where he will return to the White House at 1:30 a.m. Nov. 3.
Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, is slated to deliver remarks in Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday afternoon before kicking off a canvass in Beaver County and attending a drive-in event in Pittsburg, both in Pennsylvania.
Biden is scheduled to participate in four other events in Pennsylvania later in the day, including a drive-in event with performer Lady Gaga.
Pennsylvania is a crucial swing state that delivers the victor 20 electoral votes. Trump won Pennsylvania by 0.72 percent in 2016.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Biden’s running mate, is also traveling to Pennsylvania on Monday, along with her husband, Doug Emhoff.
Harris and Biden will be attending separate events. Harris’s final event will feature musician John Legend.
The Bidens, Harris, and Emhoff “will barnstorm Pennsylvania and fan out across all four corners of the state,” Biden’s campaign said in a statement.
“All will hold events to get out the vote while also discussing how to bring Americans together to address the crises facing the country and win the battle for the soul of the nation.”
Vice President Mike Pence will also be in Pennsylvania on Monday, holding at least two rallies.
Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, asserted late Sunday a contrast in the demeanor of the two candidates.
“The contrast in demeanor of the candidates today is remarkable. @realDonaldTrump is obviously having a blast barnstorming the country. Biden is enraged during his day trip across the Delaware border to Philadelphia. One guy feels momentum. The other feels it slipping away,” he said in a social media statement.
Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that campaign officials are feeling good about their chances for another win.
“We think that President Trump is going to hold all of the Sun Belt states that he won previously. And as you look to the upper Midwest, Joe Biden has to stop President Trump in four out of four states; Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. If President Trump wins just one of those in three of the four that he won last time, he will be a reelected president,” he said.
But Anita Dunn, a Biden campaign adviser, argued that the number of close battleground states has grown in recent months, referring to polling that suggests Biden is competitive in states like Georgia and Iowa.
“And the Trump campaign—obviously, they’re going to say they feel good. They’re going to say they feel like they can carry everything they did in 2016,” she said on the same program.
“But if you look at the enormous enthusiasm that we’ve seen in the early vote, these record-setting early vote numbers, people are going to vote. And we are going to know on Election Day that a record number of people have probably turned out to vote in this election because they want change. They want a leader who is going to unite this country, not divide it.”
While the campaigns focus on Pennsylvania, a top elections official warned over the weekend that it could take several days to count all the ballots, meaning a winner may not be declared on election night.
“I just want to set that straight, that this is a process, and we want to make sure that every single vote of every valid voter is securely and accurately counted,” she added.
The state’s official voting website says that the results of some races may not be known on the night of the election.
More than 93 million people—more than two-thirds of all the votes cast during the 2016 election—had already voted as of Nov. 1. In the 20 states that report party affiliations for mail-in votes, Democrats cast nearly 7 million more votes than Republicans. In the 10 states that report party affiliations for in-person votes, Republicans cast over 700,000 more votes than Democrats.
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