By Nandita Bose and James Oliphant
DETROIT – Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris campaigns in Michigan on Sunday while her Republican rival Donald Trump will stop in three eastern battleground states in the final days of an election that could be decided by a small slice of American voters.
Opinion polls show a historically close race, and both campaigns say they are not sure who will prevail in the seven states that are likely to determine the outcome on Tuesday.
A poll showing Harris leading in Iowa — a state Trump won easily in the past two elections — raised the possibility of an unexpected outcome, though another poll showed her trailing in that state.
Harris is due to campaign in East Lansing, Michigan, a college town in an industrial state that is viewed as a must-win for the Democrat.
She faces skepticism from some of the state’s 200,000 Arab Americans who are frustrated that the sitting vice president has not done more to help end the war in Gaza and scale back aid to Israel. Trump visited Dearborn, the heart of the Arab American community, on Friday and vowed to end the wars in the Middle East.
Trump is due to hold rallies in three smaller cities that could help him galvanize the rural voters who make up an important part of his base. He starts the day in Lititz, Pennsylvania, before heading to Kinston, North Carolina in the afternoon and ending with an evening rally in Macon, Georgia.
It will be the first day since last Tuesday that the two candidates are not campaigning in the same state. On Saturday, their planes shared a swath of tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina, where both candidates held rallies.
Harris later flew to New York for a surprise appearance on the “Saturday Night Live” comedy show.
In the campaign’s final days, Harris has sought to convince voters that she will bring down the cost of living — a top concern after several years of inflation. She has also portrayed Trump as dangerous and erratic and urged Americans to move on from Trump’s divisive approach to politics.
“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We’re done with that,” she said in Charlotte on Saturday.
Trump has argued that Harris, as the sitting vice president, should be held responsible for the rising prices and high levels of immigration of the past several years, which he has portrayed as an existential threat to the country.
“The only free aid they are going to get is a free ride back home,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina on Saturday.
At least 75 million Americans have already cast their ballots, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, equal to nearly half of the 160 million votes cast in the 2020 election.
Still, the winner might not be known for several days, as states like Pennsylvania will need time to tally their mail votes.
(Additional reporting by Ismail Shakil and Andrea Shalal; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Michael Perry)