Palm Beach, Florida: Donald Trump closed his campaign with false claims about election fraud and Kamala Harris’ crowd sizes, but it was the Republican nominee who spoke in partly empty arenas as both candidates crossed the finish line.
The former president crossed three states on the final full day of campaigning, beginning in North Carolina, heading to Pittsburgh in the all-important state of Pennsylvania (where Harris spent the entire day) and finishing, as is his tradition, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he started speaking after midnight and was still speaking at 1.30am.
Donald Trump speaks during his closing campaign event at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Credit: Bloomberg
“We do not have to live this way,” he said in Pittsburgh as he asked Americans, as per his stump speech, whether they felt better off than four years ago. “We do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline and decay.”
Trump has always measured success by TV ratings and crowd sizes, but he appeared to struggle on those indicators as the campaign drew to a close. Reporters on the ground relayed that Dorton Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina, was about 70 per cent full, and the upper stands at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh were cordoned off and empty.
While Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee, pivoted to optimism in the campaign’s final days, and stripped her speeches of Trump’s name, Trump dialled up his false claims about his opponent’s “cheating” and voting systems being susceptible to fraud.
Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly spoke at Donald Trump’s rally in Pittsburgh and said she would be voting for him.Credit: AP
“They’ll try [to rig the election]. And they are trying. You know that,” he said in Pittsburgh. He also claimed to have heard “stories” that it might take 12 additional days to count the votes, and “bad things happen when you do that”.
After months on the campaign trail, delivering the same message of grievance and doom, and with nearly 80 million Americans having already voted, it is not surprising that enthusiasm for Trump’s long and meandering speeches would dim.
But it feeds into a perception of momentum shifting towards Harris, a momentum she has openly claimed in the past 48 hours after being buoyed by a series of favourable polls in swing states and at least one, Iowa, that was considered to be in the Republican column.