Donald Trump steps up campaigning as race to the White House enters final day
Video report by ITV News International Affairs Editor Rageh Omaar
The last decisive 24 hours of full campaigning in the race for the presidency of the United States has prompted a sense of urgency in both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Both men are criss-crossing the key battleground states upon which this most polarised of elections will be decided. For Donald Trump in particular it has seen him return to what comes most naturally to him as someone who has never been a career politician; the barnstorming, often unscripted off the cuff political rallies where he pitches himself not as the incumbent President, but as something which one of his closest political allies described as “the outsider determined to disrupt the whole American political order as though he was the gunslinger from New York”.
In what should be a punishing schedule for a 74-year-old, Donald Trump showed nothing but a natural enthusiasm as he attended five rallies across the country in just one day; from the icy blizzards of Michigan to the more autumnal sunshine of Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
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Surrounded by thousands of die-hard Trump supporters who formed sometimes miles long queues to get to see him, he looked like a man who was in his natural environment.
In the run up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump famously said of his political base that he could shoot someone in Times Square in New York and his supporters would still vote him.
It was hard to disagree with that sentiment as I spoke to his supporters.
From President Trump’s strong anti-immigration programme, to his promotion of conservative justices, to the Supreme Court; his endorsement of evangelical and anti-abortion campaigners to strong opposition to gun control laws, it was the policies that made those attending these rallies pledge their total and unwavering support to his re-election.
Frank, Michelle and Bethany Bollick told me issues of religion and small government were what made them support Donald Trump and that the polls shouldn’t be believed.
Yet the reality is that Donald Trump is trailing Joe Biden in almost all polls, and this includes the key battleground states that he won from the Democrats in 2016.
When I put these points to Donald Trump’s supporters they simply see it as “fake news” and remind people that the polls were wrong in 2016 and will be again in 2020.
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It’s something that the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party are all too aware of.
The fact that traditionally Democratic blue-collar states in the so-called Rustbelt, like Wisconsin and Michigan, were taken for granted by Hillary Clinton is why 2016 has left such a scar and they are determined not to repeat the same mistake. More than 90 million Americans cast their ballot early, itself a remarkable and record-breaking feature of this election.
Many of those voters are people who didn’t vote in 2016 or are young first time voters.
Joe Biden has cast this election not simply as a choice of who will become the next president, but as a fight to preserve what he calls “the soul of America”.
He too is targeting the same states as President Trump; Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan.
But his campaign message, especially to African-Americans and young voters and suburban women, is to accuse President Trump of having pursued racist policies that are aimed at dividing this diverse nation and suppressing African-American and minority votes – and that people should do everything they can to vote to prevent him from being returned to the White House.
Watch Trump vs Biden: The Results on Tuesday 3rd November from 11pm on ITV