Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump target the "Blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and residents receive a suspicious voter report card.
Harris, Trump head to the Midwest as campaign enters final weekend
The 2024 election may come down to the trio of Rust Belt battleground states that comprise the so-called "blue wall" — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — which helped make Donald Trump the president in 2016 and thwarted his chances of reelection in 2020 when President Joe Biden won them.
As the campaign for president enters its final weekend, both candidates and their running mates are descending on the two Midwestern "blue wall" states on Friday, highlighting their importance to both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris' campaigns.
Both Harris and Trump will campaign in Wisconsin on Friday, with the two set to hold dueling campaign rallies just miles apart in Milwaukee in the evening.
Trump is also set to hold events in Michigan on Friday, rallying in Warren and stopping in Dearborn, the country's largest Arab-majority city, according to a local business owner who invited the Republican nominee to his restaurant. Dearborn, which Biden won by a 3-1 margin four years ago, has been rocked by the Democratic administration's handling of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Trump will be the first major candidate this year to visit Dearborn as he works to appeal — with mixed success — to Arab Americans who may be disenchanted with Harris over her stance on the war, despite some of his own administration's policies toward Muslims.
A poll released Friday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Muslim civil rights group, found that Harris is roughly tied not with Trump, but with Green Party Jill Stein, among Muslim voters. Stein leads Harris slightly 42-41, while Trump trails at a distant third with less than 10% support. (The survey, conducted this week, polled almost 1,500 Muslim voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.5%.)
The candidates' running mates will also be in Michigan on Friday. Ohio Sen. JD Vance is set to hold a rally in Portage before heading to North Carolina, while Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is campaigning in Detroit, Flint and Traverse City, to urge the state's residents to vote early.
In Wisconsin, Trump and Harris are set to rally miles apart, with the former president holding his event at Fiserv Forum — home of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, and the site where he accepted his third Republican presidential nomination earlier this summer — while Harris' will take place in the Milwaukee suburbs.
Harris will stop at a union hall in Janesville before a get-out-the-vote event in Appleton ahead of her Milwaukee event, which will feature performances by GloRilla, Flo Milli and the Isley Brothers, in addition to remarks from Cardi B.
Both candidates visited Wisconsin earlier this week, with Harris rallying in Madison and Trump in Green Bay. Friday's events may be their last appearances in battleground Wisconsin before Election Day.
Both sides say the race is once again razor tight for the state's 10 electoral votes. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a point, or fewer than 23,000 votes.
Democrats know they must turn out voters in Milwaukee, also home to the state's largest Black population, to counter Trump's support in the suburbs and rural areas. Harris is hoping to replicate, and exceed, turnout from 2020 in the city, which voted 79% for Biden that year.
Trump is trying to cut into the Democrats' margin. Deleon called it a “lose by less” mentality.
A lot of Democrats are "anxious and cautiously optimistic," said Angela Lang, founder and executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Milwaukee.
“Especially given 2016 when there wasn't the same amount of energy, I think it’s clear Dems learned lessons about the importance of Milwaukee and Wisconsin as a whole,” she said.
In another late outreach effort targeting Black voters, former President Bill Clinton campaigned with local faith leaders on Thursday night at The Institute for the Preservation of African-American Music and Arts in Milwaukee.
Hillary Clinton did not campaign in Wisconsin in 2016 after her primary loss, a mistake that Harris is not repeating. The Friday stop will be her ninth in the state as a presidential candidate and her fifth to Milwaukee or its suburbs. It will be Trump's 10th stop in Wisconsin, not counting the Republican National Convention, which was held in Milwaukee, and his third visit to the Milwaukee area.
Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming said that Harris having to return to the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee shows she is on defense while Trump is on offense.
The Milwaukee Election Commission estimated on Thursday that it expects to receive more than 100,000 ballots by Election Day. But that lags early vote returns from the conservative suburbs.
“The question no one knows the answer to is who those voters are voting for,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. “My feeling is that there may be some pleasant surprises for Harris.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Center for Voter Information sends out mailers tracking voter history
Mailboxes across the country are overflowing with political ads and flyers.
There is one piece of mail that is getting negative attention from voters of all parties.
Some voters called the mailer creepy and an attempt to “vote shame” the public.
It’s estimated that right now there are millions in circulation, and they all come from the same company: the Center for Voter Information.
In the mailer, the center is telling voters that they’re being watched and tracked.
The letter includes details that some think are a little too personal. For example, whether people voted in the past. Plus, it shares whether a resident’s neighbors voted too.
The group says they just want to motivate voters. However, the letter’s end is kinda eerie.
It says they’ll review your records and determine whether you did indeed vote by Tuesday.
“I assume again that their effect is they want to just try to encourage people to vote, either to request a ballot and turn it back in or to show up on election day," University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett said. "I think that’s a noble objective. But sometimes the way these letters read, they seem a little creepy to some people. Certainly, my own daughter was a little freaked out by it."
There are directions at the bottom of the mailer that tell recipients how to be removed from future mailings.
The information included in the letters is public record — anyone can search someone’s party affiliation and whether they voted in a specific election.
