Kamala Harris Changes Election Strategy in Final Stretch

With just a day to go before Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has shifted its strategy, to end on a “fully positive” note.
The vice president and Democratic presidential nominee spoke at four stops across battleground Michigan on Sunday without mentioning her Republican opponent Donald Trump by name, according to The Associated Press.
Harris has repeatedly called out Trump by name since entering the presidential race after President Joe Biden dropped his bid for reelection in July. She called him “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power” while speaking at The Ellipse last week.
But on Sunday, she sought to contrast her optimism with Trump’s rhetoric without invoking his name.
“We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division,” Harris said during a rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “We are done with that. And we are exhausted with it…. America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward where we see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor.”
A Harris campaign official confirmed to Newsweek that Harris’ rally on Sunday was the first since she entered the presidential race where she did not mention Trump by name, and was part of an effort to end the campaign on a “fully positive” note.
The Trump campaign has been contacted for comment via email.
“The strategy is Campaigning 101: End on a positive note,” Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek. “Harris is reminding voters why they should vote for her and not necessarily against Trump. She knows that everyone knows who she’s running against.”
It comes as Harris’ campaign received several polling boosts over the weekend.
Harris was ahead in the key swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to a “mega poll” by London-based polling company Focaldata. The results of the poll, which surveyed more than 31,000 voters across the country for a new type of survey called “MRP,” were reported by Politico.
The final New York Times/Siena College poll released on Sunday showed Harris with marginal leads in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin and Trump ahead in Arizona. Harris and Trump are tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to the poll, which surveyed 7,879 likely voters in the seven states from October 24 to November 2 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 points in each state.
Meanwhile, a new poll from one of the nation’s most trusted pollsters found Harris leading Trump in deep-red Iowa, a state that Trump easily carried in both 2016 and 2020.
The poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom found Harris three points ahead—47 percent to 44 percent—in Iowa. The poll was conducted among 808 likely voters between October 28 to 31 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
Harris has a razor-thin lead in national polls—47.9 percent over Trump’s 47 percent—as of Sunday, according to FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate of national polls.