US election: 7 days left – What polls say, what Harris and Trump are up to 

A week before election day, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to “turn the page on fear and divisiveness” at a campaign rally in the battleground state of Michigan.

Meanwhile, former US President Donald Trump, at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, hit out at his critics, including former First Lady Michelle Obama, whom he called “nasty.”

Incendiary devices were set off Monday at two ballot drop boxes – one in Portland and another in nearby Vancouver, Washington – destroying hundreds of ballots in what one official called a “direct attack on democracy”.

Harris and Trump remain neck and neck, with analysts predicting that the election will come down to razor-thin margins in a few key swing states.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily election poll tracker, Harris holds a narrow lead in the national polls, with a 1.4 percentage point advantage as of Tuesday. This marks a slight dip from the previous week when she was ahead by 1.7 percentage points.

Seven key swing states will likely decide the results of this election. Both campaigns have put their focus and efforts there.

Those seven states include Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily poll tracker, Harris retains a narrow lead in Michigan. Meanwhile, Trump holds a slight edge over Harris in Pennsylvania and Nevada and enjoys a more substantial lead in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.

And in Wisconsin, according to FiveThirtyEight, not even a tenth of a percentage point separates the two.

In all seven states, the candidates are within two points of each other, well within the polls’ margins of error, leaving each state a toss-up just days before the final vote.

What was Kamala Harris up to on Sunday?

Harris focused on Michigan, where her main event was an evening campaign rally and concert in Ann Arbor, alongside her running mate Tim Walz and the singer Maggie Rogers.

In 2022, Michigan saw the highest youth voter turnout in the country, with long lines at polling stations on college campuses, during the midterm election. This year, Democrats are trying to rekindle that energy by organising events like the rally held in Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan.

However, about 30 pro-Palestinian protesters confronted Harris at the event. The nominee acknowledged the chants, telling the protesters, “Hey, guys, I hear you.” The group was chanting, “Israel bombs, Kamala pays, how many kids have you killed today?”

After acknowledging the group, Harris said, “On the subject of Gaza, we all want this war to end as soon as possible and to get the hostages out, and I will do everything in my power to make it so.”

Demonstrators shout as Democratic presidential nominee US Vice President Kamala Harris holds a campaign rally and concert in Ann Arbor [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

Before that, she held afternoon campaign events in Saginaw and Macomb County. Harris pitched to working-class voters by emphasising the administration’s efforts to create more factory jobs in the state and her support for labour unions.

Before flying to Michigan, Harris also took a jab at Trump, referencing comments made at Trump’s New York rally the day before, where a comedian referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.”

“[It] really highlighted the point that I’ve been making throughout this campaign,” which is that Trump is “fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country, and it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker”, Harris said.

“There’s a big difference between he and I,” she added.

According to Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, who was reporting from Washington, DC, Harris’s campaign is trying to capitalise on some of the racist language that came out of Trump’s rally.

“This is a way for the Harris campaign to try to persuade those yet-undecided Latino voters, particularly in the swing state of Pennsylvania, to vote for her,” Jordan said.

Pennsylvania is home to more than 450,000 Puerto Ricans, who make up 8 percent of the state’s population. Just 0.2 percentage points separate Trump and Harris there, and Pennsylvania offers 19 Electoral College votes – the most among the swing states.

Harris, right, and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz depart after speaking during a campaign rally [Carlos Osorio/AP]

What was Donald Trump up to on Monday?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was in Georgia. He delivered remarks at the inaugural National Faith Summit 2024 in Powder Springs in the afternoon before holding a rally in Atlanta in the evening.

During his events, Trump dismissed claims that he or his supporters were comparable to Nazis and fascists.

“I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” Trump told the crowd assembled at Georgia Tech. “Now, the way they talk is so disgusting and just horrible.”

“My father – I had a great father, tough guy. He used to always say, never use the word Nazi. Never use that word.”

He then criticised Harris for “using the f-word.” In response to comments from Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, who stated that the former president met the definition of a fascist, Harris expressed her agreement with that assessment. Trump said of Harris: “She’s a fascist, okay? She’s a fascist.”

Trump attends a campaign rally at McCamish Pavilion, in Atlanta [Brendan McDermid/Reuters]

During his event in Atlanta, he also called former First Lady Michelle Obama “nasty” after she condemned his rhetoric over the weekend.

Georgia is an important key swing state. Trump won it in the 2016 presidential race and lost it in 2020.

However, in his Georgia events, Trump was silent on the racist remarks about Puerto Rico at his New York rally.

“But that’s to be expected from the former president,” Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said, reporting from outside the ex-president’s rally in Atlanta.

“Donald Trump works on the principle that you never apologise and you never back down,” he added.

Trump speaks during a campaign event at McCamish Pavillion on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta [Erik Lesser/EPA]

What’s next for the Harris and Trump campaigns?

Harris will speak in Washington, DC

Harris is expected to address a crowd of 20,000 people in Washington, DC, on Tuesday night in what her campaign is billing as the former prosecutor’s “closing argument”.

Harris will speak at the Ellipse, just outside the White House.

That is the same spot where Trump addressed his supporters in his infamous “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, right before a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz – Harris’s running mate – will campaign on Tuesday in Georgia, a key swing state where Trump has been actively rallying his base.

Trump is rallying in Allentown, Pennsylvania

Trump will hold a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is a critical battleground state and both Trump and Harris have made several visits there in recent weeks.

Given the scale of the Puerto Rican vote in the state, and the racist comments at the Trump rally against the US territory, Trump’s campaign visits could become even more important to his bid to win the state, where he marginally leads at the moment, according to poll trackers.

While Puerto Ricans living on the island do not cast ballots in the presidential election, Americans of Puerto Rican origin or ancestry are a key demographic in some swing states.

“Puerto Rico is trash? We are Americans, Donald Trump,” TV host Sunny Hostin said on the popular show The View on Monday. “We vote.” Hostin’s family is from Puerto Rico.

Whoever wins Pennysylvania might well win the White House, analysts believe.

“I’m really looking at Pennsylvania.” Thomas Gift, associate professor of political science in the UCL School of Public Policy, told Al Jazeera.

“Some recent forecasting showed that if Donald Trump can win in Pennsylvania, his odds for winning the White House go up to 96 percent; if Kamala Harris wins Pennsylvania, her odds of winning the White House go up to 91 percent,” Gift added.