RALEIGH, NC – A presidential campaign that has gone through a murder trial, an incumbent president being kicked off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts is coming down to a final sprint in several states on the eve of the election.

Kamala Harris is spending Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. The vice president and Democratic nominee will tour working-class areas, including Allentown, and conclude with a late-night rally in Philadelphia that includes Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

Donald Trump kicked off four rallies in three states, addressing a roaring crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he declared: “With North Carolina, we always get there.”

“It’s ours to lose,” he said.

Trump talked about his tough immigration policies and ticked off some of his complaints about his Democratic opponents. He also appeared to be referencing the video that almost sank his 2016 campaign, as he expressed his amazement at two giant mechanical arms grabbing Elon Musk’s reusable rocket – “like grabbing your baby beautiful”.

“See, I’ve gotten a lot better. Years ago, I would have said otherwise. But I learned,” Trump said, drawing laughter from the crowd. “I would have been a little more risky.”

The late stages of the 2016 campaign saw the “Access Hollywood” tape surface, in which Trump boasted about grabbing women by their genitals.

Trump has follow-up events in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh, both of which Harris is also visiting. The Republican candidate and former president ends his campaign as he did the first two with a late-night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

There were plenty of empty seats at the JS Dorton Arena, a 5,000-seat venue with additional floor seating in the Raleigh arena, where Trump began his campaign day. One attendee, Ebony Coots, said she regretted voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and now supports Trump — but is worried about Tuesday’s election.

“You know, I might actually try to go to another planet,” said Coots, a 48-year-old delivery driver, if Harris won.

About 77 million Americans have already voted early. Any result on election day will have a historic outcome.

A Trump victory would make him the first president to be indicted and convicted of a misdemeanor after his hush money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other pending federal investigations against him. Trump would also become only the second president in history to win non-consecutive terms in the White House, following Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, the first black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office — four years after she broke the same barriers to national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second-in-command.

The vice president rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set in motion his withdrawal from the race — one of a series of convulsions that have hit this year’s campaign.

Trump narrowly escaped an alleged assassin’s bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September, when a gunman pointed a rifle while Trump was playing golf at one of his Florida courses.

Harris, 60, presented himself as a generational change from Biden, 81, and Trump, who is 78. She emphasized her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion services and has regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris called Trump a threat to democracy and, late in the campaign, even embraced criticism that Trump is accurately described as a “fascist.”

As of Monday, Harris stopped referring to Trump by name, calling him “the other guy” instead. She promises to resolve issues and seek consensus.

Harris campaign chairman Jen O’Malley Dillion said on a call with reporters that withholding Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision for the future”.

At her first stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Harris talked about being a longshot while running for San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how she “used to campaign with my ironing board.”

“I’d go to the front of the grocery store, outside, and pick up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” Harris said, recalling how he taped up his posters . the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “have people talk to me as they walked in and out.”

In Allentown, home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, the vice president will hold a rally with rapper Fat Joe. Later, she visits a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are of Puerto Rican heritage.

The shutdowns come after a cartoon at a recent Donald Trump rally suggested Puerto Rico was a “floating island of trash.”

Standing in line for Harris’ rally in Allentown, Ron Kessler, 54, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for only the second time in his life. Kessler said that for a long time he didn’t vote, believing the country would “vote for the right candidate.”

But “now that I’m older and much wiser, I think it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it’s important to vote for myself and vote for democracy and the country.”

As recently as Sunday, Trump renewed his false claims that the US election was rigged against him, weighed in on violence against journalists and said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 — dark twists that have overshadowed a another anchor of his closing argument. : “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.”

Elections are likely to be decided in seven states. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to see them go back to Biden in 2020. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada add to the Sun Belt area of ​​the presidential battleground map.

Harris’ team has projected his confidence in recent days, pointing to a wide gender gap in early voting data and research showing late-deciding voters broke his path. They also believe in the strength of their campaign infrastructure. This weekend, the Harris campaign had more than 90,000 volunteers help turn out voters — and knocked on more than 3 million doors in battleground states. However, Harris’ aides insisted she remains unfavored.

Trump’s campaign says it also feels confident, arguing that the former president’s populist appeal will attract younger and working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines. The point is that Trump can assemble an atypical Republican coalition even as other traditional blocs of the GOP — particularly college-educated voters — turn more Democratic.