The first ballots in the US election were slated to go out to voters Friday, two months ahead of what looks set to be a nail-biting finish in the race for the White House between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
The battleground state of North Carolina was expected to distribute around 130,000 absentee voting slips, marking the symbolic start of a nationwide process which saw 155 million Americans cast ballots in the bitter 2020 election.
This comes as the already extraordinary race enters a newly tense phase, with Harris and Trump set to hold their first televised debate next Tuesday.
Trump, meanwhile, was expected to hear Friday whether a New York criminal court will delay sentencing in his hush money fraud case to after Election Day. Trump could in theory face jail time but is more likely to receive probation.
North Carolina is among a handful of swing states that Harris and Trump have been crisscrossing as they embark on the most intense phase of an election expected to be decided by razor-thin margins.
Other states will soon follow in mailing out initial batches of ballots, and early in-person voting begins across 47 states as soon as September 20.
Harris’s entry into the contest six weeks ago turbocharged enthusiasm among Democrats, who had been despondent about President Joe Biden’s chances of stopping Trump from recapturing the White House.
Her team announced Friday that it raised $361 million in August, the largest monthly haul of the cycle and nearly triple the Trump team’s figure.
“In just a short time, Vice President Harris’s candidacy has galvanized a history-making, broad, and diverse coalition — with the type of enthusiasm, energy, and grit that wins close elections,” said campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
– ‘Honeymoon’ –
Harris’s ascent has tilted the races for the White House and both chambers of Congress in the direction of Democrats, though all three fights remain close.
She has a two-point lead over Trump in a new nationwide survey of likely voters from Emerson College.
However, polls in the crucial swing states, which decide the balance of power in the US Electoral College system, show Harris up just 0.2 percent overall, a statistical dead heat.
While the leads Trump built over Biden have evaporated, his campaign still sees several paths to victory and believes it has more support on key election issues like the economy, immigration and crime.
Trump’s aides argue that Harris’s “honeymoon” with voters has overstated support that is beginning to erode as her policy views come into focus.
Just under a quarter of voters cast their ballot in person before Election Day in the 2020 election, which came during the Covid-19 pandemic, while 45 percent said they voted by absentee or mail-in ballot.
The plan in North Carolina was to begin mailing out voting slips first thing Friday, but a judge ordered a halt until midday to give independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr time to appeal a ruling refusing to take his name off the ballot following his late withdrawal.
– ‘Save our country’ –
Kennedy’s suspension of his fringe campaign was a reminder of how rapidly events could change the calculus in the campaign.
His support has fallen away precipitously — from 13.8 percent in July to five percent when he dropped out, according to RealClearPolitics — but even a few hundred of his supporters could swing an election in a particularly close state.
Other wrinkles on the path to November 5 include Trump’s criminal cases.
In addition to the New York hush money case, in which he was convicted of 34 felonies, Trump faces multiple upcoming hearings in a Washington federal court on charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election result.
Trump began Friday in New York, where he was due to attend an appeal hearing in a civil case in which he was ordered to pay $5 million damages for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll.
He was due to address the media before traveling to North Carolina to address an influential police union. On Saturday he will hold a rally in Wisconsin.
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