Trump will actually make his last campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is where he closed his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
So I guess this is the next-to-last stop.
The New York Times through a small scare into me over the weekend, showing Harris ahead in some of the battleground states (with Trump leading in others).
But as Katie Pavlich notes, the NYT pretty much admits they don't trust their own poll.
The New York Times published their final 2024 presidential election poll on Sunday, just two days ahead of Election Day November 5.
"Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump stayed deadlocked to the finish in the final New York Times/Siena College polls of the 2024 presidential election, though there may be a hint she has ticked up in the final stretch," the New York Times reports. "The race remains essentially even across the seven states likeliest to decide the presidency."
The results show Harris ahead, but there's a big catch: the poll is probably wrong.
"Across these final polls, white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans. That's a larger disparity than our earlier polls this year, and it's not much better than our final polls in 2020 -- even with the pandemic over. It raises the possibility that the polls could underestimate Mr. Trump yet again," the NYT concedes.
The Times also has little confidence in its claims that "late deciders are breaking for Harris:"
"A word of caution: Hypothetically, many of these 'late deciders' might have told a pollster earlier that they were Harris voters -- if only we had called them at the time and asked them to formulate an opinion they hadn't yet made. As a result, the responses to this question don't necessarily explain the shift in the polls -- even if they do align with the trend in this case."
Also over the weekend: The Selzer poll made the preposterous claim that Harris was suddenly up in Iowa -- a traditionally solid-red state that no one else even has as a battleground.
Duane Patterson notes there are reasons to consider this poll pure dumpster trash.
Kamala hasn't set foot in that state as a presidential candidate since dropping out of the 2020 Democratic primary before the Iowa Caucus took place. Iowa voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in 2020, 53.1% to 44.9%, an 8.2% spread. The ideological makeup of Hawkeye voters was R+8.
There were two polls released on Saturday. The first, by Emerson, showed Donald Trump increasing his margin in Iowa over Kamala Harris, surging to a 10.5% lead. An hour later, Ann Selzer reported a survey that Kamala Harris is up 3. That's a 13.5% spread between two polls in the same day. Suffice it to say, one of them is way off.
Emerson disclosed their sample size and makeup, and it reflects close to what the state was in 2020. Selzer's data, on a whole host of subgroups, is a tad off of that.
...
Her poll was leaked to lefty pundits and the Harris campaign three days before dropping. They knew it was coming, and yet Harris, if Iowa is truly in play, didn't divert and make a play to finish Donald Trump off once and for all by boosting her lead outside the margin of error. You have to ask yourself why they wouldn't react and put any resources there at all. Joe Biden is available. The Clintons are available. Gwen Walz, and her hand mixer, are available. And Mark Cuban's dance card suddenly has freed up for some reason. Of course, if Harris were to win Iowa, Trump winning Pennsylvania wouldn't matter if Harris holds onto Michigan and Wisconsin. The reason Harris hasn't scheduled any event in the closing 48 hours in Iowa is because nobody outside of those suffering chronic anti-Trump fevers, believe Iowa has suddenly moved 11 points to the left in the last month.
John Fund calls this poll a "dud outlier." This same poll shows a comfortably-leading Republican incumbent House member suddenly losing by... 16 points!?
Uh, no:
The [Des Moines, I think] Register reports: "Now, voters prefer a Democratic candidate by a 16-point margin in the 1st District, where Democrat Christina Bohannan, a law professor and former state representative, is in a rematch with Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who is seeking her third term."
Miller-Meeks first won her seat with 50.1 percent in 2020, but then defeated Bohannan in 2022 by nearly seven percentage points. It is highly unusual for a non-scandal-ridden incumbent to lose a House seat by 16 points. In the 2022 general election, only nine House incumbents lost.
The RCP average shows Trump leading (if only by a little) in all seven of the battleground states -- and just behind in the newly-added swing states of Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia.
Note that Iowa is only included in this list of "toss-ups" because of that preposterous Selzer poll.
Emerson's final polling shows Trump likely to win with 281 electoral votes. I think if he wins, we're going to at least 312, maybe 322. Whatever gets the job done.