#US2024: Harris, Trump battle for swing states after fierce first debate

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump return to the campaign trail Thursday, with the Democrat hoping her dominant display in their first presidential debate will boost her chances in the knife-edge US election.

The rivals are heading to crucial battleground states that will decide November’s vote, two days after Harris forced Republican Trump onto the defensive in a fiery clash that drew 67 million viewers across the United States.

But it remains unclear whether the vice president’s punchy performance will turn the dial with less than two months to go in an agonizingly tight race that will be decided by a handful of undecided voters across the country.

Harris, 59, will seek to capitialize on her debate momentum as she heads to North Carolina on Thursday, holding back-to-back rallies in the cities of Charlotte and Greensboro promising a “new way forward.”

Harris has erased a six-point Trump lead over the last month to draw level in North Carolina, where she is aiming to fire up crucial Black and young voters to back her bid to become America’s first woman commander in chief.

Amid media reports of turmoil in his camp over the way Harris succeeded in goading him at the debate, the 78-year-old former president is due onstage in Tucson, Arizona to focus on “our struggling economy.”

Arizona was one of the most bitterly fought states in the 2020 election, with Joe Biden winning there by around 10,000 votes against Trump, and promises to be closely contested again.

Their return to the swing states at the heart of the election came a day after a brief truce when they attended Wednesday’s anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York.

– ‘Missed opportunity’ –

The debate in Philadelphia was a welcome boost for Harris as the honeymoon from her sudden replacement of the aging Biden as Democratic candidate seemed to be wearing off.

Trump insisted it was one of his best debates, but snap polls and even allies disagreed as Harris riled him up with taunts about crowd sizes and his 2020 election loss, then scored points on issues like abortion.

Close Trump ally Senator Lindsay Graham told reporters afterwards that it was a “missed opportunity” while US media reported there was discontent among Trump donors.

But while Harris has erased the lead Trump held in polls, the candidates remain neck and neck and she insists she is the underdog in the White House race.

And America’s deeply polarized politics mean however that big showpiece events like debates rarely move the polls that much — even if it was a disastrous debate against Trump that forced Biden to drop his reelection bid.

Both candidates will keep bashing the battlegrounds in coming days, knowing a few thousand undecided votes in the northeastern “Rust Belt” and the booming southern “Sun Belt” could decide everything.

Harris returns to Pennsylvania, the most crucial and bitterly fought of all the swing states, on Friday for campaign events in Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre before attending an awards dinner Saturday with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Trump will deliver remarks in Las Vegas on Friday on the cost of living, as he targets Nevada, yet another key swing state. He is also due to give a press conference in Los Angeles.

Harris’s running mate Tim Walz will travel to Michigan and Wisconsin from Thursday to Saturday as part of the campaign’s New Way Forward swing state tour.