NEW YORK (AP) — The 2024 presidential race heads into its final weekend with Democrats Kamala Harris and republican donald trump caught in a very thin competition.

In this last stage of the campaign, every day counts. And while few voters could change their minds this late in a typical election, there is a sense that what happens in these final days could change the votes.

Harris and Trump are crisscrossing the country to rally voters in key states. They are trying, with varying degrees of success, to stay focused on a clear and concise final message. At the same time, each party is investing enormous resources to increase turnout in the latest early voting period. And in these critical days, the flow of misinformation is intensifying.

Here’s what we’ll see the last weekend before Election Day, which is Tuesday:

Where will Harris and Trump be?

You only have to look at the candidates’ agendas this weekend to know where this election will likely be decided.

Please note that hours can, and likely will, change without notice. But on Saturday, Trump is expected to make separate appearances in North Carolina with a surprising stop in Virginia in between.

No Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina since barack obama in 2008, although since then it has been decided by less than 3 points in all elections. Trump’s decision to spend Saturday there suggests Harris has a real chance in the state. But Trump is also trying to convey confidence by stopping in Virginia, a state that has been safely in the Democratic column since 2008.

There is perhaps no more important swing state than Pennsylvania, where Trump is expected to campaign on Sunday. But he also has another appearance scheduled in North Carolina, as well as Georgia, another Southern state that has leaned Republican for nearly three decades—that is, until joe biden Four years ago it surpassed it by less than half a percentage point.

Harris, meanwhile, is expected to campaign in North Carolina and Georgia on Saturday, in a sign that her team is sensing a genuine opportunity in the South. He plans to make several stops in Michigan on Sunday and move to a Democratic-leaning state in the so-called Blue Wall, where his allies believe he is vulnerable.

Do they stay on message?

Trump’s campaign leadership wants voters to focus on one key question as they prepare to cast their ballot, and it’s the same question they open every rally with: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

Harris’ team wants voters to think about something else: Do they trust Trump or Harris to put the nation’s interests before their own?

Whichever candidate can keep voters focused most effectively on his closing arguments in the coming days could ultimately win the presidency. However, both candidates are off to a challenging start.

Trump opens the weekend still facing the consequences of his recent Demonstration in New York City in which a comedian described Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of garbage.” Things got tougher for Trump on Thursday night after he raised the possibility that his Republican rival Liz Cheney death by gunshot.

It was exactly the kind of incendiary comment his allies want him to avoid at this critical moment.

Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is still working to steer the conversation away from President Biden. comments at the beginning of the week who described Trump supporters as “trash.” The Associated Press reported late Thursday that White House press officials altered the official transcript of the call in question, drawing objections from federal workers who document such comments for posterity.

The spotlight of presidential politics always shines brightly. But perhaps it will burn more intensely this final weekend, leaving the campaigns with virtually no margin for error. In what both sides believe is a truly volatile election, any missteps in the final hours could prove decisive.

How will the gender gap develop?

Trump’s graphic attack on Cheney was especially problematic given his allies’ growing concerns about women voters.

Polls show a significant gender gap in the race, with Harris generally rating much better among women than Trump. Part of that may be the result of the Republican Party’s fight to restrict abortion rights, which has been disastrous for Trump’s party. But Trump’s divisive leadership has also alienated women.

Heading into the weekend, Trump allies, including conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, are warning that many more women than men appear to be voting early. While it’s impossible to know who they’re voting for, Kirk clearly thinks it’s bad news for Trump.

Trump is not helping their cause. A day before his violent rhetoric about Cheney, the former Republican president caused a sensation by insisting that he would protect women whether they like it or not.

Harris, who would be the country’s first female president, said Trump does not understand the rights of women “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”

It remains to be seen whether the Democrat’s argument can carry the day on this packed weekend. But Harris’ team believes there is still a significant portion of persuadable voters. And they say the undecided are disproportionately Republican-leaning suburban women.

What about early voting?

More than 66 million People have already voted in the 2024 election, representing more than a third of the total number of people who voted in 2020.

They include many more Republicans compared to four years ago, largely because Trump has backed off his insistence that his supporters must cast their ballots in person on Election Day.

And while early in-person voting has ended in many states, there will be a big push for early voting in the final hours in at least three key states as campaigns work to rack up as many votes as possible before polling day. elections.

That includes Michigan, where early in-person voting extends through Monday. Voters in Wisconsin can vote in person from early to Sunday, although it varies by location. And in North Carolina, voters have until 3 p.m. Saturday to cast their early ballot in person.

The early voting period officially ended Friday in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, questions remain about the Trump campaign’s vote-getter operation, which relies heavily on well-funded and inexperienced outside groups, including a group largely funded by billionaire Elon Musk who facing new questions about their practices.

Harris’ campaign, by contrast, is running a more traditional get-out-the-vote operation that has more than 2,500 paid employees and 357 offices in the battleground states alone.

Will misinformation intensify?

Trump’s allies appear to be escalating baseless allegations of election fraud, and some are being amplified by Trump himself. He has spent months sowing doubt about the integrity of the 2024 election should he lose, just as he did four years ago.

Their baseless accusations are becoming more specific, in some cases, as wild claims begin to appear on social media.

Earlier this weekTrump claimed on social media that York County, Pennsylvania, had “received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT voter registration forms and mail-in ballot applications from a group of third parties.” He also singled out Lancaster County, which he claimed had been “caught with 2,600 fake ballots and forms, all written by the same person. Really bad ‘stuff.'”

Trump was referring to investigations into possible fraud related to voter registration applications. Application discovery and investigation provides evidence that the system is working as it should.

The Republican candidate has also raised unfounded claims about foreign votes and non-citizen voting, and has suggested, without evidence, that Harris could have access to some type of privileged and secret information about the election results.

Expect these types of claims to increase, especially on social media, in the coming days. And remember that a broad coalition of top government and industry officials, many of them Republicans, concluded that the 2020 election was the “safest” in US history“.

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AP journalists Jill Colvin and Michelle Price in New York; and Zeke Miller and Will Weissert in Washington contributed.