Last campaign day: Trump focuses on economy, Harris wants to save democracy

A presidential election unlike any other in US history enters its last full day on Monday with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris scrambling for an edge in a contest each portrays as an existential moment for America.

Even after the astonishing blur of events over the last few months, the electorate is divided down the middle, both nationally and in the seven battleground states expected to determine the outcome.

The winner may not be known for days after Tuesday's vote.

Former president Trump, a 78-year-old Republican, survived two assassination attempts weeks after a New York City jury made him the first former US president to be convicted of a felony.

Vice President Harris, 60, was catapulted to the top of the Democratic ticket in July giving her a chance to become the first woman to hold the world's most powerful job after President Joe Biden, 81, dropped his reelection bid under pressure from his party.

For all that turmoil, the contours of the race have changed little and polls have shown Harris and Trump running neck and neck since the summer.

More than 78 million voters have already cast ballots in early voting, but the next two days will provide a critical test of whether Harris' or Trump's campaign does the better job of driving supporters to the polls.

"It's ours to lose," Trump told thousands of supporters gathered in an arena in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the seven battleground states. "If we get everybody out and vote, there’s not a thing they can do."

It was the first of four campaign stops for the former president. Harris, meanwhile, planned to campaign across Pennsylvania, another crucial swing state.

Voters have broken century-old participation records in the last two presidential elections, a sign of the passion that Trump stirs in both political parties.

Both sides are flooding internet platforms and TV and radio stations with a last round of advertisements. Harris' campaign team believes the sheer size of its voter mobilisation efforts is making a difference, and says its volunteers knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors in each of the battleground states this weekend.

"We are feeling very good about where we are right now," campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon told reporters.

The campaign says its internal data shows that undecided voters, particularly women, are breaking in their favour, and says it has seen an increase in early voting among core parts of their coalition, including young voters and voters of colour.

Trump’s campaign has outsourced most of the work to outside groups.

Those groups have been more focused on contacting Trump supporters who do not reliably participate in elections, rather than undecided voters.

Door knockers

By cherry-picking the voters they want to contact, Trump and his team say they are sending door knockers to places where it makes a difference and being smart about spending.

Trump and his allies, who falsely claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud, have spent months laying the groundwork to again challenge the result if he loses. He has promised "retribution" if elected, spoken of prosecuting his political rivals and described Democrats as the "enemy within."

On Sunday, Trump complained about gaps in the bulletproof glass surrounding him as he spoke at a rally, and mused that an assassin would have to shoot through the news media to get him, adding, "I don't mind that so much."

Harris has cast Trump as a danger to democracy, but she sounded optimistic at a Detroit church on Sunday.

"As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states to so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice," Harris said.

"And the great thing about living in a democracy, as long as we can hold on to it, is that we have the power, each of us, to answer that question."

Voters responding to a late October Reuters/Ipsos poll ranked threats to democracy as the second-biggest problem facing the country, just behind the economy.

Trump believes concerns about the economy and high prices, especially for food and rent, will carry him to the White House.

After his Raleigh rally, Trump will campaign in Reading and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Grand Rapids in the swing state of Michigan. He then plans to return to Palm Beach, Florida, to vote and await election results.

Harris will campaign in five Pennsylvania cities, ending the day with a rally in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which will include performances by Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and Oprah Winfrey. She is expected to spend election night at Howard University in Washington, a historically Black college that is her alma mater.

Pennsylvania is the biggest prize among the battleground states, offering 19 of the 270 Electoral College votes a candidate needs to win the presidency.

Nonpartisan US election analysts calculate Harris needs to win about 45 electoral votes on top of the states she is expected to win easily to capture the White House, while Trump would need about 51.