I followed Harris and Trump round North Carolina. It’s clear who’s going to win
Eric Garcia

I was waiting outside the PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, North Carolina after Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally when my phone started to blow up. Ann Selzer, the vaunted pollster of Iowa, had just dropped a poll showing that Harris was leading Trump by three points in the Hawkeye State — a state Trump had won twice. Everyone in the political world wanted to talk about it.

The Trump campaign knew how bad this news looked. Tony Fabrizio and Tim Saler, the Trump campaign’s data men, released a memo challenging the findings almost immediately. Not long afterwards, a New York Times/Siena College poll showed Harris leading in North Carolina, as well as Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin. If Harris wins all four, she would not even need to win Pennsylvania, Arizona or Michigan in order to win the entire election.

By the time these polls dropped, I may have been shocked at their margin, but I was not surprised that Harris’s campaign had drawn another ace. That’s because I had spent much of Saturday following both presidential candidates around North Carolina on the final weekend of the campaign and it had become clear to me that Harris had all the momentum, while Trump was grasping for straws.

As I waited outside the pavilion for Harris’s rally, a few older white women worried they’d miss Harris speak. After the rally, another — Janice Lewis, who said she came from Davidson, North Carolina — told me that she not only was going to the rally but had already phone-banked for the vice president and had given money to Harris’s campaign.