With less than a week to go before the Presidential Election, campaigns are facing tough choices.
Democrats weren’t happy with their choices.
And Kamala Harris got some bad news in this pivotal battleground state.
Kamala Harris cuts ad spending in North Carolina
North Carolina is the one state that Donald Trump carried in 2020 that’s in play this year.
Polls show there is a margin of error in the Tar Heel State as the RealClearPolitics polling average has Donald Trump holding a one point lead over Kamala Harris.
The polls are one thing.
But the early vote numbers are also particularly promising as Republicans hold a 35,000 vote lead on ballots returned in the early voting period.
That’s an unheard of lead for Republicans.
Time and money are a campaign’s most valuable assets.
And in the closing days of a race, campaigns confront hard decisions on both fronts.
In North Carolina, Kamala Harris’ handlers canceled $2 million in television ad buys to retrench the campaign completely around the capitol city of Raleigh.
“According to ad tracking firm AdImpact, the Harris-Walz presidential campaign has changed much of its remaining ad spending in North Carolina in the last week of the election, pulling millions of dollars worth of ads from the major North Carolina media markets. This comes a day before Harris is scheduled to campaign in the capital city of Raleigh, the only North Carolina media market where she is leading the Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump . . . North Carolina is almost two weeks into early voting and seeing significant upticks in turnout among registered Republicans and a drop among registered Democrats. More than three million votes have already been cast in the election,” The Carolina Journal reports.
The Trump campaign trolls Kamala Harris
The Trump campaign is looking to expand the map in the final week of the campaign.
Trump scheduled a rally in blue Virginia the Saturday before the election.
Senior advisor Chris LaCivita needled Kamala Harris on social media, posting that her campaign is pulling money out of North Carolina to try and reinforce neighboring Virginia.
“@KamalaHarris giving up on North Carolina..pulling money out. Maybe to drop in Virginia to try and stop the slide?” LaCivita wrote on X.
When campaigns pull money off a state, it’s because their internal polls show them losing with no chance of making a comeback.
Kamala Harris pulling her television ads except in a major city is a sign her campaign is struggling to hold the Biden coalition together and that her handlers are more concerned about sluggish base turnout – specifically among black voters – than appeal to suburban swing voters.
Confident campaigns go on offense, and struggling campaigns play defense.
The body language of the two campaigns in the final week of the campaign tells Americans just as much – if not more – than the polls about what Donald Trump and Kamala Harris think about the trajectory of the 2024 race.
