US election explained: Controversies mar final pitch for president

In the final week of any close election, Presidential campaigns want to ensure they stay on message, attract as many undecided voters as possible and limit negative press.

To the frustration of both campaigns, the final week has been marred by controversies that have shifted the focus away from those final pitches.

Throughout the week, the Trump campaign dealt with the fallout from the Madison Square Garden rally in New York City. It was there that a Trump speaker, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, made disparaging comments about Latinos and Puerto Ricans throughout his appearance.

Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States. Although residents of the Caribbean Islands hold US citizen status, they are not US nationals and thus unable to vote in the election. There are, however, millions of US residents of Puerto Rican descent who are eligible to vote. Democrats have pushed the negative messaging in recent days to drive out the Puerto Rican vote against Trump.

President Biden, meanwhile, dove into the controversy himself. On Tuesday, he called Trump supporters “garbage,” though White House officials and the President have since tried to clarify that the President was referring solely to the Trump speaker, Hinchcliffe.

Vice President Harris has tried to distance herself from her boss’s comments, saying that she does not agree with criticism of Americans based on “who they vote for”. Nonetheless, the controversy has taken some of the spotlight away from Harris’s final campaign message of unity.

Both candidates are making their final pitches to Americans this weekend, and both are casting themselves has the candidate of “change.” With many voters, more than 70 percent, feeling that America is on the “wrong track,” the change factor may be the most important issue in this Presidential race.

The polls remain as close as they can possibly be. According to FiveThirtyEight average data, they show Harris ahead by under one and a half percent — and their average models keep getting narrower.

Via RealClearPolitics, America’s other major polling aggregation source, the RCP Average shows Trump ahead nationally by under half a percentage point. Both models show races that are closer than pre-election data in both 2016 and 2020. The election could be one of the closest in US history, should the data hold true.

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