Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump held dueling rallies in Wisconsin as polls show the candidates in a dead heat as they push to win the key battleground state next week.
Harris spoke to supporters in Madison on Wednesday night after performances by Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons and Remi Wolf to warm up the “get out the vote” event. Trump’s rally in Ashwaubenon, just outside of Green Bay, was attended by former Green Bay Packers superstar quarterback Brett Favre.
According to the latest poll from Marquette University Law School, Harris and Trump are caught in a near standstill in the Badger State, with the vice president leading 50 percent to 49 percent among 834 registered voters. A poll from AtlasIntel released Tuesday found Trump leading Harris 48.7 percent to 48.1 percent among 1,470 likely voters. Both gaps fall within the polls’ margins of error, meaning the race is essentially tied.
President Joe Biden flipped Wisconsin in 2020 but won by around 20,600 votes, or roughly 0.7 percent of the overall votes cast. According to tracking from 538, Harris leads her Republican opponent by 0.8 points on average across state polls.
Wednesday’s rallies reflected the state of the race. Harris’ event in Madison was held at Alliant Energy Center, which, according to its website, has a maximum capacity of 10,231. Photos of the event appear to show the venue at near capacity while the vice president spoke.
Wall Street Journal reporter Annie Linskey also shared a video to her account on X, formerly Twitter, of the venue before Harris arrived from her campaign stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The clip appears to show that most seats are full while spectators dance to Chappell Roan‘s hit song, “Hot to Go.”
Trump’s event took place at the Resch Center, which, according to its website, holds a maximum of 10,200 people. Photos from the event also show that most seats appeared to be filled as Trump took the stage Wednesday dressed as a garbage man, a reference to Biden’s controversial statement the day before in which he referred to the former president’s supporters as “garbage.”
NBC News reporter Matt Dixon posted videos of Trump’s venue to his X account before the former president took the stage, at one point showing the center about 60 percent full around 6:20 p.m. ET. In a following report, Dixon said that Trump’s rally was not a “sellout” but that more spectators filed in once the event began.
Roughly a half-hour later, Dixon posted a video and said the Resch Center was looking “pretty full.” The video, posted around 6:52 p.m. ET, showed a few empty chairs toward the back of the seating area. Trump took the stage a little after 7:15 p.m.
Harris campaign rapid response adviser, James Singer, posted one of Dixon’s videos to his own X account, writing, “Lotta empty seats from Trump in Wisconsin.” The video in question was taken about an hour before the former president spoke.
The presidential campaigns have exchanged barbs about each other’s rally sizes. Trump has repeatedly inflated the size of his events, and has averaged about 5,600 guests across the 28 rallies from July to mid-August, according to analysis from the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut.
During the same period, Harris appeared at six rallies, averaging about 13,400 spectators per event. The vice president set a crowd record for her campaign on Tuesday while giving her closing arguments at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., which her team said was attended by 75,000.
Newsweek reached out to Trump and Harris’ campaigns via email on Wednesday for comment.
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