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The 2024 election cycle has come down to its final fortnight. Every moment of campaign time takes on huge importance, especially considering how close the presidential race appears to be. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris need to make every minute count in the places where this election will be won or lost.
And as much as I love my adopted state of Texas, this ain’t one of those places.
So why will Kamala Harris spend a day in Houston on Friday? Especially for an event that doesn’t have a venue yet?
Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Houston Friday to cap off the first week of early voting in Texas with a campaign rally.
She will attend a rally from 3 to 8 p.m. at a location to be announced in Houston that day, according to an events page seeking RSVPs made public on Tuesday. .
While the margins of victory have narrowed in recent presidential contests statewide, Texas is still not considered a swing state. Trump won Texas by 5.6% in 2020. But, Harris County has turned into the biggest generator of Democratic votes in the state. Biden won Harris County by 13 points in 2020.
Aaaaaaaand . so? Harris may get a slight boost in Harris County by showing up here, but that won’t translate to support in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin — three states she has to win to beat Trump. Texas not only isn’t a battleground state, it’s not even close. We haven’t seen a ton of polling here in the presidential race because Texas will be reliably red, but every poll aggregated in RCP shows Trump ahead outside of the margins of error. His RCP average right now is +5.7 and 51/45.3, right in line with his +5.8 margin of victory over Biden in 2020.
Earlier in the cycle, we have seen both candidates show up outside of the battleground states. Trump went to both New York and California last month, but those were likely primarily for fundraising, with rallies scheduled around them. Harris has done the same, which makes sense for the same reason. (Trump will be in New York again this week, too, but he’s already leading the polling and may hope to shore up Republican incumbents in the House.) But fundraising is irrelevant right now, especially for Harris, who has a significant money advantage already.
