Gaza, the voting gender gap, and whether Harris can really win over Republicans

Harris is trying to put together a disparate coalition of voters through the minefield of 2024’s gender divisions and Israel’s war in the Middle East

Donald Trump watches as a video of his opponent, Kamala Harris, is played onscreen at his rally in Reno, Nevada, on October 11 (Getty Images)

Will Kamala Harris lose Michigan because of her refusal to separate herself from Joe Biden on Gaza? Will she win enough Republicans elsewhere? Will women be Donald Trump’s downfall?

We’ll know the answers in two weeks. Welcome to the final stretch.

This weekend will mark the beginning of the last full week of campaigning for the election cycle. And it’s still anyone’s ballgame, thanks to the above factors pulling specific parts of the electorate in different, opposing directions.

Just over one week from Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is leading with one of the most sizable advantages among women voters in recent history. Trump’s lead with men may be even larger. The final NYT/Siena College poll of the race was released Friday, and shows a stark gender gap separating Harris from Trump among voters nationally: The Republican candidate leads his Democratic rival with male voters, 53 percent to 39 percent, while Harris leads with women, 53 percent to 41 percent. Harris also leads with every age group except 45-64 year olds.

Trump holds a slight edge in the national poll, though well within the margin of error. It’s tough to see which campaign is now moving the numbers in a significant way.

There are positive signs in the polling for both candidates. The only polls showing Harris up over Trump in Michigan have come out within the last couple weeks, and a handful from this month also show her up in North Carolina, a state that would represent a major get for her campaign. Trump continues to hold a lead in Arizona, but the race is now tight there as well. One poll shows Harris up in Georgia; others suggest Trump still leads her there.

It’s coming down to a battle of key constituencies in the final days. With the war in Gaza (and US support for Israel) still dominating the national news headlines, Harris is playing a careful game as she targets specific voters. With polls showing her in deep trouble with Arab-American voters, a major voter demographic in Michigan, she’s headed back to the state on Monday to shore up support there.

At the same time, her campaign is making a major investment to chip away at Trump’s support from Republicans as the race comes to a head. Campaigning alongside Liz Cheney in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Harris is headed back to the region with new endorsements from Fred Upton, a Republican former congressman from Michigan, and the current Republican mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin, too.

Democrats, seeing an opening, have focused much of their rhetoric on highlighting the danger they say Trump poses to the future of American democracy, buoyed by new reporting this week revealing that John Kelly, Trump’s own chief of staff, saw him as an admirer of fascism and even Adolf Hitler. Kelly joins a number of retired military officials who have denounced the former president as a would-be strongman dictator, and Democrats are capitalizing to drive defections from moderate Republican voters — not just the “#NeverTrump” crowd.

If Harris pulls off a victory on November 5 or the days following, the vice president’s campaign will be remembered for pulling together the most disparate coalition of voters in recent memory. But if she comes up short, her loss could ignite another civil war between moderates and progressives in her party, with both trading accusations of the other abandoning the party’s core principles.