Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump squared off Thursday in do-or-die North Carolina with dueling rallies—and some star power in the Democrat’s camp—as the bitter US presidential race continues to narrow in the home stretch.
As the candidates jostle for supremacy in the handful of battleground states that will decide the November 8 election, two of the biggest prizes on the electoral map, Florida and North Carolina, are now absolute dead heats, according to RealClearPolitics poll aggregates.
North Carolina was suddenly in the eye of the political storm, with the candidates frantically crisscrossing the southeastern state where they are locked at 46.4% apiece, AFP reported.
The candidates’ motorcades even passed one another Thursday on the tarmac at the Raleigh-Durham airport ahead of their rival rallies.
“You’ve got to get everyone you know to come out and vote,” Clinton implored supporters in Raleigh, where she was joined by her one-time primary adversary Senator Bernie Sanders and “Happy” singer Pharrell Williams.
“The best way to repudiate the bigotry and the bluster and the bullying and the hateful rhetoric and discrimination is to show up with the biggest turnout in American history.”
US President Barack Obama shuttled into Florida for fiery rallies aimed at turning out the Democratic base for Clinton in a must-win state for Trump, who is under pressure to snatch battleground states and even poach one or two Democratic strongholds if he is to prevail.
