FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. August 20, 2024 and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., August 15, 2024 are seen in a combination of file photographs. REUTERS/Marco Bello, Jeenah Moon/File Photo
GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan (Reuters) -Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are barreling through the battleground state of Michigan on Friday, where opinion polls show the U.S. presidential candidates are essentially tied just 18 days before the Nov. 5 election.
Former President Trump is due to speak in Auburn Hills, a city in Oakland County, north of Detroit, which President Joe Biden won by a comfortable margin in 2020. He'll also return to Detroit - Michigan's largest city - for a rally around 7 p.m. (2300 GMT), after saying on Oct. 10 that the rest of the United States would turn into Detroit if Harris won.
Vice President Harris will speak in Grand Rapids, the heart of more conservative western Michigan, before heading east to Lansing and then Oakland County.
The Midwestern state has about 8.4 million voters and would bring the winner 15 Electoral College votes out of the 270 needed to win, which in several scenarios would be a decisive number. Harris and Trump are battling fiercely for the state's Arab American, senior, union and working-class voters.
Both have sharpened their attacks in recent days.
On Friday, Trump falsely told the "Fox & Friends" program that Harris is Marxist and renewed his attacks on her intelligence.
"I don't think she knows where she is. She's a low-IQ person. She's not smart," he said. Harris on Friday said reports that Trump was skipping interviews and another presidential debate because he was exhausted raised questions about his fitness for office.
"It should be a concern. If he can't handle the rigors of the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?" she told reporters before a rally in Grand Rapids. "That's a legitimate question."
On Thursday, Harris said Trump was "gaslighting" the American public about the deadly attack by his loyalists on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump recently called the assault a "day of love."
In Michigan and other crucial battleground states, either Harris or Trump holds a razor-thin margin over the other , according to public and internal campaign polls. That's worrying Democrats.
Trump won Michigan by 11,000 votes in 2016. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by 155,000 votes.
Harris is shifting the strategy of her whirlwind campaign to win over more Republicans and men of all races. She's also enlisting popular former first lady Michelle Obama, who will campaign for the vice president in Michigan on Oct. 26.
Nationally, Harris' edge has narrowed from a late September lead of 7 percentage points over Trump to just 3 points, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows, with high food and rent prices still worrying Americans and Trump amplifying fears related to migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with increasingly extreme rhetoric.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)
