NEW YORK — The 2024 presidential contest is hurtling into its final weekend with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a razor-thin contest.

In this final phase of the campaign, every day counts. While few voters can change their minds this late in a typical election, there is a sense that the events of these final days could change the vote.

Harris and Trump are traveling the country to rally voters in key states. They try – with varying degrees of success – to focus on a clear and concise closing message. At the same time, both parties are investing large amounts of resources to increase turnout during the latest early voting period. And in these critical days, the flow of misinformation intensifies.

Here’s what we’ll be watching in the final weekend before Election Day, which is on Tuesday:

Where will Harris and Trump be?

You only have to look at the candidates’ schedules this weekend to know where this election will likely play out.

Be aware that schedules can and will likely change without notice. But on Saturday, Trump is expected to make a separate appearance in North Carolina, with a surprising stop in Virginia in between.

No Democratic presidential candidate has carried North Carolina since Barack Obama in 2008, but every election since has been decided by a margin of less than 3 points. Trump’s decision to spend Saturday there shows Harris has a real opportunity in the state. However, Trump is also trying to reassure by visiting the state of Virginia, which has been on the side of the Democratic Party since 2008.

There is perhaps no swing state more important than Pennsylvania, where Trump is expected to campaign on Sunday. But he is scheduled to make another appearance in North Carolina, in addition to Georgia, another Southern state that has leaned Republican for nearly three decades — that is, until Joe Biden pulled it off by less than half a percentage point four years ago.

Meanwhile, Harris is expected to campaign in North Carolina and Georgia on Saturday; This is a sign that his team senses a real opportunity in the South. He plans to make multiple stops in Michigan on Sunday and move into a Democratic-leaning state called the Blue Wall, where his allies believe he is vulnerable.

Do they stay on message?

Trump’s campaign leadership wants voters to focus on one key question as they prepare to vote, opening each of his rallies with the same question: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

Harris’ team wants voters to consider another: Do they trust Trump or Harris to put the country’s interests ahead of their own?

The candidate who can more effectively keep voters focused on the closing arguments in the coming days may ultimately win the presidency. But both candidates are off to a rocky start.

Trump begins the weekend still facing the fallout from his New York City rally, where a comedian described Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of garbage.” Things got even tougher for Trump late Thursday after his Republican rival Liz Cheney raised the possibility of him dying in a shooting.

This was exactly the kind of provocative comment he wanted his allies to avoid at this critical moment.

Harris’ campaign, meanwhile, is trying to steer the conversation away from President Biden’s comments earlier in the week describing Trump supporters as “trash.” The Associated Press reported late Thursday that White House press officials changed the official text of that call, prompting objections from federal employees who document such statements for posterity.

The light of presidential politics always burns brightly. But perhaps this final weekend will burn brightest, leaving campaigns with almost no margin for error. If both sides believe a real election will fail, any misstep in the final hours could be decisive.

How will the gender gap play out?

Trump’s graphic attack on Cheney was particularly problematic, given his allies’ growing concerns about female voters.

Polls show a significant gender gap in the contest, with Harris scoring much better than Trump among women overall. Some of this may be the result of the GOP’s fight to restrict abortion rights, which has been disastrous for Trump’s party. But Trump’s divisive leadership has also alienated women.

Heading into the weekend, Trump’s allies, including conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, are warning that far more women than men are voting early. While it’s impossible to know who they voted for, Kirk clearly believes this is bad news for Trump.

It doesn’t help the Trump cause. The day before his fierce rhetoric about Cheney, the Republican former president caused a stir by saying he would protect women “whether they like it or not.”

Harris, who will be the country’s first female president, said Trump does not understand women’s rights to “decide about their own lives, including their own bodies.”

Time will tell whether the Democrat’s argument will succeed on this packed weekend. But Harris’ team believes there is still a significant amount of persuadable voters. And they say the undecided are disproportionately Republican-leaning suburban women.

What happens in early voting?

More than 66 million people have already voted in the 2024 elections; This is more than a third of the total number of people who voted in 2020.

They include significantly more Republicans than four years ago, largely because Trump has backtracked on his insistence that his supporters must vote on Election Day.

While in-person early voting has ended in many states, there will be a big push for early voting in the final hours in at least three key states as campaigns try to tally as many votes as possible before Election Day.

This includes Michigan, where in-person early voting continues through Monday. Voters in Wisconsin can vote early in person as early as Sunday, although this varies by location. In North Carolina, voters have until 3 p.m. on Saturday to vote early in person.

The early voting period officially ended Friday in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, questions remain about the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation, which relies heavily on outside groups that are well-funded and have little experience; including a group financed largely by billionaire Elon Musk that is facing new questions about its practices.

Harris’ campaign, by contrast, runs a more traditional polling operation with more than 2,500 paid staff and 357 offices in battleground states alone.

Will misinformation increase?

Trump’s allies appear to be stepping up baseless claims of voter fraud, some of which are being amplified by Trump himself. Just as he did four years ago, he spent months sowing doubts about the integrity of the 2024 election should he lose.

In some cases, their false accusations are becoming more apparent as wild claims begin to emerge on social media.

Earlier this week, Trump claimed on social media that York County, Pennsylvania, “received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail Ballot Applications from a third-party group.” He also claimed that Lancaster County was “caught with 2,600 Counterfeit Ballot Stamps and Forms, all written by the same person.” Really bad “stuff.”

Trump was referring to investigations into possible fraud on voter registration applications. Discovery and investigation of applications provide evidence that the system is working as it should.

The Republican candidate also leveled false claims about overseas voting and non-citizen voting, suggesting without evidence that Harris might have access to some sort of secret insider information about the election results.

We expect such claims to increase in the coming days, especially on social media. And remember that a broad coalition of senior government and industry officials, most of them Republicans, found that the 2020 election was the “safest” election in American history.”