Harris and Trump exchange views on the treatment of women

US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump clashed over how women should be treated in society as they battled for votes on Thursday in Arizona and Nevada, two politically contentious states in the Southwest.

Polls show Harris, the Democratic nominee, and Trump, the Republican nominee, virtually tied in both states. Arizona and Nevada are among seven closely contested states in the 50-state country that will likely decide the national outcome of next Tuesday's election.

In the other 43, polls show either Trump or Harris with a decisive or comfortable lead.

Appeals to Latino voters are at the heart of campaigns in both Arizona and Nevada. Trump won Arizona in his successful 2016 presidential campaign but lost it to President Joe Biden in 2020. Democrats won Nevada in both elections.

Migrants crossing the Arizona border into the United States from Mexico are at the center of political debate in the state. Trump has promised to complete the border wall that he began during his White House tenure from 2017 to 2021. He has also vowed to round up and deport illegal migrants living in the U.S. while accusing Harris of being weak in controlling the flow of migrants.

Harris has said she will seek to pass legislation requiring stricter asylum rules at U.S. entry points to stem the tens of thousands of migrants entering the United States. She supports an immigration bill drafted by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators that Trump accused Republican lawmakers of killing earlier this year.

Pop icon Jennifer Lopez will join Harris on stage at a rally in Las Vegas, the US gambling mecca, on Thursday evening.

Trump has scheduled an interview in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and a rally in neighboring Nevada.

Harris and Trump met in person only once in a debate, but they traded insults and taunts every day on rally stages, in campaign ads and over the airwaves.

Their latest argument is about the treatment of women.

Trump said at a rally in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin on Wednesday that he would protect American women “whether the women like it or not.”

He called the remark paternal, but it reminded his critics of his history of misogynistic comments and a civil lawsuit in which he was held liable for sexually abusing a New York writer in the 1990s.

Trump told his supporters that his advisers had urged him to stop proclaiming his desire to protect women, saying they called it “inappropriate.”

But he told rally participants: “I said, 'Well, I'm going to do it whether the women like it or not.' I will protect her.'”

Polls show Harris with a large lead among female voters; Among men, Trump is essentially the leader.

Harris quickly responded to Trump's remark, writing on that he did not understand “her rights and her ability to make decisions about her own life.”

Almost 62 million people have already voted at polling stations or by postal vote. More than 155 million voted in the 2020 election, about two-thirds of them early or by postal vote and a third of them on official election day.

The importance of battleground states like Arizona, Nevada and the five others cannot be overstated.

U.S. presidential elections are decided not by the national popular vote, but by the Electoral College, which converts the election into 50 state-by-state contests, with 48 states awarding all of their electoral votes to the winner in that state. Nebraska and Maine allocate their votes according to both statewide and congressional district vote counts.

The number of electoral votes in each state is based on population, so the largest states have the greatest impact on the overall national outcome. The winner needs 270 of the 538 electoral votes to clinch the presidency.

Polls show either Harris or Trump with significant or comfortable leads in 43 states, enough to reach 200 electoral votes or more each. Unless there is an upset in one of those states, the winner will be determined in the remaining seven states where both Harris and Trump have held frequent rallies and all but ignored the rest of the country for campaign stops.

The polls in the seven states are slightly within the statistical margins of error, so the result is in doubt in all seven states.