Kamala Harris turns to Beyoncé and Obama as Trump sees a surge in momentum and a lead in national polls

Kamala Harris fans walked out of her star-studded rally early on Thursday night with just 11 days until the election and polls showing the tide turning to Donald Trump.

The rivals in the presidential race campaigned in battleground states to make their final pleas to undecided voters in what is shaping up to be one of the closest elections in history.

A record-breaking 29 million people have already cast ballots either in-person early or by mail in a campaign that will go down to the wire.

The vice president is bringing in political powerhouses and celebrities to help her with her closing argument. Beyoncé Knowles is scheduled to perform alongside her in Texas on Friday.

But her blockbuster line-up of Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee weren’t enough to convince hundreds of supporters to stay for her speech in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Democrat took the stage an hour late in the battleground state to claim Trump wants to be a dictator if he gets back into the White House and bring up allegations he wanted his generals to be like Adolf Hitler’s.

After Springsteen played ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and portrayed Trump as a wannabe tyrant, Harris carried on her recent strategy of directly attacking her opponent and suggesting he will run a fascist administration.

But members of the crowd headed to the exits as she spoke, wrapping up a day that showed the cliffhanger presidential election could be shifting away from her.

A win in Georgia is critical for either candidate on a path to winning the presidential election on November 5.

Polls show the race is essentially a coin-toss, with Trump and Harris separated by the smallest of margins in the seven states that will decide who wins.

But on Thursday, seven polls showed the Republican has the momentum in the final stretch of the campaign.

Trump took the stage in Arizona – another critical swing state – just before Harris and accused her of turning the United States into a ‘garbage can’ because of her open border policies that led to a historic surge in migrants crossing from Mexico.

The former president described the U.S. as a human ‘dumping ground’, hours after polls showed he had edged ahead of Harris nationwide for the first time.

A Wall Street Journal poll released on Thursday shows the Republican presidential nominee with a three point edge nationally over the vice president.

The poll has Trump 47 percent and Harris at 45 percent among registered voters. That’s a reversal of the polling by the Wall Street Journal in August.

In the CNBC All-America Economic Survey, Trump also leads by 48 percent to 46 percent.

In the seven battleground states likely to decide the election, the CNBC poll shows Trump taking a lead 48 percent to Harris’ 47 percent among voters.

In that poll, economic issues remain the biggest concern for voters. When it comes to prioritizing inflation, the economy and the needs of the middle class, Trump has a strong advantage.

The poll found 42 percent of voters said they would be better off financially if Trump wins compared to just 24 percent who said the same if Harris wins.

Another 29 percent said their financial situation will not change no matter who wins the White House.

Late Thursday night, an Emerson College poll showed Harris was only ahead of Trump by three points in New Hampshire – a state she is expected to win comfortably.

The Emerson College survey has Harris at 50 percent and Trump at 47 percent, with two percent of Granite State voters saying they would vote for ‘someone else’.

The result is alarming for Harris who is projected in many models to win the state.

‘Harris’ margin among women is similar to that of Biden in 2020 — however, male voters have shifted about two points toward Trump’ Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said.

‘In addition, Harris is underperforming Biden’s 2020 support among independent voters, who break for Harris by 13 points, but broke for Biden by about double that amount.’

But there are still millions of Americans still to vote and the margins are razor thin.

CNN senior data analyst Harry Enten said on Thursday that there is a high probability one of the candidates could sweep all of the swing states in a ‘blowout’. 

On Thursday night after Obama spoke, Harris took the stage, but her usual walk-on song did not play leaving the 60-year-old to enter without the same energy seen at other rallies.

While the vast majority of attendees in the stadium that holds 15,000 stayed, dozens of people were spotted exiting the bleachers while she spoke.

Harris hugged Obama upon entering and recalled going to Springfield, Illinois seventeen years ago to support Obama’s candidacy for president at the top of her speech. She said his support and friendship means the world.

The vice president also vowed to win the election and borrowed a phrase from Obama’s own successful campaign declaring ‘yes we can’ as the crowd chanted back the rallying cry used on the 2008 trail.

Before Harris took the stage, Obama delivered his own speech similar to the one the former Democratic president has been giving all across the country.

He warned that Trump acts ‘so crazy’ people have become used to it and issued a stark warning about the ex-president. He called him ‘loony’ and a ‘wanna be king.’

Obama pointed out that Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly recently claimed in an interview Trump said he wanted his generals to be like Hitler’s generals.

Obama said a rule of thumb is ‘don’t say you want to do anything like Hitler’ calling it ‘just good political advice.’

The former president praised General Mark Milley and General John Kelly who have come out against the former GOP president as serious people.