Donald Trump and Kamala Harris closed out their campaigns Monday in starkly different moods: The former president, speaking at arenas that were not filled, said that the country was on the brink of ruin, while the vice president promised a more united future as energized supporters chanted alongside her, “We’re not going back.”

In stop after stop, the presidential rivals essentially offered up two competing versions of reality in the final hours before Election Day. Trump repeatedly raised the specter of unchecked immigration and the dangers of Democratic policies to crowds in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, with another stop planned in Michigan.

With a comparatively more optimistic message, Harris opted to crisscross Pennsylvania, which holds 19 electoral votes that could decide the race. At stops in Scranton and Allentown, and evening rallies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Harris talked about bolstering the economy and restoring federal abortion rights. She asserted that Americans were “exhausted” and ready to move on from the politics of the past decade.

“America is ready for a fresh start,” she said to supporters on a college campus in Allentown, “where we see our fellow Americans not as an enemy but as a neighbor.”

About 30 miles to the southwest, in Reading, Trump was portraying immigrants in the country without legal permission as mentally ill criminals and calling those accused of crimes “savages” and “animals.”

He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing during a trip to go hiking. Officials say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.

Both leaned on well-known Hispanic supporters as they tried to rally Latino voters. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., addressed the Reading audience in Spanish. Pro-Harris rapper Fat Joe, who is Puerto Rican, practically shamed his fellow Latinos in Allentown as he asked, “Where’s your pride?”

Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Antonio Cartagena, seemed incensed that the race was so close, and that Trump had shown such strength with voters of color, even after last month’s rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City, where a pro-Trump comedian called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” and spoke of watermelons and a Black person in the audience.

Tight race, busy day

Despite the candidates’ sharply different tones, polls suggest the race remains tight, with the final New York Times/Siena College surveys showing the candidates tied or holding only narrow leads in all of the seven battleground states.

Trump, who hopes to become the first president in more than 120 years to return to office after an electoral defeat, headed to Pittsburgh after his Reading rally, while his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, was closing his campaign in a Philadelphia suburb, Newtown.

Before Allentown, Harris, who hopes to make even loftier history as America’s first female president, began a door-knocking effort in Scranton. Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, was campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Trump’s day started in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, which he won in 2020 but where the latest Times/Siena poll showed Harris with a slight edge.

Trump’s campaign has rebuffed any concerns over crowd size, pointing to strong early-voting turnout among Republicans.

In Raleigh, Trump rehashed familiar grievances about former President Barack Obama, who has been campaigning heavily for Harris, and the news media. He continued to assail the Biden-Harris administration over its handling of the economy and immigration before making another digression: He said he felt slighted for not receiving credit for the criminal justice overhaul during his presidency.

But Pennsylvania was clearly the focus. Both campaigns insisted Monday that early-vote totals going into Election Day on Tuesday boded well for their candidates, but Pennsylvania, the battleground state with the most votes in the Electoral College at 19, also has the lowest early-vote total.

Trump’s closing argument

In Pittsburgh, Trump delivered what his campaign aides described as his closing argument after his previous attempt — last month’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York — was derailed by crude and racist jokes. He has also veered off message with falsehoods about voter fraud and invocations of violence.

“Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal and humiliation after another,” said the Republican nominee, sounding raspy yet energetic after speaking for hours each day.

“We do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline and decay,” he went on. “With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America, and indeed the whole world, to new heights of glory.”

The crowd exploded in cheers when the Republican nominee said the country should tell Harris, “You’re fired,” his catchphrase from “The Apprentice,” the reality television show that made him a nationally recognized star.

Celebrities for Harris

Harris was en route to Pittsburgh while Trump was speaking there. She held her final rally in Philadelphia later in the evening.

“This is it,” Harris said in Pittsburgh in front of the Carrie Furnaces, a historic steel facility that nodded to the city’s industrial legacy. “Tomorrow is Election Day and the momentum is on our side.”

“We must finish strong,” she added. “Make no mistake, we will win.”

For some Democrats, the vice president’s final, star-studded rally — before the “Rocky steps” of the Philadelphia Museum of Art — brought to mind the last Democrat who tried to become the nation’s first female president. Hillary Clinton closed out her 2016 campaign in Philadelphia with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, only to be beaten in the state — and the nation — by an underdog newcomer, Trump.

But Pennsylvania is no less important now than it was eight years ago, and Harris’ aspirations might rest on high turnout from the City of Brotherly Love. She hoped voters in the city were be inspired to come out with the help of superstars Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and Oprah Winfrey.

For Harris, the three-month campaign sprint has been marked by a conscious assemblage of an anti-Trump coalition spanning the ideological spectrum, from former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney on the right to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on the left.

Last strategies

Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name, calling him instead “the other guy.”

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said on a call with reporters that not saying Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision for the future.”

On Monday, Cheney’s daughter and perhaps Trump’s fiercest Republican adversary, former Rep. Liz Cheney, appeared on the daytime television show “The View,” to respond to the former president suggesting she should have “nine rifles pointed at her face.”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Cheney said. “He knows it’s a threat, to intimidate. Obviously the intimidation won’t work.”

This report includes information from the Associated Press.