With the election fast approaching, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are reportedly scheduled to host rival events on October 25 in Texas, a known GOP stronghold.
While Trump will host an event to speak about border security and migrant crime in Austin, Harris will be talking about abortion in Houston, according to MSN.
As Texas isn't considered a swing state, having consistently been won by Republican candidates in recent elections, it isn't immediately apparent why both candidates are choosing to visit before the November 5 vote.
Newsweek reached out to spokespeople for the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment via email.
Trump's event, which will be held at the Million Air airbase in Austin during the afternoon, will be focused on immigration issues in the state, as "Texas has seen the consequences" of Harris' "lethal open-border policies," according to Trump's campaign website.
The former president will also be heading to Austin to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Friday, amid rumors that Harris is set to appear on his podcast as well.
Harris will focus on reproductive rights at her event in the Lone Star State and speak alongside women who have had to navigate Texas' abortion ban, which is one of the most restrictive in the country.
Enacted after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, Texas' abortion ban states that it's illegal for women to seek abortions, or for people to perform them.
The exception to Texas' ban is that the life of the patient must be at risk, and in that situation, a licensed physician must perform the abortion, the patient must be at risk of death or "substantial impairment of a major bodily function," and the physician must try to save the life of the fetus unless this would increase the risk of the pregnant patient's death or impairment.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the Biden administration to remove an order that bars emergency abortions that violate the current law in the state.
On why the two candidates are heading to the state, Brian Smith, a political science professor at St. Edwards University, told Yahoo News: "At this point, historically, candidates avoid Texas. Democrats look and say we are going to lose. It is not worth our time and money to go there. Republicans say we are going to win. It is not worth our time and money going to a place we already have in the bag. Showing up in Texas this late in the electoral season shows something about the competitiveness in the state."
He added: "For the vice president, she is going to Harris County, which has the greatest concentration of Democratic voters in the state. If she is going to win the election, she has to come to Texas and mobilize voters, and it is voting season, so the more early votes she gets from those big urban areas like Harris County the better she will do on election day."
Users on X made similar observations, and one, Michael Board, a journalist in Texas, wrote: "Kamala Harris is in Houston on Friday. And Trump's in Austin. Texas is not a battleground state. Yet, here we are, at the center of the political universe. Like they say at UT: What starts here changes the world."
According to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, as of October 23, Trump is ahead of Harris by 6.6 points based on national averages, as Trump is at 50.8 percent and Harris is at 44.2 percent.
The race for the Senate is a bit tighter in the state, and Ted Cruz, a Republican, has a steady lead ahead of Colin Allred, a Democrat, of 1.7 points as of October 19.
Texas has been a consistent win for the GOP in every presidential election since 1980, only having been Democrat in the early to mid-20th century, according to 270toWin.
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