U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump traveled to politically battleground states on Wednesday in search of any advantage they could find six days before what could be the closest presidential election in decades.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, and Trump, her Republican challenger, both appeared in the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina before traveling to the upper Midwest state of Wisconsin, with Harris also campaigning in another key state, Pennsylvania in the east.

The three states are among seven states, along with Michigan in the Midwest, Georgia in the Southeast and Nevada and Arizona in the Southwest, that both candidates consider crucial to their chances of winning next Tuesday's election.

Polls show the outcome of the election in the seven states and nationally is too close to predict. Nearly 57 million people have already voted at polling stations or by mail, and tens of thousands continue to vote early, even as a small portion of voters remain undecided.

Retired Green Bay Packers football quarterback Brett Favre, a popular figure in Wisconsin, is scheduled to accompany Trump at his rally in Green Bay. Downstate, several musicians popular with younger audiences — Mumford & Sons, Gracie Abrams, Remi Wolf and members of the rock band The National — are scheduled to perform with Harris at her rally in the state capital, Madison.

During a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, Harris reiterated her promise to be “a president for all Americans.”

“Unlike Donald Trump, I don't believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy,” the vice president said, picking up themes from the speech she gave near the White House on Tuesday evening and which she described her campaign as a “closing argument” in her election campaign.

Trump rallied with his supporters in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and pledged to end consumer price inflation. At the same time, he vowed, “I will stop the massive invasion of criminals into our country,” as he preferred to describe the migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“And I will bring back the American dream,” he said. “Isn’t that nice?”

Tens of thousands of supporters watched Harris on the Ellipse in Washington on Tuesday evening while Trump held a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Harris vowed to work to improve people's lives and said she would show up to work at the White House with a to-do list, while she said Trump was only focused on himself and would have a new one starting in January Start your term with an enemies list.

Her speech was delivered in the same area where Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, 2021, shortly before a mob stormed the US Capitol to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden's victory.

“Look, we know who Donald Trump is. “He is the person who stood on this very spot almost four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” Harris said.

Surveys show that competition is almost dead.

Before traveling to Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a majority Latino population, Trump spoke Tuesday at his oceanfront estate at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He described Harris as “extremely incompetent…a total train wreck.”

There were frequent insults between Harris and Trump during the election campaign.

Trump described Harris as someone with a “low IQ” and said she was like a “toy” to other world leaders. “They’ll walk all over her,” he said.

Some of Trump's former top advisers from his 2017 to 2021 White House term described him as a fascist intent on authoritarian rule in a second term. Harris said she agreed with the characterization.

Trump returned the taunt and described Harris in the same way.

The importance of the seven contested states cannot be overestimated.

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 of the 50 states awarding all of their electoral votes to the winner in their 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 a significant or comfortable lead in 43 states, enough to reach 200 electoral votes or more each. Unless there is an upset in one of those states, the outcome will be left to the remaining seven battleground states where both Harris and Trump have held frequent rallies and all but ignored the rest of the country at 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.