A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Down the stretch the candidates come. It's the final sprint before Election Day, which, if you're counting, is four days away. Candidates and their surrogates are delivering their final speeches and making adjustments. And NPR politics reporter Saige Miller has been following the ups and downs of all of it. So, Saige, President Trump canceled two rallies in red states for this coming week then, this morning, uncanceled them. So what's happening?
SAIGE MILLER, BYLINE: Yeah, A, a little bit of scheduling whiplash. A source familiar with the decision but not authorized to speak on the record told NPR the rallies were arranged to accommodate nearly two dozen tele-rallies over the weekend. The president will now hold back-to-back rallies on Sunday in both Kansas and in Iowa, where they were initially canceled. And I want to say, like, both of these are competitive states. And Trump really has been on the campaign trail this election cycle. In order to get out the vote, President Trump has been on what it feels like an American tour. He's headlined more than 20 rallies this month and those have been pretty much only in Republican states. The caveat, though, is that a lot of these states have competitive races in them. For example, he was just in Ohio, where a hotly contested Senate race is going down, and today he will be in Florida, where some election analysts project the Senate race to now be within striking distance for Democrats.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, the fact that Trump is changing tactics and changing them back at the last minute, I mean, what do you think that suggests to you about the strategy of his camp?
MILLER: I mean, Trump told reporters that he wasn't worried about Kansas and Iowa, that the Republicans there are doing great and they don't need to rally for him. But now he's still holding the tele-rallies, and he's going to Kansas and Iowa. While we don't know exactly why he - while we don't know exactly why, we do know that there was a lot of confusion over this decision to pull out, and now he's going back.
But this is what I can tell you, A. Polling tells us that there are many competitive races and they show Democrats with a pretty sizable advantage, at least in the House. And Democrats are very optimistic. Just the way the president has been showing up in a big way, high-profile Democrats are turning out to support their fellow Democrats. Obama was just in Ohio and in Georgia. He told the crowd that Trump is missing the mark, the moment and focusing on the wrong things. Democrats are all trying to convince voters that life will be better and easier if they had control, and they're really trying to amplify the fact that Americans are unhappy with the cost of living, according to a recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll, and midterms, as we've said it probably, like, 1,000 times, A, are usually a referendum of the party in power. But of course, the blue wave could have its limits.
MARTÍNEZ: Oh, so what are those limits?
MILLER: I don't think it's a secret to either party that the Senate majority is definitely a toss up right now, but races seem to keep moving towards the left. Fox News just shifted the South Carolina Senate race to a toss up. Again, that's a reliably Republican...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
MILLER: ...Stronghold. And we've seen Democratic candidates in Texas and Ohio, like I mentioned, continue to gain momentum in polling and forecasting. That's why Trump is really trying to get Republicans to the polls because he knows he specifically is a motivating force within his party. So he's telling Republicans, hey, vote like I'm on the ballot. And it's hard to tell if that'll work because Trump is also a motivating force for Democrats. And early voting does show Republican turnout lagging behind Democrats. However, Republicans are more keen to show up to the polls. So, A, welcome to the waiting game.
MARTÍNEZ: A little bit more waiting. NPR politics reporter Saige Miller. Saige, thanks.
MILLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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