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Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has officially announced that she will not attend the customary charity dinner for presidential candidates in New York City. This marks her first time not attending since Democrat Walter Mondale did not go in 1984.

The New York Post reported that Harris will not be attending the Al Smith dinner, where the two presidential contenders will be criticizing each other. The Archdiocese of New York is sponsoring this entertaining venue, which collects money for underprivileged women and children.

Donald Trump, the former president, has consented to go to the event on October 17. “Harris’s camp says she will instead campaign in key battleground states on the final stretch before election day,” according to The Post.

It has been customary for both presidential contenders to attend the dinner together since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy did so in 1960. There, they alternately give remarks that disparage one another. Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, informed The Post that Harris wouldn’t be attending.

“We are disappointed that she will not be with us, as this is an evening of unity and putting aside political differences in support of a good cause of helping women and children in need regardless of race, creed, or background,” Zwilling said. “We hope she reconsiders.”

The Harris campaign said she would be willing to attend the dinner but only if she’s elected president.

The Post noted that since its founding in 1946, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner has raised millions of dollars for New York City’s impoverished citizens.

Even while it takes place every year, the meal is most noteworthy in election years when presidential candidates usually show up to trade lighthearted jabs for charitable causes. According to Zwilling, Harris will be the first vice president to turn down an offer since Walter Mondale, who was running a losing campaign against President Ronald Reagan in 1984, did not attend.

According to the Associated Press, the Archdiocese of New York declined to invite Republican contender Bob Dole and then-President Bill Clinton in 1996 because Clinton vetoed a law prohibiting late-term abortions.

“The dinner is named after the former governor of New York, who was the first Roman Catholic ever nominated to run for president by a major party in 1928. This year’s event will be held at the New York Hilton Midtown,” The Post noted.

This comes as a leading pollster shared some critical insight into the 2024 election.

Nate Silver argued that despite all of Harris’s favorable press, she and Trump are essentially tied.

“With all seven states polling so closely, I don’t really have an intuition beyond what’s in our forecast, which is 50-50, almost exactly,” Silver told CNN on Friday.

“Look clearly, Harris has some kind of momentum post-debate. The thing that would worry me a little bit if I were Democrat is that she had the same momentum earlier on in the campaign and then had a very flat to negative period afterwards. So, can she sustain the good vibe, so to speak, that she had before? You know, to me, Trump seems pretty off-kilter recently. It’s a bit more subjective,” Silver continued.

“But we’re not going to wake up on November 5 with a lot of certainty about the outcome. We might not go to bed on November 5 with a lot of certainty, either. You could even have a recount 2020 style or 2000 style, rather, in one or more key swing states,” he added.

Other pollsters share Silver’s uncertainty, though another top election forecaster sees Trump with a clear advantage heading into the home stretch as early voting began this week.

In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday, pollster Matt Towery discussed the latest data and proclaimed that Trump is ahead of where he was in 2016 and 2020 at the same time during those campaigns.

“Explain how these candidates could be tied nationally, but Kamala is up in Pennsylvania? What does that mean?” Ingraham asked to begin the segment.

“Well, you know, let me just say this. The polling gurus and predictors are going to start telling you over the next month and a half that Harris is gaining speed in these various battleground states,” Towery responded. “They’re somehow going to say that she’s gaining speed in the national polls. I’m just going to predict it. They’re going to say that she’s going to win and Trump will lose. It makes no sense.

“People have to understand. Trump is running way ahead of where he has in the last two cycles that he ran in the national average. I mean, she is much closer than either Biden or, before that, Hillary Clinton. And in these various states, now, you know, everybody has their different way of sampling things. I think all of these states are very tight,” he continued.

“But I don’t think there’s any state where anyone has a four or five-point lead right now that’s a battleground state. I just don’t see it, and I don’t believe it,” Towery said.

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Towery, later in the interview, did say Trump was trailing with the senior citizen vote. “He’s got to concentrate on senior voters, though. He’s down in the polls with senior voters, and that’s what it get him high enough so that he can get above any question about voter turnout, which Democrats are very good at,” he said.

“Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, if he carries — Trump carries those three, he wins. Alternatively, if Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan go his way, he loses some of these other states, he wins,” he added.

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