Ben Lowry: I have now seen both presidential candidates campaign - Donald Trump is more magnetic, Kamala Harris more likable

The first is that the former president Mr Trump speaks for far longer, an hour and a half or more. She spoke for 25 minutes.

The second is that her speeches are clearly scripted, his seem obviously unscripted. He rambles (albeit in a compelling way).

The third is that she seems to be trying hard to be likable. He does not make any such effort, but his crowds love him all the more for it.

The fourth is that he gets a more adoring reception from audiences than she does – in fact almost hysterical support. She does get a rapturous reception at her rallies, but there isn’t the same messianic fervour that there is at his events.

The fifth is that there might be some concern in the Harris campaign about crowd sizes at her events, which is absent in his team. The venue for her Phoenix Arizona rally, the Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre in the west of the city, was confirmed less than 24 hours in advance of the event and this led to me getting two phone calls from her supporters to check I was going – one on Wednesday afternoon when the event was confirmed, the other on Thursday morning before it.

This is partly because the venue was chosen late, but I suspect it is more to do with something Tucker Carlson, the controversial TV show host, said on stage with Donald Trump in Phoenix hours after the Harris rally: that Mr Trump is the only politician, Republican or Democrat, who could easily fill stadiums of 10,000+ people.

She, not being such a personality, is concerned at seeming to be unable to attract similar crowds.

At neither the Las Vegas Trump rally that I attended a week before (click here for a report on that rally), on Thursday October 24, or the one with Carlson on Halloween night, was anyone checking to see I would be coming. On the contrary, there was such demand for both Trump occasions that I was concerned I would not get in to venues even bigger than Belfast’s SSE Arena (I have been attending as a member of the public, not in the press areas).

I write this from Phoenix, which both candidates passed through on Thursday as they criss-cross seven swing states in America. Mrs Harris is the Democratic Party nominee for the election on Tuesday and currently US vice president to the president, Joe Biden. Mr Trump is the Republican Party nominee, who was president from 2017 to 2021.

Both Arizona, and neighbouring Nevada where I saw Mr Trump the week before, and the state to which both Mrs Harris and her rival headed after their Phoenix events, are up for grabs, and thus vital in the so-called ‘electoral college’, in which the winner will take all of the electoral college votes in the said state. Donald Trump is slightly ahead in Arizona, while Nevada is a polling tie. Arizona is the bigger prize in that it has 11 electoral college votes out of 538 across the US, while Nevada has six. Either candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the overall race and every such vote is crucial.

The difference in personality between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is obvious to anyone who watches them only briefly on TV. In a rally, it is all the more stark. Both are good speakers, albeit in utterly different ways.

Americans have found this a hard contest in which to make a decision, although most prospective voters have by now made up their mind in how they will cast their vote (around 5% are said to still be unsure). More than 50 million people have already voted, out of perhaps 150 million people who will by Tuesday evening have cast a ballot.

I think, having seen them both up close, that many US voters are deciding upon two quite different characteristics.

They think that Donald Trump will be tougher on some key policies such as immigration and the economy. They think Kamala Harris has better temperament and is more stable.

Mr Trump, famously, once described himself as a “very stable genius”. But stability of personality is not what people associate with him, nor indeed genius (although as mentioned last week, there is a view that he is a political genius). On Thursday evening with Mr Carlson he again described himself as a genius. He was making a long, rambling point with lots of digressions and then, noticing that he was doing that, brought it back to the central point and then said that being able to do that – go off at tangents and then come back to the key point – was a sign of his genius (critics think it mental incoherence). The crowd laughed with, as opposed to at, him when he praised himself so.

It is curious to note that he is full of interesting, and often outrageous, thoughts and observations, but when he starts to make a point, then goes off on a ramble, but fails to return (genius like!) to the core point, it can be disappointing because you want to hear his conclusion. For example, Mr Carlson asked him a fascinating question about his faith in God and how the assassination bid had changed it, Mr Trump began to answer by admitting that he had not previously been a great churchgoer, and then talked about his evangelical supporters and then digressed and never returned to the key point – which was a pity because it would be interesting to hear such a patently irreligious man explain himself. But while this might partly be a sign of him being aged 78, it is not – as said last week – remotely comparable to Joe Biden’s shocking cognitive decline.

When Mr Trump rambles, it is absorbing even to those of us who are sceptics. And many millions of Americans just love it, with no reservations.

Mr Trump’s talk with Carlson was full of mischief, including fierce criticism of the Republican politician who turned against him, Liz Cheney. He is being accused of calling for her assassination, but I don’t think that was his point when he called her a ‘warhawk’ who does not have to face guns herself.

Mrs Harris on other hand said nothing controversial, or even memorable. At each event she calmly emphasises that Mr Trump is ‘unstable’.

Protecting the right to abortion was one of Mrs Harris’s most emphasised points, a policy that has won her female votes from Donald Trump (she used terms such as reproductive rights, as opposed to the ugly, evocative word abortion). ​​

For a long while I thought Mrs Harris was of limited ability (Donald Trump calls her a ‘low IQ’). Her answers to hard questions can be hopeless. But she delivers her speeches well and can sustain a good impression on stage. But he has stamina: far longer rallies, and he does more of them.

I suspect that Americans agree with her that she is more sane than him. But they are wary of her liberal politics, her instincts on immigration, etc.​ And his response to Joe Biden’s remark about Trump supporters being garbage, by donning a binman’s vest to drive a waste lorry, showed his (winning?) common touch.

• On Monday Ben on why he thinks Mrs Harris still not far enough ahead in polls. Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor