Trump puts the Kansas and Iowa rallies back on for Sunday after cancelling them a day earlier

The cancellation lasted one day. On Thursday the Republican National Committee called off President Trump's weekend rallies in Salina, Kansas and Dubuque, Iowa and said he would campaign by tele rally instead, reaching voters in nearly 20 states by phone. On Friday a source familiar with the plans confirmed both rallies are back on for Sunday, November 1, rearranged to fit around the dozens of tele rallies still planned for the final days.

Trump explained the reversal himself in the Oval Office. He said Republicans in both states called and asked him to come. We have a couple of races that are very important, and they said if you could go, it would be better than a tele rally, he told reporters. The Kansas event, for Senator Roger Marshall, shifts from Saturday to Sunday. The Iowa event, for Representative Ashley Hinson, who is running for the Senate, was already set for Sunday.

The reason the schedule matters is the polling underneath it. Kansas last elected a Democratic senator in 1932, and Trump carried the state by 16 points in 2024. A Washington Post poll released Friday put Democrat Adam Hamilton ahead of Marshall at 52 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, as of October 30, while a CNN poll released Thursday put Hamilton ahead by four points, inside that survey's margin of error. In Iowa, Hinson leads Democrat Josh Turek by less than one percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, as of October 30.

Trump has held more than two dozen rallies in the closing stretch of the campaign, often speaking for close to two hours, and he was in Daytona Beach, Florida on Friday for a rally at the Ocean Center. Thursday's exchange with a Reuters reporter who asked whether he was tired of travelling travelled further than the cancellation itself. On Friday the answer was simpler and more practical. The two states asked, and the president is going. Whether a Sunday appearance moves either race is the question the final weekend now turns on, with voting on Tuesday, November 3.