Trump and Harris are relying on external factors to influence the stubborn competition

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris find themselves in a race that, despite historical developments, refuses to move beyond the poll’s margin of error – and outside factors are beginning to play an increasingly important role.

Two assassination attempts, a debate, controversies over Trump campaign conspiracy theories and theorists and more largely failed to make a meaningful difference in the election, leaving players on the field looking for help in the stands before Election Day.

For Trump, the recent push to alter how electoral votes are counted in Nebraska and change the rules in Georgia was an attempt to gain advantages in key battlegrounds. Meanwhile, Harris is banking on abortion referendums to boost voter turnout while hoping a firestorm surrounding North Carolina’s lieutenant governor and the Republican gubernatorial candidate will depress Republicans in the purple state.

MORE: Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson has been hospitalized after an ‘incident’ at a campaign rally, source says

Taken together, the maneuvers serve to find any edge, even if it’s at the margins, in a race that poll after poll shows is still going to be an exciting one.

“With a highly polarized electorate, in many of these states and in many of these elections, it comes down to winning or losing on the margins, so every little bit helps,” said North Carolina Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson.

“It’s an environment where a blowout is 3 points,” he added. “People are just locked in. 47 percent of the people are locked up on one side, 47 percent of the people are locked up on the other side, and any candidate who has the ability to put the issue on the backburner will win.”

The need to find a lead has been underscored in most national and swing-state polls, which rarely show either side having a lead beyond the margin of error. The polling average of 538 has not grown beyond a 3.7-point lead for Harris since late July, a lead that neither makes Democrats look good nor leaves Republicans out of the game.

That’s not for lack of trying.

Two assassination attempts on Trump are the kind of “black swan” events that would normally generate a wave of goodwill for a candidate. On the other hand, Harris’ debate behavior and controversies surrounding the former president over his comments about legal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and his association with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer could help improve the vice president’s standing in yesterday’s political climate.

But with each candidate commanding a strong support base, they are forced to look elsewhere for boost.

Trump’s allies pushed through new vote-counting rules in Georgia, including counting ballots by hand instead of using machines – a push that the former president claimed would help stamp out fraud but experts stressed instead will lead to more errors.

He also led a pressure campaign to use a winner-take-all system in counting Nebraska’s voters instead of apportioning Electoral College votes by congressional district, giving Harris the opportunity to get a vote in Omaha. That effort failed because of insufficient support from Republican lawmakers.

Harris expects a base motivated by abortion-choice initiatives to help her win in targeted states like Arizona, Florida and Nevada. And Robinson’s scandal, which involves posts in a chat forum for a pornographic website in which he describes himself as a “black Nazi,” among other things, is taking place in the one swing state that went for Trump in 2020 and which, according to Democrats, is reversible.

MORE: Trump says he wants a ‘fair deal’ between Ukraine and Russia

“When it comes to abortion referendums or hand-counting ballots or Robinson, don’t move a whole point here. They might shift a few thousand votes. And will those states get to a few thousand votes?” “That’s really the key question,” said a former senior Trump administration official. “You’re trying to get your little things.”

The importance of external factors makes sense in a race in which candidate Trump enjoys widespread name recognition. Harris has room to cultivate voters’ perceptions of her, but she is also a prominent political figure, having spent four years as a California senator and another nearly four years in her current office.

“A little bit,” a source familiar with the Harris campaign’s thinking said when asked if she was surprised by the general lack of movement in the race. “We all know how clearly defined and well-known Trump is, so it should come as no surprise that it is harder to change views about him. But given voters’ lack of familiarity with the vice president, I certainly expected that a strong debate performance would have done more to move the needle for them.

“See, [Trump] “Had the best 10 weeks of his political career this summer, and Harris had the best 10 weeks of any Democrat ever to run, and we’re right where we were three months ago,” added Dave Carney, a GOP strategist and leader a pro-Trump super PAC.

Relying on external factors is not a completely original tactic.

Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, noted that former President George W. Bush relied on anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiatives in 2004 to ignite conservative enthusiasm, and that former President Bill Clinton in 2106 for a fundraiser trip to Utah, a deep red bastion, to try to make gains among Mormon voters who were skeptical of Trump. The Clinton campaign also published an op-ed in a national newspaper.

“Campaigns look for places to gain even a small advantage, sometimes it comes in unexpected places,” Finney said. “Considering how tight the margins are, you don’t want to leave anything on the table.”

It’s unclear how much the candidates will benefit from this.

Bush secured victory in 2004, but that victory was largely due to the country re-electing a commander in chief during the war. And as we know, Clinton lost to Trump.

But, strategists from both parties say, it’s at least worth a try

“There is no one who doesn’t have an opinion on Donald Trump, and that’s not going to change,” said Peter Giangreco, a Democratic strategist and veteran of the presidential campaign. “So if you can’t influence voter turnout, what else are you going to do?”

Trump, Harris lean on outside factors to sway stubbornly competitive races originally appeared on abcnews.go.com