Donald Trump was to host a Virginia campaign event on Monday for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in a race headed down to the wire. But Youngkin was not planning to participate, as he attempted to balance appeals to the former president’s supporters with a semblance of independence.

Trump hoped a phone-in “tele rally” would hoist Youngkin past his Democratic opponent, the former governor Terry McAuliffe.

The contest is seen by many as a referendum on the Biden presidency and a bellwether for midterm elections next year. On the day before polling day, the realclearpolitics.com polling average had Youngkin ahead by less than two points. Fivethirtyeight.com put the Republican up by one.

McAuliffe had scheduled rallies in Roanoke, Virginia Beach and Richmond and in northern Virginia. Youngkin was to rally in Roanoke, Richmond, Virginia Beach and Loudon county.

In Richmond, Youngkin addressed “an energetic crowd of what his campaign said was around 800 people” at a small airport, the Associated Press reported.

“This is a moment for Virginians to push back on this left, liberal progressive agenda and take our commonwealth back,” he said.

McAuliffe, who has called himself a “pro-business pro-progressive”, is a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton and has campaigned with President Joe Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, former president Barack Obama and other high-profile Democrats. Nonetheless he has struggled to generate enthusiasm in a state Biden won by 10 points.

Youngkin, a businessman, has not appeared with Trump. On Saturday, he told reporters: “I’m not going to be engaged in the tele-town hall. The teams are talking, I’m sure.”

Youngkin has however comfortably dealt in Trump-esque attack lines, most prominently and potentially fruitfully focusing on how race is taught in schools. In return McAuliffe has sought to tie Youngkin firmly to Trump, not a tough task in the debate over education.

Youngkin has repeatedly raised the subject of critical race theory, an academic discipline turned into a bogeyman by Republicans nationwide. CRT examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. It is not taught in Virginia public schools. Regardless, Youngkin has treated it as a genuine threat, stoking anger on the right, and has promised to ban it.

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, McAuliffe said Youngkin had gone too far. Citing a meeting with a voter in Hampton, he said the former school board member told him “our school boards were fine. Soon as Glenn Youngkin got nominated, all of a sudden, these people started showing up, creating such a ruckus, calling such obscene things”.

“This was an African American woman,” McAuliffe said. “I can’t repeat on air what they’ve said about her. This was last night, up here in northern Virginia … we just lost a school board member … She said, ‘I was getting death threats. But when they said they were going to rape my children, I can’t take it anymore.’

“That’s what Glenn Youngkin has done here in Virginia. He’s created hatred and division just like Donald Trump, and that’s why Donald Trump, his final campaign is going to be for Glenn Youngkin here in Virginia.

“We don’t want Trump. We don’t want Youngkin. We don’t want the hatred and division.”

In a statement on Monday, Trump freely demonstrated his willingness to exploit hatred and division.

Taking barely veiled shots at the Lincoln Project – anti-Trump Republicans who have campaigned against him in Virginia, sometimes controversially, and who Trump referred to only as “perverts” – the former president said his enemies were “trying to create an impression that Glenn Youngkin and I are at odds and don’t like each other.

“Importantly, this is not true. We get along very well together and strongly believe in many of the same policies, especially when it comes to the important subject of education.”

Trump reiterated the need for Republicans to vote. He also sought to thread the needle between his insistence on mass voter fraud against him and the need for high Republican turnout – a trick he failed to pull off in Georgia in January, when Democrats won two Senate runoffs.

If enough of his supporters voted, Trump said, they would overcome the fact that he was “not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections”.