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Over 1.1m homes and businesses were still without power in the U.S. Southeast and Midwest on Wednesday after Helene slammed into the Florida Panhandle as a major hurricane on Sept. 26, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
Those outages were down from about 1.7 million on Tuesday as utilities continued to restore power. In total, the storm knocked out service to about 5.5 million customers, predominantly in the south-east. Helene’s winds, rain and storm surge killed more than 160 people.
Biden and Harris visit areas affected by Hurricane Helene
US President Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris have visited Georgia and North Carolina, which were both acutely affected by Hurricane Helene.
Biden, who was in North Carolina, announced additional funding for debris removal and emergency protective measures.
Biden said the hurricane would cost billions of dollars. “Congress has an obligation” to make sure states have the necessary resources, he said.
Harris, in Georgia, handed out meals and said she wanted to, “personally take a look at the devastation, which is extraordinary.” She expressed admiration for how “people are coming together. People are helping perfect strangers.”
“We are here for the long haul,” she said.
Harris also toured a Red Cross relief center and received a briefing from local officials, praising those working to “meet the needs of people who must be seen and must be heard.”
If you’re just tuning in: Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in a newly unsealed court filing that argues that the former US president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.
The filing was unsealed on Wednesday. It was submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a supreme court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents and narrowed the scope of the prosecution.
Trump’s legal team have employed a delaying strategy in all the numerous legal cases that Trump faces that has mostly been successful.
The 165-page filing is probably the last opportunity for prosecutors to detail their case against Trump before the 5 November election given there will not be a trial before Trump faces the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris.
Prosecutors laid out details including an allegation that a White House staffer heard Trump tell family members that it did not matter if he won or lost the election, “you still have to fight like hell”.
The new filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing his grip on the White House, “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process”.
“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice-president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges would not be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.
Per the press pool report: Governor Roy Cooper, who was seated directly to Biden’s right, introduced Biden, saying that an entire region of the state was still in a “dangerous situation.”
Cooper said he was “grateful” for the “quick” action and the “massive surge of help.”
“Mr. President, we know we’ve made a lot of asks of you – and we are grateful,” he said.
“This is going to be a long and difficult recovery.”
Here is what Biden said in North Carolina, according to the press pool report:
“In a moment like this we put politics aside,” he said. “Our job is to help as many people as we can, as quickly as we can.”
Biden said he’d flown over a lot of disaster areas before, but was struck by the scenes he saw earlier today in the Asheville area. He said he could not “imagine what it must have been like” as “all that rain came down,” remarking about how much of Asheville is underwater.
Biden said the hurricane would cost billions of dollars. “Congress has an obligation” to make sure states have the necessary resources, he said.
“Nobody can deny the impact of the climate crisis any more, at least I hope they don’t. They must be brain dead if they do,” he said. “Storm like Helene are getting stronger and stronger.”
US president Joe Biden is in North Carolina, where he has “made additional disaster assistance available to the State of North Carolina by authorizing an increase in the level of federal funding for emergency work undertaken in the State of North Carolina as a result of Tropical Storm Helene”, according to the White House.
“Under the President’s order today, the Federal funds for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance has been increased to 100 percent of the total eligible costs for 180 days from the start of the incident period.”
Updated
Kamala Harris visits Georgia in wake of Hurricane Helene
Here is the Associated Press’s report on Kamala Harris visiting Augusta, Georgia:
Harris handed out meals, embraced a shaken family and surveyed Hurricane Helene’s “extraordinary” path of destruction through Georgia on Wednesday as she left the campaign trail to pledge federal help and personally take in scenes of toppled trees, damaged homes and lives upended.
She visited Augusta, where power lines stretched along the sidewalk and utility poles lay cracked and broken. The vice president spoke from a lectern erected in front of a house with a fallen tree teetering on its roof, acknowledging those who had died in the disaster while also trying to project a tone of unity and hope for communities now facing long and expensive rebuilds.
Harris said she wanted to, “personally take a look at the devastation, which is extraordinary.” She expressed admiration for how “people are coming together. People are helping perfect strangers.”
The Democratic presidential nominee said that shows “the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us,” an echo of a line she frequently uses on the campaign trail.
Before delivering her remarks, Harris could be seen embracing and huddling with a family of five grappling with the storm’s aftermath.
“We are here for the long haul,” she said.
Harris also toured a Red Cross relief center and received a briefing from local officials, praising those working to “meet the needs of people who must be seen and must be heard.”
“I am now listening,” she said.
Updated
Walz is speaking in Reading, the Pennsylvanian city with the highest number of Latino voters.
The Latino vote could be key to this election.
As my colleague Joseph Contreras explains, their importance in presidential races has been steadily growing over the past 50 years, and Latinos are projected to represent nearly 15% of eligible voters nationwide by November.
Historically, Latinos have ranked among the Democratic party’s most reliable sources of votes, in about the same league as Black and Jewish voters. But the party’s once commanding advantage has been shrinking. Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump among Latinos nationwide in 2016 by a factor of 81% to 16%, yet four years later the former president upped his share to one out of every four votes cast by Latinos.
Tim Walz is expected to hold a campaign event in Pennsylvania any minute as he campaigns in the swing state with the highest number of electoral college votes (19) – we’ll bring that to you live.
This is Helen Sullivan taking over the Guardian’s live US politics coverage.
JD Vance took a self-proclaimed victory lap after his vice-presidential debate against the Democrat Tim Walz, appearing on Wednesday at a campaign rally in the crucial battleground state of Michigan.
Vance told supporters in Auburn Hills that he thought the debate went “pretty well” on Tuesday, as snap polls showed viewers considered it to be a tie between the two vice-presidential candidates.
Departing from the generally civil tone of the debate, Vance mocked Walz over his biggest gaffe of the night, in which the Democratic governor said he was friends with school shooters. (Walz seemingly meant to say he was friends with victims of school shootings.)
“That was probably only the third or fourth dumbest comment Tim Walz made that night,” Vance said. “I’ve got to be honest, I feel a little bad for Governor Walz. And the reason I feel bad for him is because he has to defend the indefensible, and that is the record of Kamala Harris.”
In his prepared remarks, Vance did not touch on his weakest moment in the debate, when he refused to acknowledge Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential race. But when Vance took questions from the media after his speech, a reporter did ask him about the exchange, and he again sidestepped the question.
“The media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago. I’m focused on the election of 33 days from now because I want to throw Kamala Harris out of office and get back to commonsense economic policies,” Vance said.
Today so far
Here’s where things stand:
Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed attempt to keep power after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in newly unsealed evidence arguing that the former president shouldn’t be immune from prosecution. Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed the filing, which was submitted by submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a supreme court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.
Joe Biden plans to visit communities in Florida and Georgia tomorrow that have been hit by Hurricane Helene, the White House has announced. That follows his visit to the Carolinas today. The president approved a major disaster declaration for the state of Virginia amid the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene.
Implementing Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign could cost the federal government as much as $88b per year on average, according to a new analysis released on Wednesday. If elected, Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in US history, but he has offered few concrete details about how he would achieve a campaign of such scale – and at what cost.
Biden has approved a major disaster declaration for the state of Virginia amid the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene. The White House said the president ordered federal aid to supplement commonwealth and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by Helene.
The vice-presidential hopefuls debated for 90 minutes on Tuesday night, but the Harris campaign wants Americans to remember one moment, a split-second reply that Tim Walz called a “damning non-answer”. Just hours after the primetime event concluded, with viewers split over a winner and analysts praising JD Vance for the more polished performance, the Harris campaign has launched an ad highlighting the moment the Republican refused to say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. (He did.)
Vance returned to the sharper tone that’s more his norm on the campaign trail during a rally in Michigan. Walz, meanwhile, at a Pennsylvania rally said that Vance’s obfuscations about Trump’s policies and legacy amounted to “gaslighting”.
The youth-led March for Our Lives gun control movement which emerged following the deadly Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in 2018 has condemned JD Vance for his “hypocrisy” on gun violence prevention, after he suggested schools build “stronger doors” to prevent shooters,.
There was no clear winner of last night’s vice-presidential debate among registered voters quizzed in another snap poll last night, this one conducted for CNN by polling firm SSRS. After Walz and Vance had a constructive debate, CNN reported that their viewers who were polled thought better of both candidates after the debate than they had before.
Monday’s 60 Minutes show on CBS will feature an interview solely with Harris, after the network said Trump accepted an invitation and then backed out. “A 60 Minutes candidate hour will feature only Kamala Harris after former President Donald Trump, who’d previously agreed to be on the show, decided not to participate in the Monday, October 7 special,” CBS reported.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan called Iran’s missile attack on Israel yesterday a “significant escalation” in the Middle East conflict, although he said it was ultimately “defeated and ineffective”, in part because of assistance from the US military in shooting down some of the inbound missiles. Biden said his administration is “fully supportive” of Israel and that he’s in “active discussion” with aides about what the appropriate response should be.
Analysis: Harris faces triple trouble, even before October’s inevitable surprises
100” was spelled out in giant numbers on the White House north lawn on Tuesday. It was a birthday tribute to the former US president Jimmy Carter, who served only one term after being buffeted by external events such as high inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran.
The current occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, must know the feeling as he fights three fires at once. Iran has launched at least 180 missiles into Israel, six US states are still reeling from Hurricane Helene, and ports from Maine to Texas shut down as about 45,000 dockworkers went on strike.
Unlike Carter, Biden already knows his fate: he is not seeking re-election next month. But what remains uncertain is whether the trio of troubles will drag down his vice-president and would-be successor, Kamala Harris. Certainly her rival, Donald Trump, smells an opportunity to tar her with the same brush of chaos.
“The world is on fire and spiralling out of control,” he said in a written statement. “We have no leadership, no one running the country. We have a non-existent president in Joe Biden, and a completely absent vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is too busy fundraising in San Francisco.”
Will it stick? No one can be sure. Democrats must again be breathing a sigh of relief that they jettisoned Biden after his miserable debate performance in June. The president steeped in foreign policy is running at one catastrophe a year: the botched Afghanistan withdrawal of 2021, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the deadly Hamas attack on Israel in 2023.
In the unsealed court documents released today, prosecutors detail each time Trump tried to pressure his former vice president Mike Pence to accept that their was fraud in the 2020 elections.
Here are all the times — according to Jack Smith — Trump tried to pressure Mike Pence and Mike Pence said he saw no evidence of fraud. pic.twitter.com/cDKD4xGgPb
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 2, 2024
Donald Trump’s campaign has reaised more than $160m in September, according to Reuters, and have about $283m of cash on hand.
The campaign raised $130 million in August – just a third of that Harris raised ($361m) that month.
Exclusive: Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir
Melania Trump made an extraordinary declaration in an eagerly awaited memoir to be published a month from election day: she is a passionate supporter of a woman’s right to control her own body – including the right to abortion.
“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes, amid a campaign in which Donald Trump’s threats to women’s reproductive rights have played a central role.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.
“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
Melania Trump has rarely expressed political views in public. The book, which reveals the former first lady to be so firmly out of step with most of her own party, Melania, will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.
An estimated 43.15 million viewers watched the vice-presidential debate last night, according to Nielsen.
In comparison, about 67.1 million tuned into the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in September.
Updated
Walz compares Vance to Pence in first rally since debate
At his rally in Pennsylvania, Tim Walz warned that JD Vance seems much more willing than Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence to interfere with electoral integrity.
“There is a reason Mike Pence wasn’t on that stage with me,” Walz said of his debate last night. “He chose the constitution over Donald Trump … Senator Vance made it clear he will always make a different choice.”
Pence certified the 2020 election results, as required by the constitution, despite Trump’s suggestions that he could have resisted.
Vance has said he wouldn’t have done as Pence did.
“If I had been vice-president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance said in an interview with ABC News earlier this year. “That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”
Updated
The 165-page document details prosecutors’ case against Donald Trump, who is facing criminal charges accusing him of a conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the election, defraud the US and interfere with Americans’ voting rights in the 2020 election.
It will likely be their last opportunity to lay out their case before the upcoming election day on 5 November. Trump, JD Vance and their supporters have continued to spread doubts about the system.
My colleague Sam Levine laid out the stakes here:
Updated
Judge unseals new evidence in Trump election case
Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed attempt to keep power after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in newly unsealed evidence arguing that the former president shouldn’t be immune from prosecution.
Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed the filing, which was submitted by submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a supreme court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.
The prosecutors argue that Trump in this case should not be immune because he was acting in the capacity of a candidate, not president, when he attempted to challenge the election results. The prosecutors allege:
Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.
Updated
JD Vance, who took a much less copacetic tone at his rally today than at the debate last night, again refused to admit the validity of the 2020 election results earlier in the day.
Reporter: Why did you not answer the question last night during the debate about who won the 2020 presidential election?
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 2, 2024
Vance: The media is obsessed with talking about the election from four years ago… pic.twitter.com/LTmvyUPRGf
Walz accuses JD Vance of 'gaslighting'
Tim Walz’s assessment of the debate last night: “That’s gaslighting.”
“Senator Vance is a slick talker,” said Walz, who said he and his opponent had a “civil but spirited debate”. But be also criticized Vance’s many obfuscations last night.
“The moment that really stuck out is I just asked the simplest of all questions that that every single American should be able to answer. I asked him if Donald Trump lost the 2020 election,” Walz said. “He refused to answer.”
Updated
Tim Walz has just made his entrance at the rally in York, Pennsylvania.
The crowd cheered loudly with many craning their necks to get a glimpse of the governor.
Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is currently addressing a rally in York, Pennsylvania where Tim Walz is set to make an appearance.
Speaking to an energized audience, Fetterman said:
“You delivered to Joe Biden in 2020 and now your next mission is to ensure that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz [wins].”
Prosecutors could bring more charges against Eric Adams
Federal prosecutors said they may bring additional charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors said they are pursing “several related investigations” surrounding Adams’s corruption probe after he was charged last week with taking bribes and foreign campaign contributions.
According to the Associated Press, assistant US attorney Hagan Scotten said that it is “quite likely” that prosecutors will seek a superseding indictment and that it is “possible” that more charges will be brought against Adams.
“There are several related investigations here,” Scotten told US district judge Dale Ho during a status hearing.
Updated
March for Our Lives decries Vance's 'hypocrisy' on gun violence prevention
The youth-led March for Our Lives gun control movement which emerged following the deadly Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in 2018 has condemned JD Vance for his “hypocrisy” on gun violence prevention.
In a statement released on Wednesday following last night’s vice presidential debate where Vance urged schools build “stronger doors” to prevent shooters, the movement said:
Despite clear evidence that loose gun laws lead to more deaths, Vance doesn’t want to talk about guns – he wants to talk about ‘mental health’ and armed guards at schools. Let’s talk about it. Vance opposed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that invested billions in school-based mental wellness, instead arguing that we should arm teachers. And from Parkland to Uvalde, time and time again, armed school officers do not prevent school shootings.
Unlike Vance, who believes school shootings are a ‘fact of life’, Walz recognizes we can and must end gun violence. As the Minnesota governor, Walz signed commonsense laws that prevent gun violence long before someone picks up a gun.
Updated
Vance mocks Walz's 'friends with school shooters' debate remark
Abandoning the civil tone of the VP debate last night, JD Vance came out swinging against Tim Walz as he campaigned in the battleground state of Michigan this afternoon.
Speaking to voters in Auburn Hills, Vance said he thought the debate went “pretty well,” as snap polls indicated voters considered it to be a tie between the two vice-presidential candidates.
Vance then mocked Walz over the Democrat’s biggest gaffe of the night, in which he said he was friends with school shooters. (Walz seemingly meant to say he was friends with victims of school shootings.)
“That was probably only the third or fourth dumbest comment Tim Walz made that night,” Vance said. “I gotta be honest, I feel a little bad for Governor Walz. And the reason I feel bad for him is because he has to defend the indefensible, and that is the record of Kamala Harris.”
Updated
Vance at first rally since debate praises own performance
The Republican nominee for vice-president, JD Vance, is in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and has just taken the stage for a rally in this crucial battleground state, the day after his debate last night against his Democratic rival, Tim Walz.
After his relatively amiable presentation last night in what has been dubbed a “midwest nice” debate between the US senator from Ohio and the governor from Michigan, Vance returned to the sharper tone that’s more his norm on the campaign trail.
First, he nodded to the debate last night and said: “I thought it went pretty well,” as the crowd at a manufacturing facility he’s visiting began chanting “JD, JD, JD.”
Vance said he talked to the man at the top of the GOP ticket, Donald Trump, after the debate and Trump seized on Walz’s presumed slip of the tongue that he is friends with school shooters – when it’s widely understood he meant the victims of school shooters, having been talking at the debate about meeting with parents who’d lost their children to the school shooting at Sandy Hook, Connecticut in 2012.
“That’s probably the third or fourth dumbest comment he made that night,” Vance said, adding that he feels “a bit bad” for Walz because he has to defend Kamala Harris. That’s something of a contrast to his relatively convivial style with Walz last night, when he was critical of Harris but less so about and to Walz.
Updated
Security for America’s election systems has become so robust that Russia, Iran or any other foreign adversary will not be able to alter the outcome of this year’s presidential race, the head of the nation’s cybersecurity agency said today.
Jen Easterly told the Associated Press in an interview that voting, ballot-counting and other election infrastructure is more secure today than it’s ever been.
Malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election,” said Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Federal agencies have warned of growing attempts by Russia and Iran in particular to influence voters before the November 5 election and election conspiracy theories have left millions of Americans doubting the validity of election results.
Easterly said those efforts are primarily aimed at sowing discord among Americans and undermining faith in the security of the nation’s elections.
Updated
Interim summary
Hello again, US politics live blog readers, Joe Biden is en route to the Carolinas to survey and be briefed on the appalling damage and death toll from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Kamala Harris is en route to Georgia for the same reason.
Fresh from last night’s debate, JD Vance is about to speak at a rally in Michigan and Tim Walz is joining John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and will appear at a rally in about an hour.
So much news to come and we’ll keep you posted as it happens. Here’s where things stand:
Joe Biden plans to visit communities in Florida and Georgia tomorrow that have been hit by Hurricane Helene, the White House has announced. That follows his visit to the Carolinas today.
Implementing Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign could cost the federal government as much as $88b per year on average, according to a new analysis released on Wednesday. If elected, Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in US history, but he has offered few concrete details about how he would achieve a campaign of such scale – and at what cost.
Biden has approved a major disaster declaration for the state of Virginia amid the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene. The White House said the president ordered federal aid to supplement commonwealth and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by Helene.
The vice-presidential hopefuls debated for 90 minutes on Tuesday night, but the Harris campaign wants Americans to remember one moment, a split-second reply that Tim Walz called a “damning non-answer”. Just hours after the primetime event concluded, with viewers split over a winner and analysts praising JD Vance for the more polished performance, the Harris campaign has launched an ad highlighting the moment the Republican refused to say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. (He did.)
Monday’s 60 Minutes show on CBS will feature an interview solely with Harris, after the network said Trump accepted an invitation and then backed out. “A 60 Minutes candidate hour will feature only Kamala Harris after former President Donald Trump, who’d previously agreed to be on the show, decided not to participate in the Monday, October 7 special,” CBS reported.
There was no clear winner of last night’s vice-presidential debate among registered voters quizzed in another snap poll last night, this one conducted for CNN by polling firm SSRS. After Walz and Vance had a constructive debate, CNN reported that their viewers who were polled thought better of both candidates after the debate than they had before.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan called Iran’s missile attack on Israel yesterday a “significant escalation” in the Middle East conflict, although he said it was ultimately “defeated and ineffective”, in part because of assistance from the US military in shooting down some of the inbound missiles. Biden said his administration is “fully supportive” of Israel and that he’s in “active discussion” with aides about what the appropriate response should be.
Updated
Biden and Harris to visit communities hit by hurricane
On Thursday, Joe Biden will visit communities in Florida and Georgia that have been hit by Hurricane Helene, the White House has announced.
Biden’s upcoming visits will follow his stops in North and South Carolina on Wednesday where he is set to survey the damage caused by the storm.
More than $10m has been provided directly to those who have been affected by the storm, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, Reuters reports.
Kamala Harris will be in neighboring Georgia. Helene was one of the deadliest storms in recent US history and knocked out power and cellular service for millions. The death toll is nearing 180 people.
Updated
GOP leaders are vexed as Republican Senate challengers are falling behind Donald Trump in voter polling.
Victoria Bekiempis reports for the Guardian:
In Ohio, Trump is polling at an average of 8.7 percentage points above the Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno, RealClear Politics averages suggest. In Wisconsin, Trump has polled 2.2 points ahead of the Senate candidate Eric Hovde; they also both remain under 50% in the polls.
In Arizona, Trump is at 49.3% compared with Kari Lake’s 43.4%. In Nevada, Sam Brown is at 40.7% while Trump has 47.6%.
Meanwhile, Democratic Senate contenders are still besting Republican candidates in “every key battleground” in the presidential race, per the Cook Political report. But the site noted that their leads were tighter than in August, and that Wisconsin and Michigan Senate races could be prime opportunities for Republicans.
For the full story, click here:
Joe Biden has ordered the defense department to approve the deployment of up to 1,000 active-duty soldiers to reinforce the North Carolina National Guard amid the deadly impacts of Hurricane Helene.
In an announcement issued on Wednesday, Biden said:
“These soldiers will speed up the delivery of life-saving supplies of food, water, and medicine to isolated communities in North Carolina – they have the manpower and logistical capabilities to get this vital job done, and fast. They will join hundreds of North Carolina National Guard members deployed under state authorities in support of the response.
Hurricane Helene has been a storm of historic proportion. My heart goes out to everyone who has experienced unthinkable loss. We are here for you – and we will stay here for as long as it takes.”
Updated
Kamala Harris has released the following statement on the International Longshoremen’s Association port workers’ strike:
“This strike is about fairness. Foreign-owned shipping companies have made record profits and executive compensation has grown. The Longshoremen, who play a vital role transporting essential goods across America, deserve a fair share of these record profits.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, wants to pull us back to a time before workers had the freedom to organize. As president, he blocked overtime benefits for millions of workers, he appointed union busters to the NLRB – and just recently, he said striking workers should be fired.
Donald Trump makes empty promise after empty promise to American workers, but never delivers. He thinks our economy should only work for those who own the big skyscrapers, not those who actually build them.
As president, I will have workers’ backs and finally pass the PRO [Protecting the Right to Organize] Act. And I will fight for an opportunity economy - where every person has the chance not just to get by but to get ahead.”
Updated
Following last night’s vice-presidential debate, JD Vance is continuing his talking point of “common sense” by tweeting on Wednesday:
“Last night was fun!
Remember: Kamala Harris has been in power for the last 3.5 years. She opened the border. She cast the deciding vote on trillions in new spending. The border and affordability crisis is on her.
Donald Trump, by contrast, governed with common sense.”
With only five weeks left till Election Day, the repeated messaging of “common sense” by Vance appears to be in contrast to the Harris-Walz strategy of framing their own campaign as “joy.”
Updated
After JD Vance refused to acknowledge Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election during the VP debate last night, one of the former president’s senior advisers doubled down on that stance this morning.
When CNN anchor Jim Acosta asked Trump campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski whether Trump lost the 2020 race, Lewandowski sidestepped the question in much the same manner that Vance did last night.
“Why is this so difficult for the Trump campaign to answer?” Acosta asked. “I mean it’s 2024. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Can you answer that?”
“Jim, I think it’s very simple. The American people are past the 2020 election,” Lewandowski replied. “We can go back and relitigate the 2020 election, or we can look at what we can do to make America better for the everyday Americans who are struggling under Bidenomics.”
Acosta interjected, “But, Corey, it’s not relitigating. It’s just a simple question: did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
Lewandowski replied, “Why are we talking about 2020 anymore? [Do] the American people care about the 2020 election more, or do they care about being able to put food on their table?”
Acosta and Lewandowski then sparred over the definition of “widespread fraud”, as Trump has presented no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 race. Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris’ campaign, said of the exchange: “Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. It shouldn’t be this hard to say.”
Updated
In a tweet on Wednesday following JD Vance’s refusal to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election during last night’s vice-presidential debate, Kamala Harris wrote:
“On January 6, the former president incited an attack on our nation’s democracy because he didn’t like the outcome of the election.
If you stand for country, democracy, and the rule of law—our campaign has a place for you.”
On January 6, the former president incited an attack on our nation's democracy because he didn't like the outcome of the election.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 2, 2024
If you stand for country, democracy, and the rule of law—our campaign has a place for you.
Updated
Trump's mass deportations could cost up to $88bn a year, analysis suggests
Implementing Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign could cost the federal government as much as $88b per year on average, according to a new analysis released on Wednesday.
If elected, Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in US history, but he has offered few concrete details about how he would achieve a campaign of such scale – and at what cost.
New! 🚨 We @immcouncil published new estimates of the costs of mass deportations. We find:
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) October 2, 2024
- Mass deportations would cause GDP to drop by 4.2-6.8%, more than the Great Recession.
- The annual cost to arrest, detain, process, and remove 1 million people would be $88 billion. https://t.co/ram7bqCJFE pic.twitter.com/xeU0Nvn9df
“Given that in the modern immigration enforcement era the United States has never deported more than half a million immigrants per year – and many of those have been migrants apprehended trying to enter the US, not just those already living here–any mass deportation proposal raises obvious questions: how, exactly, would the United States possibly carry out the largest law enforcement operation in world history? And at what cost?” ask the authors of the analysis, published by the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group for immigrant rights.
The analysis estimates the costs based on Trump’s pledge to deport the roughly 11 million people living in the US who as of 2022 lacked permanent legal status and faced the possibility of removal. (Trump has suggested the eligible population is as high as 20 million people.)
The largest share of the cost would be spent on building detention camps to arrest, detain, process, and remove immigrants from the US. It would also likely require the government to hire additional law enforcement officers and immigration judges.
In addition to the logistical challenges, the analysis also highlights the impact it would have on the economy, especially sectors like construction and hospitality that employ large numbers of undocumented workers.
“Due to the loss of workers across US industries, we found that mass deportation would reduce the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by 4.2 to 6.8%,” it states. “It would also result in significant reduction in tax revenues for the US government.”
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Vance and Walz to return to campaign trail following VP debate
Following last night’s vice-presidential debate where both candidates kept things fairly civil, JD Vance and Tim Walz are set to return to the campaign trail today.
On Wednesday, Vance is set to deliver remarks at a campaign event in Auburn Hills, Michigan at around 1:30pm ET before delivering another set of remarks in Marne, Michigan at 5:30pm ET.
Meanwhile, Vance will kick off a bus tour through central Pennsylvania and will make stops in Harrisburg, Reading, and York where he will be joined by York native senator John Fetterman.
Walz is set to deliver remarks in York at 3pm ET and will join a political engagement with local Latino leaders in Reading at 6pm ET.
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Biden approves major disaster declaration for Virginia
Joe Biden has approved a major disaster declaration for the state of Virginia amid the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene.
On Wednesday, the White House released a statement, saying:
Yesterday, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. declared that a major disaster exists in the Commonwealth of Virginia and ordered Federal aid to supplement Commonwealth and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by Tropical Storm Helene beginning on September 25, 2024, and continuing.
The President’s action makes Federal funding available to affected individuals in the counties of Giles, Grayson, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, and Wythe and the independent city of Galax.
Assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster.
Federal funding also is available to State and eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work in the counties of Bedford, Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Craig, Dickenson, Giles, Grayson, Montgomery, Pittsylvania, Pulaski, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise, and Wythe and the independent cities of Bristol, Covington, Danville, Galax, Norton, and Radford.”
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Harris campaign ad boosts Vance's 'damning non-answer' on Trump election loss
The vice-presidential hopefuls debated for 90 minutes on Tuesday night, but the Harris campaign wants Americans to remember one moment, a split-second reply that Tim Walz called a “damning non-answer”.
Just hours after the primetime event concluded, with viewers split over a winner and analysts praising JD Vance for the more polished performance, the Harris campaign has launched an ad highlighting the moment the Republican refused to say whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. (He did.)
During the final moments of the debate, Walz asked Vance to answer the question. Did Trump lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden?
Vance replied that he was “focused on the future”.
“That’s a damning non-answer,” Walz replied.
The ad features that exchange, overlaid with images of the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. It ends with Walz telling viewers: “America, I think you’ve got a really clear choice of who’s going to honor democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump.”
According to the Harris campaign, their internal focus group of undecided battleground state voters said the moment was Vance’s worst of the night.
Harris hasn’t centered her campaign around democracy the way Biden had. But the issue still has high salience for voters.
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Walz heading for Pennsylvania battleground bus tour
Tim Walz is heading directly from his debate with rival JD Vance in New York last night for the crucial election battleground of Pennsylvania today to begin a bus tour with one of the state’s two Democratic US Senators, John Fetterman.
Walz and Fetterman are starting out in south central Pennsylvania with a rally in the city of York.
York county voted heavily for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in 2020, even as the state flipped from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2020.
This is a further case of Dems campaigning in deeply red counties in swing states, hoping that reducing the margin of their likely loss will help to tip the finely-balanced statewide race to their party.
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The United Nations Security Council has called an emergency meeting today in New York to address the spiraling conflict in the Middle East.
The region moved closer to a long-feared regional war on Wednesday, a day after Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel and Israel said it began limited ground incursions into Lebanon targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, the Associated Press reports.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, vowed late Tuesday to retaliate against Iran, which he said “made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it”. An Iranian commander threatened wider strikes on infrastructure if Israel retaliates against Iran’s territory.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.
The Guardian is running a global live blog on the Middle East and covering all the developments as they happen. You can follow that here.
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Trump backs out of 60 Minutes interview; Harris to go ahead
There is no sign that there will be another presidential debate before the election, between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump.
We had the only planned vice-presidential debate last night between the Dems’ Tim Walz and the GOP’s JD Vance.
Now Monday’s 60 Minutes show on CBS will feature an interview solely with Harris, after the network said Trump accepted an invitation and then backed out.
“A 60 Minutes candidate hour will feature only Kamala Harris after former President Donald Trump, who’d previously agreed to be on the show, decided not to participate in the Monday, October 7 special,” CBS reported. CBS pointed out that the show has had the tradition for half a century of inviting the two presidential candidates to sit for interviews as voters head to the polls.
Late last month, Harris accepted an invitation from CNN for a second debate, but Trump declined. The broad consensus is that Harris won the lone debate between her and Trump.
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Republican JD Vance gave more misleading statements than Democrat Tim Walz in the sole vice-presidential debate last night, according to a check of some of the main facts claimed by both candidates, carried out by Reuters.
The news agency called out Vance, the US Senator from Ohio, on a key environmental point, when he said the US is “the cleanest economy in the entire world.”
This is false. According to the European Union’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research 2024 report, the US was second only to China as the highest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions globally last year.”
Vance mostly dodged talking directly about the climate crisis and related solutions.
The candidates talked about school shootings, where Reuters also found fault with Vance saying: “The gross majority, close to 90% in some of the statistics I’ve seen, of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms.”
Reuters said:
This is misleading. Most public mass shootings – a shooting that kills four or more people – between 1966 and 2019 were carried out by legally obtained handguns, according to research, opens new tab funded by the National Institute of Justice.
Reuters did not find any of the Walz statements it examined to be false. On topics including energy production, taxes, trade, poverty and healthcare costs, Reuters found Walz to be true or mostly true, with one point it declared “unknown” and another “it depends”.
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Walz, Vance neck-and-neck among voters after debate – CNN poll
There was no clear winner of last night’s vice-presidential debate among registered voters quizzed in another snap poll last night, this one conducted for CNN by polling firm SSRS.
After both Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance had a constructive debate, CNN reported that their viewers who were polled thought better of both candidates after the debate than they had before.
Vance, who has donned a controversial, right-wing platform and persona on the campaign trail, was very measured last night, conciliatory at times. Walz was less cheery than his rally self, but more consistent with his usual reputation of being a “joyful warrior” exuding reason.
CNN reported: “Among debate watchers, Walz remains the candidate who’s seen more positively and as more in touch with their needs and vision for the country. Vance …boosted his standing … outperforming expectations and gaining ground on the share who perceive him as qualified. Both men, the poll finds, are viewed by a majority of debate watchers as qualified to assume the presidency if needed.”
Crucially, though, the cable TV network added that almost no respondents felt the need to change the way they’ve decided to vote after watching the debate.
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In another interesting finding from the Politico/Focaldata snap poll conducted straight after the vice-presidential debate last night, Minnesota governor and Democratic nominee Tim Walz polled better with younger voters, despite his being 60 years old.
GOP nominee and Ohio Senator JD Vance did better with voters over 55, while he was a youthful pick for running mate by Donald Trump, having just turned 40 last month.
The findings track broadly with their tickets.
Politico reported that: “Walz’s strongest ratings came from younger people, particularly those ages 25-34, those with college degrees, and Black and Latino respondents – all key components of the Democratic coalition that powered President Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in 2020.”
As we’re talking ages, Kamala Harris, the Dems’ nominee for president, will turn 60 later this month, having replaced Biden, 81, when the US president quit his re-election bid in July.
Trump is 78. Politico found from its debate poll that: “Vance performed best with people over the age of 55, white voters and those without a college degree.”
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Voters split 50-50 over whether Walz or Vance won debate
In a snap poll after the vice-presidential debate, voters declared there was no decisive winner and were split on who performed better, the Democrats’ Tim Walz or the Republicans’ JD Vance, Politico reports this morning.
“Asked who won Tuesday’s debate, voters were split 50-50 over whether it was JD Vance or Tim Walz, according to a POLITICO/Focaldata snap poll of likely voters conducted just after the two faced off in a studio in New York City,” the political news site said.
It added: “The dead-heat results are a fitting reflection of the country’s hyper-polarized politics — particularly as it enters the final stretch of the closest presidential election in years.”
Democrats mostly thought Walz won and GOP-ers mostly thought Vance won. However, there was in interesting divergence when it came to independents.
“Walz had a commanding advantage with independents, 58 percent of whom sided with the Minnesota governor while 42 percent gave Vance the edge,” the site said.
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Joe Biden’s administration heaped pressure on US port employers to raise their offer to secure a labor deal with dockworkers on strike for a second day on Wednesday, choking half the country’s ocean shipping, AP reported.
The strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) union has blocked everything from food to automobile shipments across dozens of ports from Maine to Texas in a disruption analysts warn will cost the economy billions of dollars a day.
More than 38 container vessels were already backed up at US ports by Tuesday, compared with just three on Sunday before the strike, according to Everstream Analytics.
“Foreign ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic, when Longshoremen put themselves at risk to keep ports open. It’s time those ocean carriers offered a strong and fair contract that reflects ILA workers’ contribution to our economy and to their record profits,” Biden said in a post on X late on Tuesday.
He directed his team to monitor for potential price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers, the White House said.
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White House calls Iran missile attack 'significant escalation'
Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on Tuesday, the latest in a series of rapidly escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its Arab allies that threatens to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.
White House National Security adviser Jake Sullivan called Iran’s missile attack a “significant escalation,” although he said it was ultimately “defeated and ineffective,” in part because of assistance from the US military in shooting down some of the inbound missiles.
President Joe Biden said his administration is “fully supportive” of Israel and that he’s in “active discussion” with aides about what the appropriate response should be to Tehran.
Three weeks on from the presidential debate, Tim Walz and JD Vance took to the stage on Tuesday night for a vice-presidential head-to-head. The two candidates largely avoided attacks on each other in what was a more policy-driven discussion.
If you live in a swing state such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, we would like to hear what you thought of the debate.
How do you think it went and do you feel the candidates addressed the issues important to you? What other issues would you like them to have addressed in the debate? What was your favourite moment? Did anything change your mind in any way?
The Democratic candidate for vice-president, Tim Walz, and his Republican counterpart, JD Vance, clashed over border policy and the January 6 Capitol attack, with Walz at one point asking point blank if Vance believed former president Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election.
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There was a strange feeling as the vice-presidential debate got under way in the CBS News studios on Tuesday night that only intensified as 90 minutes of detailed policy discussion unfolded: was the United States in danger of regaining its sanity?
After weeks and months of being assailed by Donald Trump’s dystopian evocation of a country on the verge of self-destruction, amplified by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s dire warnings of democracy in peril, here was something very different. The two vice-presidential nominees were embracing that most endangered of American political species: agreement.
“Tim, I actually think I agree with you,” said JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, addressing his opposite number Tim Walz during the discussion on immigration.
“Much of what the senator said right there, I’m in agreement with him,” said Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic nominee, as they turned to trade policy.
It wasn’t true, of course. The two men were no closer to agreement than their bosses, who in their own presidential debate last month showed themselves to be worlds apart.
But on Tuesday it was as if the CBS News studio in midtown Manhattan had been transported back to a prelapsarian – or at least, pre-Maga – times. To an era when politicians could be civil, and to get on you didn’t have to castigate your opponent as an enemy of the people.
Tim Walz and JD Vance faced each other for the first and only vice-presidential debate of this election cycle – and clashed on issues including abortion, childcare, the cost of living and Trump’s 2020 election claims.
Here are the facts on some of the false or misleading claims offered during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate.
Helene death toll now at least 166 as Biden plans to visit ravaged Carolinas
President Joe Biden will survey the devastation in North and South Carolina on Wednesday as rescuers continue their search for anyone still unaccounted for after Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage across the south-east and killed at least 166 people.
Many residents in both states were still without running water, cellular service and electricity as flood waters receded and revealed more of the death and destruction left in Helene’s path, AP reported.
“We have to jump start this recovery process,” Biden said Tuesday, estimating it will cost billions. “People are scared to death. This is urgent.”
While Biden is in the Carolinas, vice-president Kamala Harris will be in neighboring Georgia.
Helene, one of the deadliest storms in recent US history, knocked out power and cellular service for millions. More than 1.2 million customers still were in the dark early Wednesday in the Carolinas and Georgia. Some residents cooked food on charcoal grills or hiked to high ground in the hopes of finding a signal to let loved ones know they are alive.
On Tuesday, cadaver dogs and search crews trudged through knee-deep muck and debris in the mountains of western North Carolina looking for more victims. At least 57 people were killed in Buncombe County alone, home to city of Asheville, a tourism haven known for its art galleries, breweries and outdoor activities.
In Swannanoa, a small community outside Asheville, receding flood waters revealed cars stacked on top of others and trailer homes that had floated away during the storm. Roads were caked with mud and debris and pockmarked by sinkholes.
Key moments from the debate
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Vance refuses to say Trump lost the 2020 election in Walz debate
JD Vance refused to say whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and continued to sidestep questions over whether he would certify a Trump loss this fall during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday.
The exchange brought out some of the sharpest attacks from Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor, in what was otherwise a muted and civil back-and-forth with the Ohio senator.
Walz asked Vance directly whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance responded: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” Walz then cut in with one of his most aggressive attack lines of the evening: “That is a damning non-answer.”
Vance has previously said that he would have asked states to submit alternative slates of electors to Congress to continue to debate allegations of election irregularities in 2020. By the time Congress met during the last election to consider electoral votes, courts, state officials and the US supreme court had all turned away efforts to block legitimate slates of electors from being sent to Congress.
Pressed by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell on whether he would again refuse to certify the vote this year, Vance declined to answer.
“What President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square,” Vance said. “And that’s all I’ve said and that’s all that Donald Trump has said.” He later said that if Walz won the election with Harris, Walz would have his support.
Trump has warned of a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win the election. He has also said supporters won’t have to vote anymore if he wins in November. Both the Trump campaign and Republican allies are seeding the ground to contest a possible election loss in November.
Donald Trump’s senior aides saw JD Vance as having a slick debate performance over Tim Walz, according to people close to Trump, that made his campaign appear palatable despite the former president’s increasingly caustic threats such as vowing to prosecute his perceived enemies.
The campaign aides also believed that Vance reset the narrative over his image and likely came across in a more favorable light to undecided voters after a brutal few months of being hammered for making disparaging remarks about women as “childless cat ladies”.
Vance’s favorability issue was perhaps the principal priority for Trump’s senior aides because they saw it as potentially fixable and if so, beneficial to the Trump campaign with fewer than five weeks until election day in what has become a vanishingly close race against Kamala Harris.
Afterwards, Trump predictably claimed Vance won the debate, but a CBS News poll confirmed how vice-presidential debates matter increasingly less in close elections compared to ground game efforts to drive turnout.
In the post-debate poll, 42% of respondents said Vance won the debate, 41% gave the win to Walz, while 17% said it was tied – suggesting the main takeaway remains that it is unlikely to play any material role in which campaign wins each of the seven battleground states in November.
Tim Walz and JD Vance took to the stage on Tuesday night for a vice-presidential debate that served up less drama than September’s presidential debate, but offered revealing differences on abortion, school shootings, and immigration.
Three weeks ago Kamala Harris and Donald Trump had endured a contentious hour-and-a-half, with an emotional Trump being goaded into ranting about the number of people who attend his rallies and declaring the vice-president to be a “Marxist”, before reportedly threatening to sue one of the debate moderators. Harris enjoyed a brief polling uptick from that performance.
But on Tuesday, Walz and Vance largely avoided attacks on each other, and instead concentrated their fire on each other’s running mates. It was a more policy-driven discussion than that of their running mates’, but one with a few gaffes that might overshadow some of the substance in coming days.
In a key exchange over abortion, Walz, the governor of Minnesota, followed Harris’s lead in using personal stories.
Trump “brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v Wade”, Walz said. He noted the case of Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion in Texas despite serious health complications during pregnancy – Zurawski is now part of a group of women suing the state of Texas – and a girl in Kentucky who as a child was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant.
“If you don’t know [women like this], you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said, which Vance contested.
Walz also criticized the Trump-Vance position that states should decide whether women have access to abortion.
“That’s not how this works. This is basic human rights. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world,” he said.
Walz and Vance clash, politely, at policy-heavy vice presidential debate
Good morning and welcome to the blog as we wake up to reaction to Tim Walz and JD Vance’s vice-presidential debate which offered revealing differences on abortion, school shootings, and immigration.
It was a debate that was surprisingly civil in the final stretch of an ugly election campaign marred by inflammatory rhetoric and two assassination attempts.
The two rivals, who have forcefully attacked each other on the campaign trail, mostly struck a cordial tone, instead saving their fire for the candidates at the top of their tickets, democratic vice-president Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump.
The most tense exchange occurred near the end of the debate, when Vance – who has said he would not have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election – avoided a question about whether he would challenge this year’s vote if Trump loses.
Walz responded by blaming Trump’s false claims of voter fraud for instigating the 6 January 2021, mob that attacked the US Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election.
“He is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said, before turning to Vance. “Did he lose the 2020 election?”
Vance again sidestepped the question, instead accusing Harris of pursuing online censorship of opposing viewpoints. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
Meanwhile, CNN’s snap poll has viewers split over who won the debate – but Vance narrowly wins. The poll of 574 registered voters saw 51% say that Vance won the debate, with 49% choosing Walz.
Polled before the debate, 54% of voters thought Walz was likelier to win.
