Donald Trump is now on stage in Reading, Pennsylvania, his second of four campaign rallies planned for today.
His speech thus far has focused on his claims that migrants are dangerous, and that he will deport them, if elected:
November 5, 2024 will be Liberation Day in America. And on day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in American history. We’re going to get them out.
Trump heads to Pittsburgh after this, then to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for his last appearance of the day.
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How will the vice-president spend her election day?
With her ballot already posted and her campaign stops finished, Harris will return to Number One Observatory Circle in Washington in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, following a late-night rally in Philadelphia.
Throughout the rest of the day, the campaign said she will be “on the airwaves” – calling into local radio stations in the seven battleground states.
The eleventh-hour calls are about “making sure that those final voters who are on their way to work, on their way home, taking a lunch break, understand the stakes, but understand her vision for where she wants to take this country over the course of the next four years,” Harris’s communications director, Michael Tyler, told reporters.
“And most importantly, make sure that they understand when, where and how to vote … she’s going put in the work that it takes to hit 270, and that’s until polls close tomorrow.”
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This is the second Kamala Harris rally I’ve attended this week in Pennsylvania, and I have noticed that speakers are bringing up the racist joke about Puerto Ricans made at a recent Trump rally much more often than they were before.
“I want a president of the United States who looks to the 500,000 Puerto Ricans who live in our communities and strengthens our neighborhoods,” Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said to loud cheers.
The Harris campaign also says it’s prepared to combat any attempts by Trump to challenge the election results.
“We have hundreds of lawyers across the country ready to protect election results against any challenge that Trump might bring,” said Dana Remus, a senior campaign adviser and outside counsel. “This will not be the fastest process, but the law and the facts are on our side.”
Remus said the Trump campaign’s legal efforts were designed to undermine faith in the electoral process.
“Keep in mind that the volume of cases does not equate to a volume of legitimate concerns. In fact, it just shows how desperate they’re becoming,” she said.
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Harris campaign expects 'near complete results' from Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan on election night
Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Harris campaign, offered a rundown of when the team is expecting to learn the results from key states on election night.
By the end of election night, the campaign expects to have “near complete results” from Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, and “partial results from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona”, she said.
“By Wednesday morning, we expect most results in from Wisconsin and additional results from Pennsylvania and potentially Michigan,” she said. More results from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada will come after that.
Pennsylvania is seen as an all-but-must-win for Harris, who is spending the final day before the election barnstorming the commonwealth.
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro gets loud ovation when he takes stage
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro just received a loud ovation when he took to the stage a little after 3pm.
“This race is about something deeper that a policy or a bill,” he said. “It’s about the character of this great nation.”
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The last time battleground state Nevada went red was in 2004, when George W Bush was on the ballot. But Republicans hope that this year, Donald Trump will end Democrats’ streak.
As with all the other swing states in this election, polls have shown Trump neck and neck with Kamala Harris in Nevada – an encouraging sign for the GOP, considering its recent history of Democratic strength. But Jon Ralston, a veteran political forecaster and editor of the Nevada Independent, released his projections for the year, and does not think Trump can pull it off.
From his article:
The key to this election has always been which way the non-major-party voters break because they have become the plurality in the state. They are going to make up 30 percent or so of the electorate and if they swing enough towards Harris, she will win Nevada. I think they will, and I’ll tell you why: Many people assume that with the GOP catching up to the Democrats in voter registration that the automatic voter registration plan pushed by Democrats that auto-registers people as nonpartisans (unless they choose a party) at the DMV had been a failure for the party. But I don’t think so. There are a lot of nonpartisans who are closet Democrats who were purposely registered by Democrat-aligned groups as nonpartisans. The machine knows who they are and will get them to vote. It will be just enough to overcome the Republican lead – along with women motivated by abortion and crossover votes that issue also will cause. I know some may think this reflects my well-known disdain for Trump, heart over data. But that is not so. I have often predicted against my own preferences; history does not lie. I just have a feeling she will catch up here, but I also believe – and please remember this – it will not be clear who won on Election Night here, so block out the nattering nabobs of election denialism. It’s going to be very, very close. Prediction: Harris, 48.5 percent; Trump 48.2 percent; others and None of These Candidates, 3.3 percent.
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Allentown mayor Matthew Tuerk is the first speaker at this rally.
He is the city’s first Latino mayor and is laying into Donald Trump after a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico an island of garbage.
There is a huge Puerto Rican population in Allentown, and there were loud boos in the crowd, and then cheers, when some people in the audience held up a big Puerto Rican flag.
“Puerto Rico se respeta, Allentown se respeta,” Tuerk said.
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Kamala Harris holds a slight lead over Donald Trump in the final national PBS News/NPR/Marist poll published today, just hours before election day.
The poll shows Harris holding a four-point lead over Trump, with the support of 51% of likely voters compared with Trump’s 47%. The lead lies just outside the study’s 3.5-point margin of error.
A little more than half of independents support Trump, a 5-point lead over Harris, according to the poll.
Mostly notably, the poll shows that the gender gap has shrunk significantly in the last month of the campaign. Trump’s lead over Harris among male voters has dropped to just 4 points, down from the 16-point advantage in October.
At the same time, 55% of women said they will back Harris in the latest poll, meaning that her lead among women has dropped from 18 points to 11 points since last month.
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Before Kamala Harris took the stage here at Muhlenberg college in Allentown, I chatted with Elizabeth Slaby, an 81-year-old, who was the first person in line this morning.
She said she got here at 6am – so early that she had to circle the block before getting in line.
She was a registered Republican for more than 50 years. But after the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 she changed her voter registration.
She’s her with her son and grandson. “I never thought I’d see a woman president and now I’m so so excited,” she said.
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'Let's get this done': Harris rallies supporters in Pennsylvania
Kamala Harris sought to reassure her supporters during a campaign stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, telling them “we’re good” and urging them to “enjoy this moment” during the final 24 hours of her campaign.
“I’m telling you guys, we’re good,” Harris addressed Democratic canvassers. “We’re good. So we’re going to keep doing this work.”
Harris recalled campaigning with her ironing board when she first ran for office as district attorney for San Francisco. “No one thought I could win,” she said.
“I like to say that when you love something, you fight for it.”
She told her supporters she could “feel the energy” and called for them to go and knock on neighbors’ doors, “even if you’ve not met them”.
“As we’re getting out the vote, let’s be intentional about building community, about building coalitions and reminding people, we all have so much more in common than what separates us.”
“We love our country and that’s what this fight is about,” she said. “Let’s get this done.”
Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, also appeared at a rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on Monday where he said the decisions made over the next days “will shape not just the next four years, they will shape the coming generations”.
Walz, who was joined at the rally by his wife, Gwen, and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, said the election “quite literally could be won through the state of Wisconsin”.
“This is a generational opportunity for us to turn the page for us to take this momentum going forward,” he said.
Walz also spoke about his confidence in the country’s election security, arguing that the US has “the fairest, the most secure elections in the world”.
“We will count the votes. We will win on the votes, and we will be able to know, too, that we have a part in not only moving on from nine years of what we’ve seen, but charting, truly, a new way forward. The rest of the world is watching, so I have one request: win this for America.”
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While we’re on the subject of Katy Perry, the pop star posted to X to say that she has officially voted for Kamala Harris.
This is @KamalaHarris. She’s gonna be… well… We’re the only ones who can finish this sentence 🗳️🇺🇸 VOTE! pic.twitter.com/zrEcSH1fah
— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) November 4, 2024
Kamala Harris will close out the final day of campaigning with a series of star-studded events featuring Oprah, Lady Gaga and … Katy Perry.
For anyone at the Javits Center in New York City on Election Night 2016 – and for those who were not, picture a glass-ceilinged convention hall with hordes of women and young girls blissfully unaware that the US was not, in fact, about to elect its first female president – Perry’s election eve appearance may be jarring.
Not just because her solo Woman’s World debuted this summer to brutal reviews – The Guardian asked: what regressive, warmed-over hell is this? – but because Perry’s song Roar was the anthem of Hillary Clinton’s doomed presidential bid in 2016.
Perry was due to perform at the Democrat’s election night watch party in 2016. But as the results began to turn irrevocably against Clinton, Perry arrived on stage, not to sing but to implore voters in California to stay in line if they had not voted yet. The urgency in the pop star’s voice, especially about votes in a deep blue state, shattered hopes in the room and confirmed what few had even considered at the beginning of the evening: that the “highest, hardest” glass ceiling would not shatter – at least not that night.
Perhaps Perry’s presence on the campaign trail on its final day will prove cathartic.
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Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on the popular Jubilee YouTube channel where he attempted to win over 25 undecided Michigan voters.
In one clip posted on Instagram, Buttigieg faced a young voter who said they were trying to decide between voting for Kamala Harris or the Green party presidential candidate, Jill Stein. “I want to see something different,” the undecided voter said.
Buttigieg argued that neither the Democratic nor Republican party is “perfect” but that “Jill Stein is not going to become the president of the United States. Donald Trump is, or Kamala Harris is”.
“From an environmental perspective … you’ve got one side that is saying climate change is a hoax,” Buttigieg said, adding that Trump would “tear up” the Clean Water Act if he is re-elected.
“You keep mentioning stuff about Trump, but I’m trying to tell you that I’m between Jill and Kamala,” the voter responded. “I I have lost a lot of faith in our two party system, and I want to see something different.”
Prior to the debate, six of the 25 voters said they were leaning toward Harris, four toward Trump, five leaning third parties and 11 said they were leaning toward not voting at all.
After hearing from Buttigieg, 12 of the participants said they planned to vote for Harris. Five said they would vote for Trump, six for third parties and three said they did not intend to vote.
Arizona senate race: Democrat Ruben Gallego polling ahead of Republican Kari Lake
Ruben Gallego is polling well ahead of his competitor, Kari Lake, while Donald Trump is slightly ahead of Kamala Harris in most polls in Arizona.
I’ve spoken with people who are voting for both Trump and Gallego, who is a progressive member of the US House – an unlikely voting combination.
Gallego told me this morning that he’s winning over Republicans and independents because he’s been showing up for nearly two years in places they didn’t expect to see him.
“We went to rural Arizona. We went to the boardrooms. We went to the rodeos,” he said.
“I reached out to my veterans out there and made sure for them to understand that no matter what party I am, I’m still a Marine Corps veteran first, and that I would be here to fight for them.
As far as the Trump-Gallego voter? “I think it’s not a sizeable amount of people, but they’re there, and we’re proud to have them part of our coalition.”
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At a house in the suburbs outside Phoenix this morning, US representative Ruben Gallego fired up his supporters for one more day of getting out the vote for Democrats in Arizona as he seeks the US Senate seat, one of the crucial races nationally to keep the chamber.
The group of a dozen or so volunteers circled up with Gallego to first chant “si se puede,” or “yes we can”. “The other side does not have this,” he told them. The Republicans aren’t hitting the doors for dozens of canvasses every day like Democrats are, he said.
“Their IE is being funded by billionaires like Elon Musk. Ours is being funded by people. We have people, and that’s what’s going to win the day,” he said.
Voters say they’re most concerned about three issues, Gallego said: abortion access (the state has a measure to restore Roe on the ballot), cost of living and border security.
Ruben Gallego arrives to give a pep talk to canvassers launching from Avondale this morning. Canvassers are going out around the city today for last-minute GOTV pic.twitter.com/BiTvR6QWnT
— Rachel Leingang (@rachelleingang) November 4, 2024
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I just got on a shuttle bus from the parking area for Kamala Harris’s rally in Allentown and you can already feel the excitement.
People are cheering as strangers get on the bus bringing their children to the rally (schools in Allentown are closed today because of the visit).
Harris earlier stopped by a canvas in Scranton and is set to hold two more rallies in Pennsylvania today.
The fact that she’s spending the entire last day of the campaign in Pennsylvania underscores how important the state’s 19 electoral votes are to the race.
While in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance stopped by a set of giant storage tanks billed as the “world’s largest six-pack” of beer.
“This is a six pack under the leadership of Kamala Harris,” Vance said in a clip posted to his X account, while holding a six-pack of a beer.
Pointing to the 54ft-tall tanks, Vance said: “This is a six pack under the leadership of Donald J Trump. Let’s make America great again.”
Make Six Packs Great Again.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 4, 2024
Vote for Donald J. Trump🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/cXGP7T5H6y
Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, made one final visit to the key swing state of Wisconsin before election day where he urged voters to back the Republican ticket even if “you don’t agree with everything that Trump says.”
“Our message to the swing voters of the state of Wisconsin is very simple: it doesn’t have to be like this,” Vance addressed supporters in La Crosse on Monday.
“You don’t have to agree with everything that I say, every policy proposal that we have. But what we know is that when Donald Trump was president, you could afford to pay your bills.”
Vance delivered a tight speech about border security and the economy, arguing that Americans were “playing by the rules” but have been “falling farther and farther behind” thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies.
“When Donald Trump is president, we get back to an old age of American prosperity,” Vance said.
The day so far
The final day of campaigning before Tuesday’s election is here, and Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Tim Walz will be on the road rallying voters all day. We already heard from the former president, who told supporters in North Carolina that he would put tariffs on Mexico to force them to stop migrants from entering the United States, while distorting his economic record and attacking Barack and Michelle Obama. Harris, meanwhile, will be spending her time in Pennsylvania, and has so far today avoided talking about her opponent in what will be one of her last chances to reach the voters who could send her to the White House.
Here’s what else has been going on today:
We can expect to see some of the final polls of the presidential race released today. One survey that came out, from Emerson College and The Hill, confirms that the two candidates are ties in the swing states.
Election administrators have stepped up their security as they face threats and harassment connected to Tuesday’s vote.
If recent history is any guide, tomorrow’s election may take days to call – or merely hours. Here’s a look at why calling election winners can be so unpredictable.
An official in Washoe has raised concerns about a new voter registration system in Nevada.
Cari-Ann Burgess, the former interim Washoe County registrar who has been on administrative leave since September and is facing charges of insubordination and poor job performance, has said that the county’s new voter registration and management system that went live eight days before the early voting in Nevada started has issues that still needs to be worked out. Her complaints are detailed in a recent article by ProPublica.
Burgess has alleged that the new system lacked safeguards to keep non-citizens from voting, and that issues with transferring data from the old to the new system could have left some registered voters off.
But the secretary of state’s office has strongly denied any issues, and noted that a lack of issues with early voting are a sign that things are working well.
Early voting ballots are being tallied in Washoe County, Nevada – and observers from both major parties have been holed up in the plexiglass observation room to watch the count.
Washoe, which includes the mountain city of Reno, is what many locals call the “swingiest” county in a key swing state, one that could help determine the outcome of the presidential election. During the midterms this year, the county’s Republican commissioners voted against certifying the election, spurring legal action, before reversing course.
Ahead of Election Day, the office has been fielding a deluge of questions and public information requests, working to reassure the public that the vote count is coming along smoothly.
Bob Blackstock, who is one among several observers with the local Democratic Party, said he was compelled to get involved in the elections process in 2022. “It’s not even that I’m so passionate about being a Democrat, it’s that I’m passionate about democracy,” said Blackstock, who is an organizer with the Washoe Democrats, but was speaking from his personal capacity.
“If we lose our democracy I don’t know what is left.”
Blackstock anticipates that his biggest responsibility will be to testify at the commission’s vote to approve the canvass – and providing a counterpoint to election deniers.
“It really seems like people have already made up their minds,” he said. Even though those who believe there is fraud have been able to watch the count and ask officials detailed questions, he worries that those looking for anything suspicious will think they see it.
“It’s self-confirmation bias,” he said.
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Despite presiding over mass layoffs, Trump makes false claim about employment
Donald Trump just told a whopper of a lie about the economy, saying that the most recent employment numbers were “the worst … in modern history”.
In fact, that distinction goes to April 2020’s data, which showed more than 20 million people had lost their jobs and unemployment had skyrocketed to 14.7% due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Who was president then? Trump, whose administration was roundly criticized for mishandling the pandemic.
Last month’s jobs report was indeed weak, though it remains to be seen if the trend will persist, or if the data was just reflecting the impact of an industrial strike and two major hurricanes:
In something of a throwback to his first presidential campaign (and many years of Republican attacks before that), Trump made a point to mention Barack Obama’s middle name, and also attacked former first lady Michelle Obama.
“Barack Hussein Obama, I call him the great divider,” Trump said during his ongoing speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hussein is Obama’s middle name, but Republicans, including Trump, have made a point of mentioning it while simultaneously propagating baseless claims that he is Muslim, or was born outside the United States.
Trump then complained that Michelle Obama insulted him: “Michelle hit me there. I was so nice to her, out of respect. I was saying she hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.”
Michelle Obama recently appeared with Kamala Harris at a rally in swing state Michigan:
As he has campaigned this year, Trump has become known for his lengthy speeches that typically run around 90 minutes.
The former president is clearly aware that much has been written about his penchant to go on and on, saying at his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina: “By the way, the press will say, Oh, he rambled.”
“That was genius,” he said of his speech. “The rest of it I don’t really even have to talk about.”
Trump has dubbed his rambling speaking style “the weave”, and called his speech in Raleigh “the ultimate weave”. He added: “And think of it, isn’t it nice that you can have a president that doesn’t need to use a teleprompter?” Trump definitely uses a teleprompter, but often does not follow what’s on it.
Trump threatens Mexico with tariffs if they don't stop migrants from entering US
Donald Trump has finally taken the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, and announced a new policy: he would impose tariffs on Mexico if the United States’s southern neighbor does not stop migrants from crossing their shared border.
Referring to Mexico’s recently inaugurated president Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said: “I haven’t met her, and I’m going to inform her on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America.”
“It’s only got a 100% chance of working, because if that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 50, and [if] that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 75. For the tough guys, and I’ll make it 100,” Trump said, predicting Mexico will deploy soldiers to its southern border with Guatemala and Belize to stop migrants heading north.
“You know, their southern border’s where they come in, they come right through. And by the way, there’s 100% chance of working. It’s only a question,” he said. He called Mexico America’s top trading partner, which isn’t quite right – according to the US trade representative, it is the number-two supplier and purchaser of American goods.
Donald Trump is a bit late to his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, but his son Donald Trump Jr just came onstage to give voters a pep talk, one angled on encouraging them to look for the voter fraud that Republicans claim, without much evidence, mars elections in the US.
“So, you guys, at this point is up to each and every one of you. So, whatever you would do if you woke up on November 6 and Kamala Harris was president-elect, whatever you would do to stop that disaster for our country, for the world and for Western civilization, whatever you would do, do it now,” Trump Jr said.
“Do it till the polls close tomorrow night, and then start calling your friends on the west coast to make sure they’re doing it, too. Get in line, dear friends, stay in line. If you see nonsense, video it, show it to everyone. Do not let them play their games.”
Conspicuously absent from Kamala Harris’s closing argument? Donald Trump.
At least in name. In the campaign’s closing ad and in the final days on the campaign trail, the vice-president has made no explicit reference to her opponent, instead opting to end on a positive, forward-looking note.
“Our campaign has not been about being against something, it is about being for something,” Harris said at a high-energy rally in Michigan on Sunday night. “A fight for a future with freedom and opportunity and dignity for all Americans.”
At a Black church in Detroit, Harris appealed to “Americans from so-called red states to so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice” and declared the country ready to “turn the page and write the next chapter of our history.
It’s a shift from just a few days ago, when the vice-president focused on Trump’s threat to American democracy and agreed with Trump’s former aides who said he was a “fascist.”
But in the final days, the Harris campaign is betting that the slice of undecided voters left need an affirmative reason to vote for Harris. If they were scared of the threat Trump poses, they’d likely have made up their minds long ago.
Trump to rally in North Carolina, first of four events in final day of campaigning
We expect Donald Trump to soon take the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, kicking off his final sprint of campaigning before polls open in tomorrow’s presidential election.
The former president has four events scheduled today. After Raleigh, he’s set to appear in Reading, Pennsylvania at 2pm, then in Pittsburgh at 6pm, and finally in Grand Rapids, Michigan at 10.30pm.
The presidential election is being held tomorrow, but it may take days to count the ballots necessary to determine the winner, and the story may not end there. Evidence is mounting that Donald Trump and his allies are planning to once again cast doubt on the result, should he lose. The Guardian’s Sam Levine explains how:
Donald Trump has left little doubt that he will contest the results of the 2024 election if he loses.
Election lawyers and voting rights experts are bracing for an aggressive effort by the former president in the days after the election to challenge the results while votes are still being counted. But unlike 2020, when Trump’s effort after the election seemed a bit haphazard, experts say they’re seeing a much more organized effort that stretches from the courts to local groups organizing election deniers to work the polls.
Here are a few key ways Trump is preparing to contest the 2024 vote:
We can also expect some final polls of the presidential race to be released today, though what has come out doesn’t show much.
The Hill and Emerson College surveyed all seven swing states and found, as many, many other polls before it have shown, that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in an effective tie:
FINAL SWING STATE POLLS with @thehill
— Emerson College Polling (@EmersonPolling) November 4, 2024
2024 Presidential Election
AZ: Trump 50%, Harris 48%
GA: Trump 50%, Harris 49%
MI: Harris 50%, Trump 48%
NC: Trump 49%, Harris 48%
NV: Harris 48%, Trump 48%
PA: Trump 49%, Harris 48%
WI: Trump 49%, Harris 49%https://t.co/axSc58DgwM
We will soon hear from Donald Trump, when he holds his first campaign event of the day in Raleigh, North Carolina at 10am.
And we may also see some of his supporters turn up wearing trash bags, as they have started doing recently:
If you missed this latest bizarre turn in the presidential campaign – which could have real impacts on the allegiances of a key voters group – the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe explains what it is and why it matters in the below piece:
Walz to campaign in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan
Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz also has a busy day of campaigning ahead of him.
He starts in St Paul, Minnesota, capital of the state he governs, where he and his wife Gwen Walz will greet their neighbors, before heading to Wisconsin for rallies in La Crosse, Stevens Point and Milwaukee. At that last rally, they’ll have Eric Benét as their musical guest, the campaign says.
They finish the day with a rally in Detroit where they will have even more musical guests, specifically the Detroit Youth Choir, Jon Bon Jovi, and The War and Treaty.
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Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance will campaign in four different swing states today.
Specifically Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. His press secretary just posted a video of him dressed all casual and he and his wife set out for the day:
.@JDVance and Usha board TF2 for a full day on the campaign trail today!
— Taylor Van Kirk (@taylorvankirk) November 4, 2024
We’re headed to:
📍 La Crosse, WI
📍 Flint, MI
📍 Atlanta, GA
📍 Newtown, PA pic.twitter.com/xK0VaOqn61
Harris spends final campaign day blitzing Pennsylvania with events
Kamala Harris is spending all day campaigning in Pennsylvania, which is seen as potentially the most important state to win this election.
Her first stop is in Scranton, Joe Biden’s childhood hometown, where she’ll participate in a kickoff for canvassers, he campaign said. After that, she heads to Allentown, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia before finally returning to Washington DC.
Biden is not scheduled to join her in Scranton. He’s spent the weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and is heading to the White House this morning, where he will have a private call with military members involved in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
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US election offices increase security measures amid ongoing threats
Elections offices in the US have hardened their security measures this year, anticipating potential violence based on experience since 2020 and during an ongoing rise in threats and harassment focused on election workers.
Many offices have now trained their workers on de-escalation tactics. They’ve run drills for active shooters or other disturbances. They have a process for flagging the threats that could be criminal and seeking law enforcement help when needed.
Hundreds of election offices have been reinforced with bulletproof glass and steel doors. Some have increased their security details or locked down their social media in case people come looking into their lives. And new laws and added enforcement of prohibitions on such harassment have added to the response to the increased hostility.
Authorities are concerned about the rise of the right-wing election denial movement, which originated in 2020 following Trump’s rejection of his defeat to Joe Biden. Trump’s propagation of unfounded theories regarding the election mobilized large crowds to participate in “Stop the Steal” protests, which reached a climax on January 6, 2021, when supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to impede Congress’s confirmation of the election outcomes.
Trump has not committed to accepting the outcome, claiming without evidence that Democrats will cheat to install his opponent, Kamala Harris.
Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said her concern for her personal safety increased after Elon Musk, the owner of X, attacked her online. Before she responded to his claims about Michigan voting and her office, she called her security team to “make sure my family was safe,” she said on NBC.
You can read the full story by my colleague, Rachel Leingang, here:
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What would a Trump victory mean for the UK-US 'special relationship'?
Eleni Courea is a political correspondent for the Guardian:
A Trump victory would be awkward for the Labour party, which has close links with the Democrats and has seen droves of members voluntarily head to the US in recent months to campaign for Kamala Harris.
Last month, Trump’s campaign filed a formal complaint accusing Labour of foreign interference in the US election after a social media post by the party’s head of operations Sofia Patel said nearly 100 current and former staffers were travelling over to support Harris and offered to help them with accommodation.
The row was deeply frustrating for Keir Starmer, who has sought to build a good working relationship with Trump since becoming prime minister in July and was one of a few world leaders to speak directly to the former president after he suffered an assassination attempt in mid-July. The pair met in person in September for a two-hour dinner while Starmer was in New York for the UN General Assembly.
David Lammy, the UK’s foreign secretary, was present at the dinner in New York and has actively been developing links with Republican politicians. But there are questions over whether Lammy can remain in his role if Trump wins, given his strident criticism of the former president in past years — he has branded him a “neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath,” a “dangerous clown” and “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathizer”.
If Trump is elected, Starmer would need to try and convince him of the importance of supporting Ukraine in its defence against the Russian invasion. Trump has censured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not making concessions to Russia and has made clear he wants to see a quick end to the war.
Secretaries of state ask social media companies for moderation plans on election day
Rachel Leingang is a democracy reporter focused on misinformation for Guardian US
A group of Democratic secretaries of state are calling on social media companies to detail their plans to moderate inflammatory content and artificial intelligence on their platforms during and after election day.
Seven secretaries of state – representing Maine, Rhode Island, Illinois, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and New Mexico – sent the letters to Google, X and Meta on Friday. Secretaries of state typically play some role in overseeing elections in their states.
The officials note that violent threats against election officials and disinformation about elections are already spreading online, saying they are “deeply concerned about the failure of major social media companies to clearly lay out their plans to moderate inflammatory claims and AI-generated election-related content ahead of, during and following election day”.
Throughout the 2024 election, false and misleading claims about elections have spread widely, playing on frequent myths like that noncitizens are voting en masse or that tabulation machines aren’t secure. Donald Trump often elevates these claims, as does X owner Elon Musk, as part of an ongoing narrative that Democrats can only win the election if they cheat.
Republicans in Congress and in the courts continue to go after attempts to flag misinformation during previous elections and call it censorship. In response, many platforms have taken a less active approach to moderating or removing content, and some have far fewer staff dedicated to trust and safety than they did in previous years.
Some of those signed on to the letters have been targets of threats and harassment personally for doing their jobs.
You can read the full story here:
Updated
The Reuters news agency has pulled together a list of people Donald Trump has suggested he would investigate or prosecute if he is reelected for a second presidential term (having lost a reelection bid in 2020 against Joe Biden – a result he still falsely claims was rigged against him):
The ‘enemy from within’
Asked on Fox News last month whether he expected chaos on Election Day, Trump responded that the bigger problem was “the enemy from within”. “We have some sick people, radical left lunatics ... and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
Political adversaries
Trump has called for investigations into Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and Liz Cheney, a former Republican congressman and vocal Trump opponent. Trump has shared posts on his Truth Social media platform calling for military tribunals to try Cheney and Obama.
At a September rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said Harris, the US vice president, was responsible for the “biggest crime story of our time,” referring to illegal border crossings. “She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions,” Trump said.
Election workers
Trump and his allies have been laying the groundwork to contest a potential loss in November by stoking doubts about the election’s legitimacy. Trump has portrayed Democrats as cheaters, called mail-in ballots corrupt and urged supporters to vote in such large numbers to render the election “too big to rig”.
“Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials,” Trump posted on Truth Social last month. “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our country,” he added.
Protestors
Following pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the USs this year, Trump told Fox News in July that anyone who desecrates the American flag should get a one-year jail sentence. “Now, people will say: ‘Oh it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people who say that,” Trump said, adding that he wants to work with Congress to allow the jail sentences. Trump has said he would arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.
Tech sector
Trump has also warned Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google over what he claims is potential election interference on their tech platforms. Trump has accused Meta of suppressing content that would have hurt Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and has also criticised Zuckerberg’s donations to bolster election infrastructure. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison,” Trump wrote his recently published Save America coffee table book, according to media reviews of the book.
Trump has also threatened to instruct the Department of Justice to criminally investigate Google for “only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump,” according to a Truth Social post last month. “I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election,” Trump wrote, without providing evidence for his assertion about Google.
Prosecutors
Trump said earlier this month that if elected he would fire Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor leading the criminal probes into his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. That follows an April 2023 speech by Trump - after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg convinced a New York grand jury to bring the first criminal charges ever against a former US president, in which he said Bragg was “the criminal”. “He should be prosecuted or at a minimum he should resign,” Trump said.
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Memorable images from the 2024 US presidential campaign
Here is a look back at some of the more memorable pictures of the 2024 US presidential campaign:
Updated
In an interview with NBC News, Donald Trump did not rule out banning certain vaccines if he was elected to a second presidential term.
Trump told the outlet in a phone interview that he is open to some of the more controversial ideas of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a nephew of President John F Kennedy and son of the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy.
Trump said recently that he wants the vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr “to take care of health”, including “women’s health” if the former president wins back the White House in this election.
Asked on Sunday whether banning certain vaccines would be an option if he was elected, Trump told NBC News: “Well, I’m going to talk to [Kennedy] and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.”
Trump refused to say what specific role Robert F Kennedy Jr may play in his administration but sources close to his campaign told NBC News he might play a prominent role in battling “chronic childhood disease”.
It comes as Robert F Kennedy Jr, who ended his independent White House bid in August and endorsed Trump, said the former Republican president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected. He said fluoride was “an industrial waste” linked to a variety of health conditions.
On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease. President…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 2, 2024
Where does Donald Trump stand on some of the key election issues?
Here are some of the stances former Republican president Donald Trump has on key election issues. You can read more in this explainer by my colleague Lauren Gambino.
Economy
Much of Trump’s inflation-reduction plan hinges on his vow to slash energy costs by expanding oil and gas drilling and deregulation. He has also been highly critical of high interest rates, the Federal Reserve’s main inflation-fighting tool.
Trump said recently that he thinks the president should have a say in decisions made by the Fed, which traditionally operates independently from politics.
Trump has vowed to extend and expand a suite of tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, while pledging to cut the corporate tax rate to 15% from 21% for companies that make their products in the US. He has also said he would exempt Social Security benefits and overtime pay, in addition to tips, from income taxes.
He has suggested an across-the-board levy of perhaps 10% and up to 20% on virtually all foreign-made goods, as well as slapping tariffs of 60% – or more – on goods from China.
Abortion
Trump has said abortion access should be left to the states, and has vowed that as president he would not sign a national abortion ban (weeks before making that pledge, he refused to say whether he would veto such a ban).
Trump has said that if he wins he would make IVF free for women, though has provided few specifics and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly blocked legislation that would protect the treatment.
Immigration and ‘border security’
Trump has promised to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in US history, a policy that would face many logistical, legal and financial hurdles.
Trump has said he would reinstate several controversial policies from his first term, including the Remain in Mexico program, Title 42 and a travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority nations.
He has vowed to rescind programs that shield undocumented immigrants from deportation, including children, while revoking the legal status of potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the US under the federal temporary protected status program.
Trump has also suggested he would end birthright citizenship for the US-born children of undocumented immigrant.
Climate and energy policies
Trump has questioned established climate science, previously dismissing the climate crisis as “mythical” and an “expensive hoax”.
As president, Trump claims he will prioritize clean air and water for Americans. Yet he has also promised to continue to roll back environmental regulations, including all of the ones put in place by the Biden administration.
In a May meeting with oil bosses, he reportedly offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign. He is especially opposed to wind power – falsely claiming wind turbines kill birds and cause cancer.
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Where does Kamala Harris stand on some of the key election issues?
Lauren Gambino, a political correspondent for Guardian US, has done this useful explainer about where the two presidential candidates stand on key issues. Here are some extracts from the piece:
Kamala Harris
Economy
Harris says she wants to build up the “opportunity economy,”, focused on the middle class, with plans to combat price gouging, boost housing development, aid first-time homebuyers, expand tax credits for parents and expand Medicare to cover in-home senior care.
Harris has pledged to cut taxes for tens of millions of middle- and low-income families, while saying she supports tax breaks for entrepreneurs and small business owners. She also backs a proposal championed by Trump to eliminate taxes on tips. Harris has called for the corporate tax rate to be raised to 28%, up from 21%.
Harris is expected to maintain the Biden administration’s approach, relying on tariffs and export controls to boost domestic competitiveness with China.
Abortion
Harris has called on Congress to pass legislation to restore the protections of Roe v Wade, which the supreme court overturned in 2022. Doing so would reinstate the Roe-era status quo, in effect blocking states from banning abortion before fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy.
As president, Harris has vowed she would veto any nationwide abortion ban, Harris has pledged to protect the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare, including access to contraception and other fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Immigration and ‘border security’
During a visit to the border in September, Harris laid out a plan to enact stricter penalties for people who attempt to claim asylum between lawful ports of entry.
Harris has long championed comprehensive immigration reform, including pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, especially those who were brought to the US as children.
Climate and energy policies
Harris has walked back her support for the progressive Green New Deal proposal and a fracking ban. She is a proponent of electric vehicles – though does not support a mandate – and backs clean-energy tax credits.
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In the 60th US presidential election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs along with 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate, which together will decide the membership of the 119th Congress.
Republicans hold a majority in the House, while Democrats control the Senate, both by narrow margins. But the polls – if to be believed – suggest Democrats could win back the House and Republicans retake the Senate.
The Republican House majority leader, Steve Scalise, has told Axios that multiple GOP members have been “angling” for senior posts in a potential administration led by Donald Trump.
Scalise, a hardline conservative representing Louisiana, told the outlet:
I’ve heard from a number of members that have been having conversations whether they’re on a short list or a long-short list.
And we saw it in 2017 where a number of House colleagues got pulled into Cabinet secretary positions and other positions, and so I wouldn’t expect anything different this time.
Hopefully we have a large enough majority where that option is available to them, but that’s going to be up to President Trump.
Scalise said he is “very confident” House Republicans will hold or grow their majority, adding that a margin of 8-12 seats would be a good one for the party (Democrats need to flip only four seats to win back a House majority this year).
“You know, with the way redistricting is, these aren’t the days we can get a 30-seat majority anymore. So whatever majority we have is going to be slim,” Scalise told Axios.
Updated
Donald Trump said with two days until the presidential election that he should never have left the White House after his defeat in 2020 and joked darkly he would be fine with reporters getting shot, dredging up grievances that overshadowed his attack lines against Kamala Harris.
The closing themes of the former president’s campaign at a rally in Lititz in the battleground state of Pennsylvania brought him full circle with his 2016 campaign that went after the news media and his 2020 campaign that was defined by his attempts to overturn the result.
Trump stayed on message for the first part of his remarks but could not resist reverting to resentments he has held on to for years, describing Democrats as demonic and lamenting the 2020 election – an issue that polls badly and his aides privately said they thought he had been convinced to drop.
“We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” he said before abruptly cutting himself off.
The remark reflected what Trump told aides and allies in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat, a loss he has never conceded, and how he sat in at least one meeting at the end of his first term where he mused about refusing to leave the White House, a person familiar with the matter said.
You can read the full story by my colleague, Hugo Lowell, here:
As we mentioned in the opening summary, the US vice president and Democratic presidential hopeful, Kamala Harris, pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday.
Many Democratic voters, including Michigan’s large Arab American and Muslim American population, have expressed anger at the Biden administration over its support for Israel’s war on Gaza (and now Lebanon).
The US continues to be the biggest arms supplier to Israel and is its most powerful diplomatic ally. Harris has not signalled a significant shift from Biden’s policy. Both have condemned the high civilian death toll (according to Gaza’s health ministry over 43,000 Palestinian people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since last October) but continue to insist on Israel’s right “to defend itself”.
Harris said at the Michigan rally:
We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan, and I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon.
It is devastating, and as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination.
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How long it will take to know the winner and where to find early clues about how the contest might unfold
Election Day in the US is now often considered election week as each state follows its own rules and practices for counting ballots that can delay the results. There is also the possibility of legal challenges to counts that could cause delays.
In 2020, The Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner on Saturday afternoon — four days after polls closed. But even then, The AP called North Carolina for Donald Trump 10 days after Election Day and Georgia for Biden 16 days later after hand recounts.
Four years earlier, the 2016 election was decided just hours after most polls closed. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner on election night at 2:29 a.m.
The tightness of the race this year makes it hard to predict when a winner could be declared – but North Carolina and Georgia could give an early indication as results in these swing states come in relatively quickly.
The Associated Press has pinpointed areas in swing states that could give us a clue on how the race will unfold:
In North Carolina, Harris’ margins in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, home to the state capital of Raleigh and the state’s largest city, Charlotte, respectively, will reveal how much Trump will need to squeeze out of the less-populated rural areas he has dominated.
In Pennsylvania, Harris needs heavy turnout in deep blue Philadelphia, but she’s also looking to boost the Democrats’ advantage in the arc of suburban counties to the north and west of the city.
She has campaigned aggressively in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties, where Biden improved on Clinton’s 2016 winning margins. The Philadelphia metro area, including the four collar counties, accounts for 43 percent of Pennsylvania’s vote.
Elsewhere in the Blue Wall, Trump needs to blunt Democratic growth in Michigan’s key suburban counties outside of Detroit, especially Oakland County. He faces the same challenge in Wisconsin’s Waukesha County outside of Milwaukee.
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What is the current state of the polls?
The Guardian US has been averaging national and state polls to see how the two candidates are faring. Nationally, Kamala Harris has a one-point advantage, 48% to 47%, over Donald Trump, virtually identical to last week.
The election will be decided in the seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In these states, the polls are too close to call.
Harris has an 8% lead among those who have already voted, while Trump is ahead among those who say they are very likely to vote but have not yet done so. The poll, from the New York Times and Siena College, also found Harris was slightly ahead in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with Trump up in Arizona and the other three too close to call.
Many Democrats are worried Trump is setting the stage for a series of legal challenges to poll results, in a sign the former president thinks Harris may win on election day tomorrow.
Updated
Harris and Trump begin blitz of rallies across battleground states on election day eve
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the 2024 US presidential election.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will begin a blitz of rallies and media appearances across the vital battleground states in the rust belt, as the final day of campaigning gets under way.
Harris is set to appear in the Pennsylvania cities of Allentown, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, in a sign of how crucial the state will be to securing victory. Trump will start his day in North Carolina before making appearances in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Opinion polls show the pair locked in a tight race. More than 78m Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, approaching half the total 160 million votes cast in 2020, in which US voter turnout was the highest in more than a century.
Here are some of the latest developments:
Kamala Harris pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population two days out from the election. Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Joe Biden in 2020, helping him to a narrow victory over Donald Trump. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the vice-president’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza.
Harris was making her fourth stop of the day in Michigan, having earlier spoken at a church in Detroit and stopped by a barber shop in Pontiac. Trump is holding his final rally of the campaign in Michigan on Monday night.
Donald Trump said he should never have left the White House after his defeat in 2020 and joked darkly he would be fine with reporters getting shot. “We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said at a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” he said before abruptly cutting himself off. In other comments, as he denigrated the media, he said: “To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, because, I don’t mind. I don’t mind.”
Donald Trump again suggested he would give a role on health policy to Robert F Kennedy Jr at a rally in Macon, Georgia. “I told a great guy, RFK Jr., Bobby — I said, ‘Bobby, you work on women’s health, you work on health, you work on what we eat. You work on pesticides. You work on everything,” he said. Kennedy, a well known vaccine sceptic, on Saturday said that the former president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected.
Harris dodged a question on whether she voted for California’s Proposition 36, which would make it easier for prosecutors to send repeat shoplifters and drug users to jail or prison, after submitting her ballot. The measure would roll back provisions of Proposition 47, which downgraded low-level thefts and drug possession to misdemeanors.
The Trump campaign claimed that recent polling by the New York Times and the Des Moines Register is designed to suppress Trump voter turnout by presenting a bleak picture of his re-election prospects. The memo claims that the Times’s polls have biased samples and overrepresent Democratic voters compared with actual voter registration and turnout trends.
Trump also disputed a shock Iowa poll that found Kamala Harris leading the former president in the typically red state 47% to 44%. “No President has done more for farmers, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on the Truth Social network on Sunday morning. “In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, by a lot”.
