Kamala Harris and Donald Trump criss-crossed the United States on Saturday as both candidates tried to drum up support on the final weekend before the 5 November presidential election. Both candidates began the day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before Democratic nominee Harris departed for Atlanta and then Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump, the Republican nominee, also travelled to North Carolina, before heading to a rally in Virginia. Almost 70 million Americans have already voted in the historic US election that comes to a head on Tuesday, prompting furious arguments over what early voting trends might mean as Trump and Harris prepare for their final showdown.
A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll on Saturday unexpectedly showed Harris ahead of Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters. Broadly though, the polls have remained deadlocked. The Guardian’s Robert Tait writes that some experts think such a tight race is improbable. Josh Clinton, a politics professor at Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, NBC’s director of elections, write on the network’s website: “Some of the tools pollsters are using in 2024 to address the polling problems of 2020, such as weighting by partisanship, past vote or other factors, may be flattening out the differences and reducing the variation in reported poll results … [This] raises the possibility that the results of the election could be unexpectedly different than the razor-close narrative the cluster of state polls and the polling averages suggest.”
Here’s what else happened on Saturday:
Donald Trump election news and updates
A Georgia judge rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person. The lawsuit only targeted Fulton county, a Democratic stronghold. Trump falsely blamed Fulton county workers for his loss of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Ed Pilkington writes that if Trump re-enters the White House he will do so emboldened by a power that no previous incoming president has ever enjoyed: immunity from criminal prosecution for any act carried out in his official capacity. Whereas losing the election, writes David Smith, could mean he ends up in jail.
Kamala Harris election news and updates
Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, playing herself as the mirror-image double of Maya Rudolph’s version of her. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph, “and I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters needed to “Keep Kamala and carry-on-ala”, declared that they shared each other’s “belief in the promise of America”, and delivered the signature “Live from New York it’s Saturday night!”.
Harris struck a contrast between her work as a prosecutor and a Trump campaign “obsessed with revenge and consumed with grievance” on Saturday in Atlanta. “In less than 90 days it’s either going to be him or me in the Oval Office,” Harris said. The vice-president filled the fields at the Atlanta Civic Center, attracting thousands on little notice in the crucial swing state of Georgia, which Joe Biden won in 2020.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail
Americans took to the streets in cities across the country for a day of women’s marches. Marches were planned in all 50 states for the eighth annual gathering, which began the day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017.
Vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday. Kennedy said in a social media post that he would remove fluoride from all public water.
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