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”.
Key events
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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