Eliana Willis

On the night of the US election, the Guardian is offering readers a unique way to get live, up-to-the minute election results delivered to their mobile phones.
What is it?
When results start coming in on Tuesday evening, we’ll send one mobile alert that will automatically update with the latest national vote count data over the course of the night. Without a tap, a search or the opening of an app, you can follow the vote tally and key developments live on your phone’s lock screen. (That’s the screen on your phone when you’re not actively using it.)
This alert will be one of the fastest ways to receive election results on Tuesday and beyond. Since we don’t know how long it will take to count the votes this year – whether it will be hours, days or weeks – the election alert will keep counting until the election is officially called, though you can minimize it any time.
How do I sign up?
The alert is available free worldwide on both iOS and Android devices to anyone who downloads the Guardian’s mobile app.
If you’re in the US: If you already have the Guardian app and you’re signed up to breaking news notifications in the US, you don’t need to do anything – you’ll automatically receive the live election alert. But if you need to download the app or you’re not already signed up to receive notifications, you can follow these steps:
Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhones or the Google Play store on Android phones by searching for “The Guardian”
If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you’re on the most recent version
In the Guardian app, tap the yellow button at the bottom right, then go to Settings (the gear icon), then Notifications
Turn on “US Election 2020” notifications
If you’re outside the US:
Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhones or the Google Play store on Android phones by searching for “The Guardian”
If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you’re on the most recent version
In the Guardian app, tap the yellow button at the bottom right, then go to Settings (the gear icon), then Notifications
Turn on “US Election 2020” notifications
What will I receive?
If you sign up, you’ll receive a single continuously updating notification that will sit on your phone’s lock screen as results come in on election night and beyond. The notification will show the most up-to-date numbers of electoral votes won and states called, as well as an indication of which swing states have been called, and the breakdown of the popular vote between the two top candidates.
You will also be able to expand the alert to see a data visualization showing the electoral vote and options to tap through to the Guardian liveblog or a page of full results.
What if I decide I want to stop getting alerts?
No problem. When the notification is expanded (pull down to expand notifications on Android, and either swipe sideways to tap “View” or hard-press to expand them on iOS) there will be buttons attached to the notification, including an option to Manage notifications (on iOS) or Stop (on Android). Tap that and you can unsubscribe.
Who created the alert?
The project was developed in 2016 by the Guardian’s Mobile Innovation Lab, which was funded by the John S and James L Knight Foundation to explore news delivery on small screens. The 2020 version was developed by the Guardian Apps team, part of our product and engineering division. It is fed by live by data from the Associated Press, which has played a key role in assessing US election results since 1848. More

Joe Biden is leading ​Donald Trump in the national polls for the presidential election.
But that doesn’t guarantee ​the Democratic candidate victory. Hillary Clinton also had a clear lead over Trump in the polls for almost the entire 2016 campaign. She ended up losing in the electoral college.
​Because the presidential ​voting system assigns each state a number of electoral college votes, which​ go to the state’s victor regardless of the​ margin of victory (with the exception of Nebraska and Maine), a handful of swing states will ​probably decide the election and be targeted heavily by campaigners.
Each day, the Guardian’s poll tracker takes a rolling 14-day average of the polls in ​eight swing states.
In order to track how the race is developing in the areas that could decide the election, six of the eight states we focused on were those that flipped to Trump​ in 2016 after backing Barack Obama in 2012. Arizona and North Carolina were also added due to what they might tell us about a shifting electoral landscape – they could emerge as vital new swing states this year.
We must caution that the polls – particularly some swing state polls – severely undercounted Trump supporters in 2016. We are not certain, despite assurances, that they they have corrected this​. Additionally, they may be over-counting Democratic support (more people may say they will vote for Biden than actually turn out).
We present the latest polls with those caveats in mind.
The national polls
The latest polling average puts Biden ahead of Trump nationally.
While the national poll tracker is a poor indicator of how the crucial swing states will sway the election, a strong polling lead across the country can point to how the race will develop.
Each day, the Guardian’s national poll tracker takes a 14-day average of national voting intention polls.
On Tuesday 3 November 2020, Americans will vote for their next president, with a choice between ​Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent, or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
Methodology
The Guardian poll tracker tracks the latest polls in eight crucial swing states. For Biden to win, he needs to reclaim some of these swing states.
The Guardian is collating polls in each of these ​states, as well as another set of national polls. Polls are assessed for their reliability by looking at factors such as their sample size.
Our polling average is a 14-day rolling average: on any day, we collate any polls published in the last 14 days and take a mean average of their results.
If any ​company ​has conducted multiple polls in the last 14 days, we average out their polling results in order to give them just one entry. After this standardi​zation process, we take a mean average of these daily entries to present the polling average.
This article was amended on 28 October 2020 to clarify that Maine and Nebraska are alone in assigning their electoral college votes in proportion to the popular vote. More

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The US economy bounced sharply back from the record-setting slump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to government figures released on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a key talking point days before the election.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis gross domestic product (GDP) rose at an annualized rate of 33.1% between July and September and was up 7.4% compared to the previous quarter. The previous record was a 3.9% quarterly increase in 1950.
Trump was quick to claim credit, tweeting the figures were the “Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close.”

Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump)
GDP number just announced. Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close. Next year will be FANTASTIC!!! However, Sleepy Joe Biden and his proposed record setting tax increase, would kill it all. So glad this great GDP number came out before November 3rd.

October 29, 2020

But the numbers show the US still has a long way to go to escape the devastation wrought by Covid-19 and were boosted by extra unemployment payments, business loans and direct payments, none of which have been replenished for the fourth quarter.
The news comes just five days before the US election and is the last major economic release before polls close. Even before the figures were released the Trump campaign released ads boasting: “FASTEST GDP GROWTH IN HISTORY.”
Big issues remain for the economy, however. The growth rate announcement came on the same day that the labor department announced that another 751,000 people filed for unemployment claims last week and the unemployment rate, at 7.9%, is twice as high as it was in February before the pandemic struck the US.
A closer look at the numbers shows that the US’s economic woes are far from over. Thursday’s figures follow an equally historic slump in the second quarter. The US economy shrank by a revised annual rate of 31.4% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war, as much of the country went into lockdown to control the virus.
The annual rate suggests the economy will continue on its current trend for the rest of the year. But such huge swings make the annualized figures misleading – no one expects such massive losses or gains to continue but most economists expect the US economy to be smaller at the end of the year than it was at the beginning.
Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC, said the figures represented “real growth” but added “there is still a long way to go before we get back to normal.”
The decision to reopen much of the economy has provided a considerable boost, especially to consumer spending, which drove much of the recovery. But it comes as coronavirus infections are soaring in the US. Covid cases hit new highs over the weekend and the US now has the largest number of infections, more than 8.6m, and deaths, over 225,000, in the world.
There are also signs that the recovery has slowed in recent months. Unemployment claims remain at historically high levels and the number of new jobs being created has dropped month on month. The economic situation for women, people of colour and teenagers remains difficult. The unemployment rate fell to 7.9% for the US population overall in September. For Black Americans it was 12.1% and for Black teens (16-19) it was over 20%.
GDP is the broadest measure of the economy and includes personal consumption, business investment, government spending and net exports. The figure has often been criticized as a measure of economic health – GDP growth has, for example, done little to address growing income inequality.
For some still feeling the impact of the pandemic and its attendant recession the latest GDP news was little comfort, especially as Congress remains deadlocked over further stimulus relief.
Tim Swartz in Mesa, Arizona, stopped receiving unemployment benefits on 5 September after the unemployment office flagged an issue with his payments. When the pandemic hit he had to stop working as an Uber and delivery driver to care for his five children, including one with special needs. His wife works full-time as a medicine technician at a facility for Alzheimer’s patients.
“I cannot get any answers from anyone on the phone or through emails. I’m behind on rent and utilities,” Swartz said. He has now received an eviction notice. “I’m not sure how we will pay the outstanding balances for rent and utilities,” he said.
“Many of us are losing hope along with everything we have worked so hard for,” said Swartz. Three of his children had to recently return to online learning after exposure to classmates who tested positive for coronavirus, further delaying his return to work. “Without any relief package to help keep the economy going I don’t see much growth in the near future and unfortunately even darker times ahead for American families.” More

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been mocked for his attempt to explain why he could not produce some documents he had promised relating to Joe Biden.He said the only copy of the papers, which he claimed added to claims about Biden’s son Hunter, had been lost.In a segment delivered to camera, Carlson said:
On Monday we received from a source a collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family. We believe those documents are authentic, they’re real, and they’re damning … We texted a producer in New York and we asked him to send those documents to us in LA … He shipped those documents overnight to California with a large national carrier brand … But the Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from the shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing. The documents had disappeared.
He went on to say of the delivery company, which he did not name:
They searched the plane and the trucks that carried it, they went through the office in New York where our producer dropped that package off, they combed their entire cavernous sorting facility. They used pictures of what we had sent so that searchers would know what to look for. They went far and beyond. But they found nothing, those documents have vanished. As of tonight the company has no idea – and no working theory even – about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign.
Carlson’s show has been one of the main conduits of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden, attempting to expand the narrative about his dealings in Ukraine and China and castigating other media outlets for not paying enough attention to claims made recently in the New York Post.Carson’s story of the lost documents cut little ice on social media:BREAKING: Documents Tucker Carlson never actually had that would allegedly blow up the election were so important that they were sent via DHL, and now can’t be found despite copiers, iPhone cameras and security cameras. 😂😂😂 https://t.co/9yKkDAUh2v— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) October 29, 2020 More

In 2016, white evangelicals made up a quarter of all US voters. And 81% of them voted for Donald Trump. Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to the pivotal battleground state of North Carolina to see if Trump’s religious base is showing signs of crumbling. They meet extreme evangelical pastors, travelling progressive preachers and the moral movement leader Rev William Barber
Watch other episodes of the Anywhere but Washington video series  More

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Voting during a contentious presidential election and a pandemic is more than a little overwhelming. Like many Americans, you may have designed a plan to vote by absentee ballot months ago, when 3 November felt a lifetime away, and no one knew how election day would look. Maybe you were unsure of where you would be, geographically speaking, and voting by mail felt like the safest option. If you’re like me, when the time came to request your absentee ballot, you submitted your information and waited for the ballot to arrive in the mail, but it never did.
I requested my absentee ballot for New York on 14 September. Two weeks later, the status on my ballot tracker read “out for delivery” but no ballot ever arrived. One of my roommates requested her Pennsylvania absentee ballot on 5 October and it has reportedly been on the way since 19 October. Last week, the Queer Eye star and Texas resident Jonathan Van Ness shared on Instagram that his absentee ballot was marked out for delivery weeks before but never arrived, and the election board couldn’t locate it.
Why hasn’t my absentee ballot arrived if I requested it before the deadline?
As states grapple with the challenges of voting during a pandemic, people across the country may find themselves without an absentee ballot days before the election for a multitude of reasons. An absentee ballot request form “may be marked invalid if it’s not completed according to the specific instructions or if it was submitted by the postmarked date, but not received by the deadline”, says Carolyn DeWitt, president and executive director of Rock the Vote. To make matters worse, “if a voter submitted an absentee request that was deemed invalid, they may not receive notification, in which case a voter may be waiting for a ballot that will never arrive”.
Another one of my roommates believed she had properly requested her California absentee ballot online, only to learn that she needed to physically submit an absentee ballot request to her local board of elections as well. Meanwhile, the US Postal Service has been struggling to meet the demands of increased absentee ballots amid delayed services this year.
Did states have enough resources and time to set up voting by mail?
In short, the answer is no. While five states have conducted elections by mail for years, including Oregon and Colorado, the rest were forced to adapt in a matter of months. “It takes most states several years to transition to a vote-by-mail state, but the pressures and restrictions of Covid-19 have put significant pressure on election officials while the federal government has failed to provide adequate resources,” says DeWitt. “There are logistical hurdles – from the purchasing, printing and mailing of millions of absentee request forms and absentee ballots to the processing and counting of absentee ballots.”
Congress has granted $400m in election aid to states but the Brennan Center for Justice estimated $4bn would be needed to create “free, fair, safe, and secure” elections across the country. Donald Trump has also admitted to restricting funds for the USPS in hopes of curbing mail-in voting. With the entity responsible for delivering absentee ballots under-resourced, ballots may remain in processing or lost through election day.
What is the best way to track my absentee ballot’s status?
If you requested an absentee ballot but have yet to receive it, you can track it online or by calling and emailing your local election official, says Ben Hovland, chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission. It may be possible to visit your local election office and speak with a representative, depending on your jurisdiction.
How do I vote if my absentee ballot is lost?
In the case that your ballot isn’t located, you have a few options. First, check if an absentee ballot can be picked up from your local election office. If so, you or a trusted person may be able to grab and drop it off in a ballot dropbox or at your local election office quickly.
The more obvious choice – voting in person – is also an option but comes with a few hoops to jump through. “Most states will require the voter to complete a standard affidavit or another form of documentation confirming that they never received the ballot. Then, the voter will be allowed to vote in-person,” says DeWitt. These affidavits are available at polling places and would be submitted with your in-person vote. “In some cases, voters may have to complete a provisional ballot that will be counted once it’s been verified that the voter did not already vote.” This is the case in states such as New Jersey, Alabama, Texas and California.
Provisional ballots are a safeguard to ensure people only vote once, explains Hovland. They are theoretically counted as long as you don’t submit a completed absentee ballot, but there’s no guarantee. The 2018 Election Administration and Voting survey reported that about 38% of provisional ballots were rejected in the 2018 election. Reasons for this included a voter not being registered in that jurisdiction, having the wrong ID, and having already voted. Canceling your absentee ballot before voting, as Van Ness reported doing, may allow you to vote in person.
If your only option is voting in person, but the idea of doing so during a pandemic is frightening, there are a few precautions you can take, says Hovland. If possible, avoid peak voting times before and after work, as well as lunchtime. Check to see if early voting is happening in your district, and keep in mind that the polling location may be different than your voting place on election day. Some jurisdictions also provide voters with the ability to check wait times in advance of leaving to vote.
What if my absentee ballot comes at the last minute?
While the USPS advises against mailing your ballot later than a week before the election, if your ballot shows up between now and election day, you can still use it. Some states, such as Michigan and New York, allow you to drop it off in person or invalidate it at the polling station and cast your vote there. In certain places, such as Florida, voters may be able to have their ballots delivered by someone else, says DeWitt. Some jurisdictions may provide ballot pick-up for disabled voters.
To find out more about your state’s rules and practices for absentee ballots, visit the below resources:
Vote.org breaks down absentee ballot rules by state
The ACLU outlines voter deadlines and laws More

Like Babe Ruth pointing a bat over a fence, Donald Trump last month called his shot.
“I think this will end up in the supreme court,” Trump told reporters, referring to the election. “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices. I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.”
Earlier this week, Trump got his ninth justice, with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the seat vacated by the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But is the 2020 presidential election really headed for the supreme court? Here’s a look at the situation:
Can Barrett hand Trump the election?
Probably not. The most likely scenario is that American voters alone will decide the election.
For all its flaws and added complications this year from the coronavirus pandemic, the US elections system has basic features to ensure a high correlation between the vote that is cast and the result that is announced.
It is highly decentralized, with thousands of jurisdictions staffed by members of each major party, all using different technologies and independently reporting results, which can be reviewed or recounted, with both sides and the media watching out for irregularities before, during and after election day. It might take awhile, and the tragic story of disenfranchisement in the United States continues, but elections officials have vowed to deliver an accurate count.
Sometimes, however, US elections are very close, and in an era of nihilistic partisanship, court fights during elections are becoming increasingly common. Such disputes might land with increasing frequency before the supreme court.
It is extremely rare for a presidential election to land before the supreme court. In 1876, five justices sat on a commission that decided the 1876 race for Rutherford B Hayes over Samuel Tilden.
In the modern era, it has happened just once, in 2000, after the Florida state supreme court ordered a recount in a razor-thin race that the Republican secretary of state said George W Bush had won. Republicans challenged the recount order and the case went to the supreme court, which sustained the challenge and stopped the recount.
How might a 2020 election-supreme court scenario unfold?
The supreme court has already issued two significant rulings in the election, one that allowed ballots received in Pennsylvania up to three days after election day to be counted, and a second blocking ballots received in Wisconsin after election day from being counted. Lower courts have issued numerous decisions on issues around voting and counting.
Republicans in Pennsylvania have vowed to renew their challenge to ballots received after election day, and if they can push the case back to the supreme court, they might find victory this time with Barrett making a majority.
But if the supreme court ends up getting involved in a major way in the presidential election, it would likely be to weigh in on a question that is not yet clear because we don’t know what legal conflicts will play out in which states.
In Bush v Gore (2000), lawyers on the Republican side argued that the state supreme court had usurped the legislature’s authority by ordering a recount. The supreme court stopped the recount, not by relying on the argument about the court bigfooting the legislature, but by finding that different standards for vote-counting in different counties violated the equal protection clause.
Is there a chance Barrett would recuse herself from any case involving a president who appointed her so recently?
At her confirmation hearing, Barrett dodged just this question. “I commit to you to fully and faithfully applying the law of recusal,” she said. “And part of the law is to consider any appearance questions. And I will apply the factors that other justices have before me in determining whether the circumstances require my recusal or not. But I can’t offer a legal conclusion right now about the outcome of the decision I would reach.” More