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      Americans head to polls with historic election on a knife edge

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      Election day has arrived in America, with tens of millions of voters set to head to the polls on Tuesday in one of the closest and most consequential contests in modern US history.The Democrat Kamala Harris and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, appear locked in a knife-edge contest with hardly any daylight between the pair in national opinion polls that have barely budged in weeks.In the seven crucial swing states – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – the picture was the same. Recent polling has been unable to discern a clear pattern or advantage for either Harris or Trump in this electoral battleground, though most experts agree that whoever wins the Rust belt state of Pennsylvania is likely to have a clear advantage.“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump, 78, said at a rally in Reading, in the state’s southeast corner, during a frenetic final day of campaigning in the state. Later, in Pittsburgh, he framed the election as a choice between “a golden age of America” if he returns to the White House or “four more years of misery, failure and disaster” under Harris.Harris, 60, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania and finished in Philadelphia, where she was joined by singer Lady Gaga and TV personality Oprah Winfrey, who warned of the threat that Trump poses to democracy. “We don’t get to sit this one out,” Winfrey said. “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”It is the swing states that will decide the election, because under the complex American political system, the result is decided not by the national popular vote but an electoral college in which each state’s number of electors is weighed roughly by the size of its population. Each candidate needs 270 votes in the electoral college to clinch victory, and the battleground is formed of those states where polls indicate a state could go either way.More than 78m early ballots have been cast but the result may not be quickly known. With polling so tight, full results in the crucial swing states are unlikely to be available on Tuesday night and may not even emerge on Wednesday, leaving the US and the wider world on tenterhooks as to who may emerge as America’s next president.The election brings to an end a remarkable and in many ways unprecedented election campaign that has deeply divided American society and upped the stress levels of many of its citizens amid warnings of civil unrest, especially in a scenario where Harris wins and Trump contests the result.Harris has consistently centered her campaign on the autocratic threat that Trump represents. In her final big signature event, Harris staged a rally of 75,000 supporters on the Ellipse in Washington – the spot where Trump helped encourage his supporters to attack the Capitol on 6 January 2021.“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people,” Harris told the crowd.Harris’ campaign has tried to represent a page turning on the Trump era and threat of his return to the White House. She has acknowledged that calling Trump a fascist is a fair reflection of his political beliefs and the intentions of his movement, while insisting that she represents a choice that will serve all sides of America’s deeply fractured political landscape.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump, meanwhile, has run a campaign fueled by a sense of deep grievance, both personal, at his legal travails, and the perception among many of his supporters of an ailing America that is under threat from the Democrats. That sense of victimhood has been fueled by lies and conspiracy theories that have baselessly painted Biden and Harris as far-left figures who have wrecked the American economy with high inflation and an obsession with identity politics.Trump has also put immigration and border security at the heart of his campaign pitch, painting a picture of America as overrun with crime caused by illegal immigration that has often veered into outright racism and fear-mongering. He has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” with “bad genes” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.The huge divisions between the two campaigns and the language used by candidates – especially Trump and his allies – have led to widespread fears of violence or unrest as voting day plays out and especially as the count goes on. In the run-up to election day, ballot drop boxes used for early voting were destroyed in several US states.At the same time, however, it was Trump himself who was the subject of two assassination attempts during the campaign. At a rally in Pennsylvania, an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear and at a golf course in Florida, a gunman lay in wait for an ambush, only to be foiled by an eagle-eyed Secret Service agent before he could open fire. Neither shooter seemed coherently politically motivated or definitively aligned with one side or another.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

      US election 2024 live updates: latest polls, results and news

      When do polls close?

      How the electoral college works

      Where is abortion on the ballot?

      Senate and House races to watch

      Lessons from the key swing states

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake in this election

      What to know about the US election More

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      How the US elections will unfold overnight for British viewers

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      By late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday, we may know who is going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don’t yet know. Or we may know who’s been projected as the winner but be bracing ourselves for weeks of legal action and protest. It’s going to be that sort of night.A reminder of the basics: whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is the next president will be decided by the electoral college, rather than a straight count of the national vote – meaning that the winner will be the person who gets to a simple majority of 270 of the 538 electors on offer across the 50 states, whether or not they get more votes than their opponent nationwide.That means that the result is quite likely to come down to who prevails in the seven battleground states identified by both sides as being up for grabs – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, as are 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate. There are also 13 state and territorial governorships to be decided.In the UK, the election will be covered across the BBC (including radio), ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and various others. You can get CNN’s US coverage by signing up on its website; it’s also available on Sky. The Guardian live blog is also running, obviously.Here is a guide to how the night will unfold. UK residents determined to stick around to the bitter end, whenever that might be, should consider getting some sleep at 8pm or 9pm, and setting alarms (at least six, at three-minute intervals) for midnight or 1am, since not much will happen before then anyway. But pace yourself. For all that we talk about election night, any of the key races – or several of them – could take well into the next day, or longer, to produce a clear result.10pm UK (5pm Eastern Time): exit polls give contextVoting ends in Indiana and most of Kentucky, but neither is in play. Meanwhile, the first batch of exit polls are released. Unlike in the UK, where exit polls are usually a decent guide to the final outcome, the American version offers only a tantalising hint of what may be in store: rather than providing a projection of final results on the basis of asking people at polling stations how they voted, they give a view of what respondents have said the issues that mattered the most to them were.They’re based on a bigger sample than typical polls – numbering in the tens of thousands – so they ought to give pretty robust findings. But knowing that voters were motivated by the economy or abortion, for example, will only be a clue to how the night might go, rather than a basis for projecting the result.Midnight UK/7pm ET: Georgia and North Carolina – the first cluesPolls close in nine states over the next hour. Don’t just follow the running count of electoral college votes to get a sense of how it’s going, though: Trump is expected to have the biggest tally coming out of this first batch, however his night is going.But polls also close in the first battleground states that could give a major indication of what’s happening: Georgia and North Carolina. Just as importantly, we may start to see whether any clear pattern is emerging that holds true across different states, and therefore provides evidence of what could happen elsewhere.We don’t know when any of the states will be called, and even the results in Georgia and North Carolina may not be known for hours – or, and let’s hope not, days – yet. It’s possible that broadcasters and the Associated Press will start to call some states that haven’t even finished counting if they conclude that the other side has no chance of catching up but the closer the race the longer it may take.(When we talk about states being “called”, we mean that major news organisations have examined the data and reached a conclusion that it is statistically impossible for the other side to win. Official declarations can take much longer.)1am UK/8pm ET: Oh God, it’s PennsylvaniaPolls close in about half the country – so any nationwide patterns should be becoming clear. But it’s Pennsylvania that matters most. With more electoral votes – 19 – than any other swing state, and polls suggesting that it’s the closest race in the country, this is a huge moment. If Trump wins, tell your friends that it was madness for Harris not to pick the state’s popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate; if Harris wins, you can muse that the insults hurled towards the state’s 470,000 Puerto Ricans at a recent Trump rally might have made the difference.Again, the polls closing doesn’t necessarily mean a quick declaration. In Pennsylvania, rules against counting mail-in ballots before polls close are likely to slow things down. So it might end up being one of the later races to be called among the key states. It took four days in 2020.Whenever they come, if Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina all go in one candidate’s favour, it will be very difficult for the other to win. If we don’t get that sort of news by now, find some caffeine or a cocktail and pin your eyelids to your forehead: we might be in for a long night.2am UK/9pm ET: Three more battleground statesIn this hour, polls will close in 15 states, including three of the four remaining battlegrounds: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. But Wisconsin wasn’t called until after 2pm the following day in 2016 or 2020. Arizona took more than a week in 2020, and there are more onerous rules in place around the count this time.It was around now in 2016 – 2.29am, to be precise – that AP called the race for Trump, with Clinton calling to concede a few minutes later In 2020, the result wasn’t called for four more days (the following Saturday).Another interesting state to watch now: Iowa, where a shock poll at the weekend gave Harris a lead of three points in a state generally assumed to be a sure thing for Trump, who won it at the last two elections. If that bears out in reality, it probably won’t make a difference to the overall outcome – but only because it is likely to indicate that Harris has had a better night than expected in other similar states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.By now, Trump is likely to have a solid-looking lead in the running electoral college count you’ll probably see on screen – but that is expected to start whittling down as polls close in big, solid blue states, including New York and California, from this point. But if and when those six swing states where polls have closed by now are called, it’s very likely that the result will be apparent.3am UK/10pm ET: NevadaPolls close in Nevada, the last swing state, this hour. It’s unlikely that its six electoral college votes will be decisive but if they are, things are probably going to feel uncertain for a while yet. It took 88 hours to call the state in 2020.Another question will be whether either candidate comes out to speak to their supporters, and when. Everything Trump has said suggests that it is very unlikely that he will concede defeat on election night, except in the unlikely event of a landslide against him. (In 2020, he made a speech at the White House at 2.21am ET in which he made his first false claims of electoral fraud.)The tone he and Harris strike in these hours and afterwards will give a sense of whether the result is going to be accepted all round – or if we could be in for a much more febrile period.4am/11pm ET: California, Alaska and everything afterThe last polls close over the next two hours and, while it is just about theoretically possible that it could all come down to Alaska, I wouldn’t bet your house on it. What seems significantly more likely is: whatever the candidates have said, if the race looks close, lawyers for both sides will be gearing up for court challenges in key states – while pro-Trump poll watchers and other supporters are likely to be making numerous claims of election interference.Last time around, exhaustive legal processes found similar claims to be without foundation but that doesn’t mean they won’t be repeated. It is entirely possible that we will have a clear call of a result from the major networks by this time – but that everything will still appear to be in flux. More

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      Tuesday briefing: Hour by hour, what to expect as the results roll in

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      Good morning. This time tomorrow, we may know who’s going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don’t yet know. Or we may know who’s projected to win, but be bracing ourselves for weeks of enervating legal action and protest. It’s going to be that sort of night, I’m afraid.There’s been a bit of a sense in the last few days that momentum has been shifting towards Kamala Harris, but most respected polling dorks are treating that narrative with the same caution they viewed the one before that, which suggested a rush towards Donald Trump. The smart way to approach it is to remember that there is literally no need to make a prediction because we will have actual numbers very soon, and then get into a flotation tank and stick on some Sigur Rós.Today’s newsletter is your cut-out-and-keep guide to the night. If you were shockingly thinking of sleeping through it, we’ll be with you first thing tomorrow with the very latest – and it is eminently possible we won’t be bringing you decisive news. Whatever happens, if you’d like to help the Guardian keep covering US politics and everything else without fear or favour, please consider supporting us. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

      Education | University tuition fees in England are to go up for the first time in eight years, taking annual payments up to a record £9,535 per student, the government has announced. The inflation-linked rise, amid warnings of a deepening financial crisis in the sector, was coupled with an increase in student maintenance loans.

      Conservatives | Kemi Badenoch has appointed Robert Jenrick shadow justice secretary, with Mel Stride shadow chancellor and Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary, as she began to put together a frontbench team. But there were questions over whether Jenrick, who lost to Badenoch in the leadership contest, had initially sought another post.

      Brazil | Federal police in Brazil have formally charged the alleged mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, accusing him of arming and funding the criminal group responsible for the crime.

      Social care | Care workers from countries such as India, Nigeria and the Philippines who faced losing their immigration status in the UK if they left their employers have been promised new protections under the migrant care workers charter.

      UK news | A teenager has been remanded in custody after he appeared in court charged with attempting to murder a 13-year-old girl and possessing a samurai sword. The 14-year-old was arrested after a girl was found with life-threatening injuries near Hull on Friday morning.
      In depth: What will happen, when and whereView image in fullscreenIf you’re only really tuning in to the detail today, David Smith’s Q&A is a great place to get up to speed. An obligatory reminder of the basics: whether Trump or Harris is the next president will be decided by the electoral college rather than a straight count of the public vote – meaning that the winner will be the person who gets to a majority of 270 of the 538 electors on offer across the 50 states, whether or not they get more votes than their opponent nationwide. Here’s a more detailed explainer on how it works.That means the result is quite likely to come down to who prevails in the seven battleground states identified by both sides as being up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, as are 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate. There are also 13 state and territorial governorships to be decided.If you’re based in the US, interested enough to be reading this and still not sure how to watch it on TV, you may be beyond help, to be honest. In the UK, it will be covered across the BBC (including radio), ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and various others. You can get CNN’s US coverage by signing up on its website; it’s also available on Sky. Mark Brown has more information on the broadcasts here – and the Guardian live blog will also be running, obviously.Here’s a guide to how the night will unfold. UK residents determined to stick around to the bitter end, whenever that might be, should consider getting some sleep at 8pm or 9pm, and setting alarms (let’s say … six? At three minute intervals) for midnight or 1am, since not much will happen before that anyway. But pace yourself. For all that we talk about election night, any of the key races – or several of them – could take well into the next day, or longer, to produce a clear result.10pm UK/5pm Eastern Time | Exit polls give contextVoting ends in Indiana and most of Kentucky, but neither is in play. Meanwhile, the first batch of exit polls are released. Unlike in the UK, where exit polls are usually a decent guide to the final outcome, the American version offers only a tantalising hint of what may be in store. Rather than providing a projection of final results on the basis of asking people at polling stations how they voted, they ask respondents about the issues that matter to them most.They’re based on a bigger sample than typical polls – numbering in the tens of thousands – so they ought to give pretty robust findings. But knowing that voters were motivated by the economy or abortion, for example, will only be a clue to how the night might go, rather than a basis for projecting the result.Midnight UK/7pm ET | Georgia and North CarolinaPolls close in nine states over the next hour. Don’t just follow the running count of electoral college votes to get a sense of how it’s going, though: Trump is expected to have the biggest tally coming out of this first batch however well his night’s going, because five of the nine are firmly in his column, and represent more electoral college votes. Harris’s biggest, safest states like New York and California come later.But polls also close in the first states that could give a major indication of what’s happening: Georgia and North Carolina. Just as importantly, we may start to see whether any clear pattern is emerging that holds true across different states, and therefore provides evidence of what could happen elsewhere.Confusingly, the fact that the result is uncertain that doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to be close. By the end of this hour, if there has been a major polling error in either direction, we could have a sense of it. If it’s a surprise blowout for either candidate, we’ll know pretty quickly. Even a “normal” polling error of two or three points produced consistently across the country would mean a decisive result, and the first signs of that around now. But it’s also possible everything will still be on the line for a long time yet.We don’t know when any of the states will be called, and the results in Georgia and North Carolina may not be known for hours – or, and let’s hope not, days – yet. It’s possible that broadcasters and the Associated Press (AP) will start to call states that haven’t finished counting around now if they conclude that the other side has no chance of catching up, but the closer the race, the longer it may take.(When we talk about states being “called”, we mean that major news organisations have examined the data and reached a conclusion that they feel it is statistically impossible for the other side to win. Official declarations can take much longer.)1am UK/8pm ET | Oh God, it’s PennsylvaniaPolls close in about half the country – so any nationwide patterns should be becoming clear. But it’s Pennsylvania that matters most. With more electoral votes – 19 – than any other swing state, and polls suggesting that it’s the closest race in the country, this is a huge moment. (This dispatch from Joan E Greve and Sam Levine gives you a flavour of how tense things have been.) If Trump wins, tell your friends that it was madness for Harris not to pick the state’s popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate; if Harris wins, you can muse that the insults hurled towards the state’s 470,000 Puerto Ricans at a recent Trump rally might have made the difference.Again, the polls closing doesn’t necessarily mean a quick declaration. In Pennsylvania, rules against counting mail-in ballots before polls close are likely to slow things down. So it might end up being one of the later races to be called among the key states. It took four days in 2020.Whenever they come, if Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina all go in one candidate’s favour, it will be very difficult for the other to win – partly because of the electoral college arithmetic and partly because that would suggest that late-deciding voters may well have broken in similar numbers elsewhere. If we don’t get that sort of news by now, find some caffeine or a cocktail and pin your eyelids to your forehead, because we might be in for a long night.2am UK/9pm ET | Three more battleground statesIn this hour, polls will close in 15 more states, including three of the four remaining battlegrounds: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. But in 2016 and 2022 Wisconsin wasn’t called until after 2pm the following day. Arizona took more than a week in 2020, and there are more onerous rules in place around the count this time.It was around this time in 2016 – 2.29am, to be precise – that AP called the race for Trump, with Hillary Clinton calling to concede a few minutes later; in 2020, the result wasn’t called until the following Saturday.Another interesting state to watch in this hour: Iowa, where a shock poll at the weekend, by a usually reliable pollster, gave Harris a lead of three points in a state generally assumed to be a sure thing for Trump. If that bears out in reality, it probably won’t make a difference to the overall outcome – but only because it is likely to indicate that Harris has had a better night than expected in other similar states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.3am UK/10pm ET | NevadaPolls close in Nevada, the last swing state, this hour. It’s unlikely that its eight electoral college votes will be decisive, but if they are, things are probably going to feel uncertain for a while yet. It took 88 hours to call the state in 2020.Another question will be whether either candidate comes out to speak to their supporters, and when. Everything Trump has said suggests that it is very unlikely that he will concede defeat on election night, except in the unlikely event of a landslide defeat. (In 2020, he made a speech at the White House at 2.21am ET, in which he made his first false claims of electoral fraud.)The tone he and Harris strike in these hours and afterwards will give a sense of whether the result is going to be accepted all round – or if we could be in for a much more febrile period.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion4am/11pm ET | California, Alaska and everything afterThe last polls close over the next two hours, and while it is just about theoretically possible that it could all come down to Alaska, I wouldn’t bet your house on it. It seems significantly more likely that – whatever the candidates have said – if the race looks close, lawyers for both sides will be gearing up for court challenges in key states – while pro-Trump poll watchers and other supporters are likely to be making numerous claims of election interference.Last time around, exhaustive legal processes found similar claims to be without foundation, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be repeated. It is entirely possible that we will have a clear call of a result from the major networks by this time, but everything will still appear to be in flux.What else we’re readingView image in fullscreen

      Poppies have been an exhausting part of British political discourse for more than 20 years. Samira Shackle’s long read is a definitive exploration of how they shifted from “a modest sign of remembrance” to “a prop for performative patriotism”. Archie

      These days, every product, app and service seems to be designed to make life as frictionless, quick and easy as possible. But in this week’s edition of The Big Idea, Alex Curmi asks whether the relentless pursuit of hyper-convenience and optimisation is actually making life more difficult. Nimo

      Climate protesters’ contentious nonviolent tactics – such as throwing soup on expensive artwork and disrupting sports events – may draw attention to environmental issues, but they have also led to activists being accused of undermining their cause. In New York magazine, Elizabeth Weil explores the idea of the “climate anti-hero”. Nimo

      RIP Quincy Jones. It’s a fine occasion to revisit David Marchese’s rip-roaring 2018 interview with him for New York magazine, widely shared on social media yesterday. You will have your own favourite bit, but it’s his anecdote about Ringo Starr and shepherd’s pie, for me. Archie

      Justin McCurry has written a fascinating, bleak piece about the North Korean soldiers headed to Ukraine to join their Russian counterparts – desperately inexperienced, unfamiliar with the terrain, and said by many to be cannon fodder. Archie
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | A remarkable stoppage-time double from Harry Wilson (above) was enough to give Fulham a 2-1 win over Brentford. Vitaly Janelt’s first half goal looked to have secured all three points for the visitors until Wilson pounced with a flicked volley and a superb header.Rugby | The former Scotland rugby international Stuart Hogg has admitted abusing his estranged wife over the course of five years. Hogg, 32, had been due to stand trial at Selkirk sheriff court on Monday but pleaded guilty to a single charge when he appeared at the court yesterday.Football | Arsenal’s sporting director, Edu, is to leave the club and looks likely to join the network of clubs spearheaded by Evangelos Marinakis, the owner of Nottingham Forest. Edu’s shock departure will bring to an end his five years in Arsenal’s senior management and means Mikel Arteta will lose one of his major allies.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“Harris or Trump: US faces its moment of reckoning” – the Guardian’s splash headline today while the Daily Telegraph has “Farage tells Trump: Do not fight poll result”. “America decides – as world holds its breath” – that’s the i. The Financial Times has “America votes as polls show dead heat”. “Starmer’s 180 degree uni U turn” is the top story in the Metro while the Daily Mail says “Now that’s what you call a U-turn!” and in the Times it’s “Labour vow to improve universities as fees rise”. The Express wants a different reversal: “Labour has to U-turn on ‘spiteful’ farm tax”. “My broken heart” – Amy Dowden in the Mirror after having to quit Strictly Come Dancing.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenA road trip through Pennsylvania, the ultimate swing stateFrom traditional rural Republicans who won’t vote for Trump to Latino voters who will, Michael Safi finds voters taking surprising stances as he embarks on a road trip through the biggest swing state in the USCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenIslamic State’s brutal three-year occupation of Mosul in northern Iraq was marked by the destruction of cultural sites and the banning of literature, arts and sports. Seven years since the occupation ended, the city’s poets and writers have begun to revitalise its rich literary heritage. Residents convene in a public reading club, where they can engage in open dialogue free from the fear of reprisal or judgment.“People want the city to rise again,” says Unesco adviser Wifaq Ahmed. “Writing is the simplest weapon people have to save our identity [and] history, and restore social cohesion.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

      Quick crossword

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      Trump and Harris in final election push as polls signal extremely close contest

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      Donald Trump and Kamala Harris closed out the tumultuous 2024 campaign with competing rallies across Pennsylvania, offering contrasting visions – and moods – in the final hours before polls opened in an election both candidates have cast as an existential fight for America’s future.In Philadelphia, Harris ended a frenetic dash across the state at the art museum steps made famous in the film Rocky – “a tribute to those who start out the underdog and climb to victory” – where tens of thousands of supporters gathered for the star-studded event.“Momentum is on our side,” Harris declared to roars from the crowd.Earlier in the day, Harris rallied in Allentown, Scranton and Pittsburgh. She also made stops in Reading to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and to join a canvas for her own presidential campaign. “I wanted to go door-knocking!” Harris told the family, stunned to see the vice-president on their porch.Trump, by contrast, appeared hoarse and exhausted at times, as barnstormed the battleground states, holding rallies in Raleigh, North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania and a late-evening event in Grand Rapids, Michigan – where he ended his two previous presidential campaigns. His remarks were dark and dystopian, rife with warnings that cast migrants as dangerous criminals and personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women. He has continued to boast about his crowd sizes, but reports suggest some of his final events have been plagued by empty seats and early departures from audience members during his lengthy, meandering speeches.“Tonight, then, we finish, as we started, with optimism with energy, with joy,” said Harris, who was introduced by Oprah Winfrey in Philadelphia. Behind her, the steps were illuminated blue and a large “President for All” banner was displayed. It all matched the mood of Harris’s positive closing argument, an attempt to shift the focus away from the threat posed by the ex-president, whom she did not mention by name in her remarks or her final ad.Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin performed at the event, while Oprah Winfrey brought on-stage 10 first time voters to share their reason for supporting Harris. Winfrey perhaps provided the starkest warning of the night, suggesting a second Trump presidency be the end of free and fair elections in the United States.“If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”As the Harris campaign and its surrogates have continued to appeal to female voters, Trump revived familiar insults against notable women, sometimes with violent language.In North Carolina, he attacked former first lady Michelle Obama, 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.” He also suggested the Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi should have been jailed for ripping up a copy of his 2020 State of the Union address: “She’s a bad, sick woman, she’s crazy as a bedbug.”And Trump repeated his line that Harris is a “low IQ individual”, followed by an incoherent tangent seemingly imagining her struggling to sleep: “I don’t want to have her say, You know, I had an idea last night while I was sleeping, turning, tossing, sweating,” he said, without finishing the sentence.Trump leaned into his taunts as he continues to face scrutiny over his recent comment suggesting that Liz Cheney, the former GOP congresswoman and a Harris supporter, should face rifles “shooting at her”. Appearing on ABC’s The View on Monday, Cheney said, “Women are going to save the day” on Tuesday.In North Carolina, Trump also threatened the newly elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, suggesting he would impose tariffs on all Mexican goods “if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs” – part of his trade proposals that economists have warned could significantly raise costs for US consumers.At around the same time, Harris was rallying in Allentown, roughly 40 miles away, critiquing Trumpism without directly naming her opponent: “America is ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy but as a neighbour. We are ready for a president who understands that the true measure of the strength of the leader is not based on who you beat down. It is based on who you lift up.”Later, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, earned loud applause at a rally in Georgia, when he attacked Harris by bringing up Joe Biden’s recent gaffe, in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage”.“In two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington DC, and the trash is named is Kamala Harris,” said the Ohio senator, in a remark that was condemned by Democrats and pundits.The back-and-forth trash talking originated with a comedian’s racist joke at Trump’s recent New York rally, calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”, a comment that many Harris surrogates cited on Monday while appealing to Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania.View image in fullscreenBy his evening rally in Pittsburgh, Trump returned to his crowd size obsession, making false claims about low turnout at Harris’s nearby rally that hadn’t yet begun. He then mocked Beyoncé, who rallied for Harris in Texas: “Everyone’s expecting a couple songs and there were no songs. There was no happiness.” He added, “We don’t need a star. I never had a star.”The final scramble to turn out voters comes as Trump continues to make false claims about voter fraud, raising fears about how he might challenge the results if Harris wins. In a call with reporters on Monday, the Harris campaign said it was prepared to combat any efforts by Trump to discredit the outcome.“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.”Legal challenges were designed to undermine faith in the electoral process, she added: “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.”There are also growing fears that political violence will escalate on election day and beyond, as misinformation and conspiracy theories are expected to spread while counting is under way. Election officials in one Nevada county said on Monday that threats have become so severe that polling places have installed “panic buttons” to automatically call 911 in emergencies.At Trump’s Pittsburgh rally, Michael Barringer, a 55-year-old coalminer, expressed his disdain for undocumented immigrants in explaining his support for Trump: “You’ve got millions and millions of illegal aliens crossing the border. They don’t speak English. They don’t say a pledge allegiance to the flag. They freeload off of us. I’m all for legal immigration, but not coming across the border illegally, taking American jobs.”Elizabeth Slaby, 81, was the first in line at Harris’s Allentown rally, arriving at about 6am. She said she was a registered Republican for more than 50 years, but changed her registration after the January 6 attack: “I never thought I’d see a woman president and now I’m so, so excited.”Sam Levine Smith contributed reportingRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

      US election 2024 live updates: latest polls, results and news

      When do polls close?

      How the electoral college works

      Where is abortion on the ballot?

      Senate and House races to watch

      Lessons from the key swing states

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake in this election

      What to know about the US election More

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      Illinois man arrested after punching election judge at polling location

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      A man in Illinois punched an election judge at a polling location and was arrested on Sunday, two days before the climax of the US presidential race, according to authorities.The man, identified as 24-year-old Daniel Schmidt, was charged with two counts of aggravated battery to a victim over 60, two counts of aggravated battery in a public place, and five misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and one count of disorderly conduct.His case follows numerous attacks on the voting process and threats of violence, the purpose of which often is to create fear and distrust around voting, according to extremist experts.Election officials across the US say voting is safe, and voters should not be deterred from casting their ballots in Tuesday’s presidential race.In Schmidt’s case, police say they responded to reports of a man causing a disturbance in the voting line at the township office of Orland Park, Illinois.Officers arrested Schmidt after learning that he had allegedly entered the building and attempted to cut in front of other voters in line for early voting.An election judge at the entrance instructed Schmidt to go to the back of the line and wait his turn. But authorities say that Schmidt refused.At that point, another election judge was called to assist, police said – and Schmidt was again instructed to go to the back of the line.According to the police, Schmidt then attempted to push past that election judge who stopped him from entering alongside several other staff members.Schmidt then reportedly began yelling profanities and punched the election judge in the face, knocking the official’s glasses off. At that point, several other patrons jumped in and restrained Schmidt until the officers arrived.Authorities added that, while being arrested, Schmidt also resisted Orland Park officers.Schmidt was held overnight on Sunday and transported to Bridgeview courthouse for a detention hearing on Monday morning.Ahead of this year’s election, election offices around the country have strengthened their security measures in anticipation of potential violence at the polls, in part in response to a rise in threats and harassment directed at election workers after the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.Trump is running in Tuesday’s election against Kamala Harris.Many offices have also trained their workers on de-escalation techniques and conducted drills for active shooters as well as other kinds of attacks.In the last week alone, the US has already experienced multiple attacks on the voting process, threats of violence and extremism, including bomb threats, ballots being burned and more. More

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      Musk-linked Pac accused of targeting Jewish and Arab Americans in swing states

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      A political action committee (Pac) linked to Elon Musk is accused of targeting Jewish and Arab American voters in swing states with dramatically different messages about Kamala Harris’s position on Gaza, a strategy by Trump allies aimed at peeling off Democratic support for the vice-president.Texts, mailers, social media ads and billboards targeting heavily Arab American areas in metro Detroit paint Harris as a staunch ally of Israel who will continue supplying arms to the country. Meanwhile, residents in metro Detroit or areas of Pennsylvania with higher Jewish populations have been receiving messaging that underscores her alleged support for the Palestinian cause.Those aimed at Arab American populations claim Harris will “ALWAYS stand with Israel” and “stand up against Hamas and radical terrorists in Gaza”. Another notes that she has a Jewish husband, and describes the pair as “America’s pro-Israel power couple”.

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      Meanwhile, texts and mailers sent to heavily Jewish areas claim “two faced Kamala stands with Palestine”, picturing her in front of a Palestinian flag. A Pennsylvania ad asked: “Why did Kamala Harris support denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands? And why did Harris show sympathy for college protesters who are rabidly antisemitic?”The different ads, produced by the Future Coalition Pac, can be viewed in Google’s ad transparency center.“They are stirring up and trying to create trouble,” Mark Brewer, a Michigan elections attorney and former head of the state’s Democratic party, told the Guardian. Messages depicting Harris as pro-Israel or having a Jewish husband in Michigan “are not designed to help her – they’re designed to hurt her”.Metro Detroit has the largest Arab American population in the US per capita, until this election a solidly Democratic voting bloc that helped boost the party in the divided swing state. But the Trump campaign has made inroads with the groups as frustration mounts over the Biden administration’s support for Israel in its bombardments of Gaza and Lebanon.Another Musk Pac is separately facing legal action and backlash for mistreating canvassers, including failing to pay them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMany mailers and billboards are from Future Coalition, which was established in July. In its Federal Election Commission (FEC) paperwork, the Pac claims its ads are in support of Harris, despite the fact that those in Michigan clearly aim to sabotage her. The only funding it recorded was a $3m contribution from the Musk-funded Building America’s Future non-profit.One billboard from the group in a heavily Arab American Michigan area is more open about its aims: it states that the Democratic US Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin, who is Jewish and in a tight race with her GOP counterpart, is “more focused on arming Israel than helping your family”.But some people in Arab American areas around Detroit report receiving up to five text messages a day from unidentified senders touting Harris’s alleged support for Israel. The FEC does not require organizations sending political texts to identify themselves, Brewer said, which he called “a real problem and a big loophole”. The FEC in 2002 ruled that identification in text messages was not required in part because the messages of character limits on the messages.The same Pac is producing purportedly pro-Harris ads targeting Pennsylvania on issues unrelated to Gaza, one of which reads: “Imagine a world where the American Dream has no borders,” and features a photo of migrants at the US border. More

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      How scenario planning could help Canadian policymakers deal with American political chaos

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      One of the most bizarre aspects of the United States presidential election has been how difficult it’s been to determine the truth — particularly due to Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy — and if the truth even matters.

      White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci walks back to the West Wing of the White House in July 2017. His advice to take Trump symbolically, not literally, likely puzzled Canadian policymakers.
      (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

      As former Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci once noted about the former president: “Don’t take him literally, take him symbolically.” This advice wasn’t very helpful.

      The difficulty in determining what is true is symptomatic of the high levels of uncertainty that Canadian policymakers are confronted with regularly in their dealings with their American counterparts.

      Voters in the most powerful nation on Earth — and Canada’s neighbour and largest trading partner — are choosing between two starkly different choices on the ballot, and Canada must be attentive and adaptive across a number of policy areas.

      Three-part process

      Scenario planning provides an effective way to address such high levels of uncertainty. The method can generate difficult and radically different descriptions of the future by way of challenging participants, requiring imaginative interventions and overcoming stability and optimism biases.

      At the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance at Dalhousie University, our team used this method extensively throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, including with members of the tourism industry in early 2021. The method proved to be an effective tool for these organizations in planning for the 2021 tourism season in light of the uncertainty posed by COVID-19.

      There are typically three parts to the approach, divided by sessions. The first session establishes the goals the participants wish to achieve in light of their unique challenges and timelines. Goals vary but usually address some aspect of the medium-term success of the organization. Timelines can be anything from a few months down the road to decades from now.

      Motivating factors

      The group then discusses drivers, which are highly impactful forces beyond their immediate control that will shape the scenarios. Two drivers are selected, often based on supply-and-demand concepts.

      During the second session, participants describe four scenarios based on the two drivers, answering questions that include:

      What does this scenario look like?
      How would we arrive at this scenario?
      What are the underlying causes of the scenario?
      What are the critical failures and opportunities in this scenario?

      Finally, the group names the scenario. The four scenarios are deliberately intended to be different and extreme in order to push people beyond their comfort zones.

      At the third session, participants establish how they’re going to judge policies and operational changes knowing that any one of the four scenarios could materialize.

      Trade, economy

      In terms of scenario planning for the Canada-U.S. relationship, Canadian policymakers could consider U.S. trade policies as the first driver (liberal trade policies vs. protectionist policies) and the state of the American economy as the second driver (it either booms or it sinks into a deep recession).

      Policymakers can use a two-by-two matrix to discuss potential strategies in light of the possible scenarios posed by the U.S economy and trade policies.
      (MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance)

      Organized as a two-by-two matrix, policymakers can explore four plausible future scenarios: either liberal or protectionist trade policies, during either an economic boom or a recession.

      Within these four scenarios, policymakers can develop criteria by which to evaluate Canadian policies knowing that any one of these four scenarios could materialize.

      There are important things to consider at the design stage.

      To start, it can be time-consuming to organize and execute the sessions. You can run remarkably simple and helpful sessions in a day, or extremely involved ones over several months.

      The number of participants is flexible. Usually it involves a small to medium-sized group, but individuals can use the two-by-two matrix to think through problems over lunch.

      Who’s there matters. We tend to invite people who represent different parts of an organization or sector. That provides legitimacy to the process and satisfies a sense of fair play, and this approach can also help participants accept the conclusions and communicate them broadly.

      At the same time, having representatives from each part of the organization can lead to turf wars. It can serve to reinforce existing institutional arrangements rather than challenge, change and in some cases abolish them. Bringing in guest speakers to share best practices from other jurisdictions can help to discuss difficult issues.

      The Ambassador Bridge, spanning the Detroit River between Windsor and Detroit, in December 2021. The trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and Canada provides lots of material for scenario planning for Canadian policymakers.
      THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Thornhill

      Embracing diversity

      Scenario planning exercises also favour elite groups — experts, company executives and clever high flyers who are skilled at imaginative thinking. Turning to these elite groups can be at odds with equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility principles.

      Diverse sources of information can challenge participants to think differently and also help participants to understand the impacts of scenarios to different communities.

      Participants also need to be able to speak frankly. Values may differ, and attempts by participants to avoid saying anything controversial can crowd out more nuanced thoughts.

      Generally, egalitarian dynamics lead to consensus-seeking solutions. But this doesn’t always result in more radical transformations. In some respects, the four possible scenarios compel participants to consider quite different views, which can be helpful.

      Diverse participants in scenario planning sessions can challenge people to think differently.
      (Shutterstock)

      All of this makes discussing how to judge new programs at the third session more challenging and important.

      One way to address these challenges is to have a broad way to discuss and evaluate each strategy. Typically, we examine different parts of the strategy — how an organization gathers information, sets standards and changes behaviour internally — and different criteria by which to judge the strategies (efficiency, fairness and accountability and stability and learning).

      An experienced moderator with some professional distance from the group can help to keep the conversation on time, on subject and challenge participants when conventional wisdom starts to creep in.

      Public agencies are premised on a command-and-control dynamic, but policymakers increasingly need tools and skills that allow them to anticipate, address and communicate risks over which they have limited control.

      The U.S. election and its aftermath in the weeks and months to come are a salient and consequential example. Scenario planning allows policymakers to challenge their assumptions and have difficult conversations in light of quickly changing events in order to seize opportunities and reduce vulnerabilities. More