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      The candidates’ closing campaign messages could not be more different | Margaret Sullivan

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      In recent days, the Republican nominee for president of the United States has driven around in circles in a garbage truck, pretended to work at McDonald’s and presided over a rally in which Puerto Rico was called a floating island of garbage.Outrageous, of course – but then it got worse. On Thursday, talking on stage with Tucker Carlson in Arizona, Donald Trump went after the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who opposes his re-election and has campaigned with Kamala Harris: “Let’s put her with a rifle with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face.”Cheney characterized this as “how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death.”Meanwhile, in the final days of her campaign, Harris continued to call for unity, progress and inclusion. In a sweeping speech at the Ellipse in Washington DC before a huge and appreciative crowd, she warned of Americans losing their fundamental freedoms if they submit to the will of the “petty tyrant” mentioned above.With only a few days left of this exhausting campaign, the candidates’ closing statements could not be more different. There’s violent, hateful rhetoric and threats of retribution from one side. There’s inclusion, sanity and promises of good will on the other. Autocracy on the one hand; the preservation of democracy on the other.And yet, according to the polls – if you choose to believe them – the presidential race is tied.The oft-cited Cook Political Report issued its final projection: “Too close to call. Harris heads into Election Day with 226 electoral votes in Likely or Solid Democrat, and Trump with 219 in Likely or Solid Republican. Seven states and their 93 electoral votes are too close to call, with neither candidate having a lead larger than one or two points in any state.”You’d think, then, that these final days would matter. That mysteriously undecided voters would finally figure things out, or that some last-minute political bomb would explode – like the Access Hollywood audio followed by the FBI’s reopening of the Hillary Clinton emails investigation in the last days of the 2016 campaign.But no one should have bothered to wait.At this point, nothing can make a bit of difference. For some observers, this is not a new realization.“That’s where I’ve been ever since 2015: feeling like language is pointless,” wrote David Roberts, formerly of Vox, who writes the Volts newsletter about clean energy and politics. “Like the reality I inhabit is so far from the reality Trump supporters inhabit that discourse between us is impossible or at least futile. The divide is unbridgeable.”And this is the background as voters make their way to their election sites, with many of them voting early to avoid chaos or danger on Tuesday. Each side is claiming the early voters as theirs.And right to the end, the most powerful of the mainstream press keeps trying to equalize the unequal.Both the New York Times and the Washington Post led their websites with Joe Biden’s verbal fumble in which he may, or may not, have referred to Trump supporters as garbage.And both placed that story above the fold on Thursday’s print front pages. The Post’s hefty two-column headline dominated the lead position: “Biden’s ‘garbage’ remark has Harris seeking distance.” The Times struck the same note: “Biden Misstep Delivers Grist to Harris Foes.”The headlines themselves demonstrate the flawed news judgment. “The news hook is literally that it provided ‘grist’ to Republicans,” and this in effect “outsources the judgment about the newsworthiness of the event to bad faith actors,” wrote Greg Sargent of the New Republic.Sure, Biden’s untimely gaffe is a legitimate story. But this important? Certainly not when you consider how the Times handled its own scoop – that the former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general, believes Trump is a fascist and a danger to the nation. That one went to page A12.Meanwhile, Trump drives around in a garbage truck, issues death threats and says he’s planning to protect American women from their own healthcare decisions “whether the women like it or not”.No October surprise could have superseded the media’s reflexive false equivalence or the cult-like adoration of Trump’s followers.But, as my father used to urge, keep the faith.If there’s any justice or decency left – and I trust there is – Harris will leave the pollsters and the pundits scratching their heads after a November surprise. Her historic victory.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Harris vows at Michigan rally to ‘do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza’

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      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 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, and polling suggests that these voters are gravitating towards Jill Stein, the Green party candidate.With Harris and the former president essentially tied in Michigan, a drop in voting numbers for either could be critical, and Harris made a clear appeal at the beginning of her speech.“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,” Harris said.“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.”Speaking at the Michigan State University campus, Harris repeated her campaign promise to “turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division”. Harris did not mention Trump by name in East Lansing, as she gave an address that struck a hopeful tone for the future.“America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor,” she said.“We are ready for a president who knows that the true measure of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it is based on who you lift up.”

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      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. The state is key to her chances of success, but the result is likely to be close. Trump won Michigan by about 10,000 votes in 2016 as he demolished Democrats’ “blue wall”, and Biden also carried the state by a narrow margin in 2020. Trump is holding his final rally of the campaign in Michigan on Monday night, but Harris was defiant.“We need to finish strong. So for the next two days we still have a lot of work to do but here’s the thing: we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work,” she said.“And make no mistake, we will win.”It was a raucous atmosphere at the rally, Harris’s final stop in Michigan before Tuesday’s vote. She repeatedly had to pause for loud chants of “Kamala, Kamala” from a diverse crowd who seemed enthusiastic about voting for her“I feel more energized and more excited in this election than I have in a while,” said Latonya Demps, 40, a small business owner and a Michigan State alumna.“I’m very excited to vote for Harris. As a woman she speaks for my rights and the rights of women that we have fought for for a very, very long time: the right to choose, the right to have equity and access, also freedom for all of us in terms of climate change, in terms of our economy, the type of neighbors we want to have, the families that we want to raise, I think she represents the values that are really important to me.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis week Democrats have fought to counter the gains made by Stein among Arab American and Muslim American voters in Michigan, with the Democratic National Committee launching a series of ads on Instagram and YouTube aiming to discourage people from voting for Stein and Cornel West, who is running as an independent and is also a critic of Israel.The ads highlight recent comments by Trump that he likes Stein “very much”, because: “She takes 100% from [Democrats].” The pro-Democrat organization MoveOn has also been running a “seven-figure” ad campaign this week, which it said was designed to appeal to people who are yet to decide on a candidate and “third-party curious voters”.Polling on the issue has yielded inconsistent results. Last week a national survey of Arab Americans, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit, found 43% supporting Trump compared with 41% for Harris, and 4% backing Stein, while a survey of Muslim Americans, by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of American Muslims, found that 42.3% plan to vote for Stein, 41% for Harris and 9.8% for Trump.Despite that uncertainty, Harris supporters left buoyant on Sunday night.“She’s going to be the first Black woman president that we’ve had. She’s actually going to fight for our rights. She’s fighting for women’s reproductive rights, she’s also fighting for the middle class, for entrepreneurs, and business owners like myself,” said Zay Worthey, 19.Worthey said he was “100%” confident that Harris will win the White House on Tuesday.“Because she has something that Donald Trump doesn’t: community,” Worthey said.“She’s really working and fighting for the people of America, and Donald Trump is just only working for the people of the rich.” More

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      Trump disputes Iowa poll showing Harris ahead in red state: ‘It’s not even close!’

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      Donald Trump has passionately 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 his 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.”Trump continued, in all caps: “I love the farmers, and they love me. And they trust me.” More than 85% of Iowa’s land is used for farming and it produces more corn, pigs, eggs, ethanol and biodiesel than any other state.On Saturday, the Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed the vice-president ahead of her Republican rival by three points. Selzer is a widely respected polling organisation with a good record in Iowa; she shot to polling fame in 2008 when she predicted that a virtually unknown senator, Barack Obama, would beat frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.If Harris were even competitive in Iowa – which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 – it could radically reshape the race.The pollster told MSNBC on Sunday that Harris was leading in early voting in Iowa “because of her strength with women generally, even stronger with women aged 65 and older. Her margin is more than 2-to-1 – and this is an age group that shows up to vote or votes early in disproportionately large numbers.”Earlier on Sunday, Trump’s campaign released a memo from its chief pollster and its chief data consultant calling the Des Moines Register poll “a clear outlier” and saying that an Emerson College poll – also released Saturday – more closely reflected the state of the Iowa electorate.

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      The Emerson poll found 53% of likely voters support Trump and 43% support Harris, with 3% undecided and 1% planning to vote for a third-party candidate.The Trump campaign, which many Democrats believe is setting the stage for a series of legal challenges to poll results, also said in an email that the Des Moines Register poll and a subsequent New York Times swing state poll that found Harris ahead in four of the seven states, is “being used to drive a voter suppression narrative against President Trump’s supporters.“Some in the media are choosing to amplify a mad dash to dampen and diminish voter enthusiasm,” the statement added.Last week, Trump said: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before” but did not provide evidence for the claim. A Harris campaign official said that the “cheating” claim was an example of how Trump was trying to sow doubt in the electoral system because he was afraid he would lose.The claims come as a federal judge plans to rule on whether Iowa officials can continuing trying to remove hundreds of potential noncitizens from its voting rolls despite critics saying the effort could keep recently naturalized citizens from voting.North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, a Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he is confident that Trump is “going to confidently win Iowa”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked if Trump has a problem winning over women voters, Burgum said: “I’d be surprised, completely shocked if that comes anywhere close to being the fact in Iowa.”Burgum pointed to national polling which shows Harris and Trump tied.“I think that’s the feeling that I get on the ground. It’s a very tight race. It’s going to be decided on Tuesday,” Burgum added.But speaking to MSNBC, Maryland governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, said the Des Moines Register poll putting Harris ahead Iowa, but still within margins of error, “lines up with what we’re seeing on the ground”, particularly among women voters.Moore continued: “We’re watching an energy that I think has not been there for a while, where we continue to see where women understand firsthand, what is at stake, that they understand the dynamics and the distinctions between these two candidates literally could not be more stark about when you’re talking about a future vision for the country.” More

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      Trump’s alternate-reality ‘mirror world’, where only he can save America

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      For many observers of the coming presidential election, especially those overseas, Donald Trump and his Maga-infused Republican party represent a foreboding stress test for American democracy.Historians have weighed in with analysis that Trump now heads a movement close to fascism, Trump himself has spoken of “enemies within”, he and his followers held a mass rally of racist rhetoric in a New York city venue known for an infamous Nazi gathering before the second world war and his language has been tinged with violent imagery.Yet, in Trump’s world, and those of his followers and campaign surrogates, it is the Democrats who are to blame for the degraded discourse in American politics, their rhetoric a sign that they demonize the other side. It is Kamala Harris who is far outside the American mainstream. It is Joe Biden who is a Marxist. It is the Democratic party who plots a complete remaking of the American way of life. They are even, they argue, trying to take away Americans’ hamburgers.When millions of American Republicans vote on Tuesday they will believe that it is they – by casting their vote for Trump – who are the ones saving American democracy.The alternate reality “mirror world” that Trump has built for himself and his followers features them as the victims of their political opponents, despite Trump’s rampant use of insults and heated comments. And he casts himself as the savior from this persecution, again framing his election in the final days as he only able to fix the country that Democrats have broken, a retread of his 2016 slogan of “I alone can fix it”.The mirror world effect is a feature of the 2024 campaign – a place where Trump’s liabilities are twisted to become his opponents’, a place where he can call people names but it’s an outrage when others do, a place where Trump is saving democracy despite his attempts to overthrow an election.Perhaps no incident more clearly shows the way the same word can be twisted differently in this flipside America than the way a “garbage” gaffe played out this week.At a rally in Arizona last Thursday, Trump called the US a “garbage can” because of migrants, noting how he’d never used the term before to describe the country but that it was accurate, though he had previously said the people around Harris were “scum” and “absolute garbage.” Days later, at a Madison Square Garden rally filled with opening acts that lobbed insults and diatribes at perceived enemies, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.Trump sought to distance himself from the comedian by saying he didn’t know him and by claiming that Puerto Ricans love him. “Every time I go outside I see somebody from Puerto Rico. They give me a hug and a kiss,” he told Fox host Sean Hannity. He hasn’t walked back his own comments on the whole country being garbage.President Joe Biden then said Trump supporters were “garbage”, though then clarified he specifically meant Hinchliffe, the comedian, and that a critical apostrophe should be added: that Trump supporter is garbage, not the lot of them. Kamala Harris also said she disagrees with calling Trump supporters names, focusing instead on the former president himself in her comments.Sensing an opportunity for a campaign stunt akin to manning the fryer at McDonald’s, Trump donned an orange vest and jumped into a Trump-branded garbage truck for a brief ride, then wore the vest throughout a speech, joking that the outfit made him look thinner.View image in fullscreen“Joe Biden’s comments were the direct result of Kamala’s decision to portray everyone who isn’t voting for her as evil and sub-human,” Trump said. “And we know it’s what they believe because look how they’ve treated you, like garbage.”Since then, he has called Kamala Harris a “low-IQ individual” and a “sleaze bag” and claimed she is “dumb as a rock”. He called Biden a “stupid bastard”. At a later rally, with some supporters on stage behind him in bright construction vests, Trump again brought up the “garbage” comment and said his supporters were “far higher quality” than Harris’ or Biden’s.Yet, in Trump’s words, he is simultaneously “running a campaign of positive solutions” while Harris is “running a campaign of hate.”Trump, talking to rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson on Thursday, explicitly laid out how one of his political opponents, former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, was a radical war hawk and should face rifles herself to see the consequences of US involvement in conflict abroad.“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said.Cheney said the comments were indicative of how dictators destroy free countries. “They threaten those who speak against them with death,” Cheney said. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”It’s exactly the line of attack on Trump that Trump has twisted to say his opponents are using harsh language and calling him extreme names.“For the past nine years, Kamala and her party have called us racists, bigots, fascists, deplorable, irredeemables, and they call me Hitler … They’ve taken your money, they’ve thrown open our borders to criminals … They’ve sent our blood and treasure to fight in stupid foreign wars – This Tuesday is your chance to stand up and declare you are not going to take it anymore – VOTE!” he posted on Truth Social this week.Trump has also continued to claim the Democrats are a threat to democracy, a strategy he picked up this year as he faced a barrage of criminal charges related to his actions to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He has said these charges are the work of the Biden administration to hobble their political opponent during an election year, calling it “election interference”.This line of thinking is now a feature of his speeches, and his allies and supporters now often parrot it – that a vote for Trump is a vote to secure democracy. Despite these proclamations in his speeches, he is expected to declare victory whether he wins or not, and he and his allies are laying groundwork to challenge election results. He has called his political opponents the “enemy within” and threatened to prosecute them or use military force against them for nonspecific crimes, which has led even some of his former staffers to say he is a fascist. He and his allies have instead said comments about the existential threat Trump poses have led to assassination attempts against him. More

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      Everything you need to know about the 2024 US presidential election

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      The 60th US presidential election and will decide the 47th president – widely held to be the most powerful job in the world – and 50th vice-president. The candidates and their supporters are describing it as the most important election of their lifetimes with democracy and the American way of life are at stake. Record amounts of money have been raised and spent on campaign ads and ground games. Media coverage in print, on TV, online and on podcasts has never been more intense – or more polarised.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. Thirteen state and territorial governorships and numerous other state and local elections will take place.Voters in 41 states will consider a total of 159 ballot initiatives. Ten states including Arizona, Colorado and Florida have abortion-related measures on the ballot. 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      It no longer makes sense to talk solely about “election day”. Tens of millions of people have voted early by mail or in-person, thereby avoiding long queues, potential bad weather or other inconveniences. Georgia’s first day of early voting “shattered records”, according to state officials, while an “unheard of” 97,000-plus voted on day one in Wisconsin.Democrats encouraged people to vote by mail in 2020 to avoid exposure to Covid-19 during the pandemic and fought legal battles to expand absentee voting. Trump, by contrast, falsely claimed that the practice was rife with fraud (it is extremely rare), although Republicans have since changed their messaging and increasingly embraced it.With the exception of Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire, all states give voters the chance to cast a ballot in person at a polling place ahead of election day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Most states begin counting those ballots on election day, and some require officials to wait until polls are closed to begin counting. Some states offer a version of early voting called “in-person absentee” voting, in which a voter can obtain and submit an absentee ballot in person at a polling place before election day.Most states offer some form of absentee voting, in which a voter requests a ballot in advance and returns it by mail. Some offer voters the option of returning absentee ballots to a secure dropbox. Eight states practice “all-mail” elections in which all registered voters receive a ballot in the mail, whether or not they plan to use it.Federal law requires states to send absentee ballots to military voters and voters overseas. Most states allow officials to immediately process absentee ballots but some require them to wait until election day to begin processing ballots – which can slow the release of election results.On election day, which is 5 November this year, everyone else goes to polling places to cast their vote. 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      Kamala Harris, 60, the current vice-president, won the Democratic party’s nomination after Joe Biden ended his re-election bid. She is a former senator, California attorney general and San Francisco prosecutor and is bidding to make history as the first woman and first woman of colour to be elected president in America’s 248-year history.Donald Trump, 78, the Republican nominee, is making make his third consecutive run for the White House. The businessman and reality TV star continues to repeat his false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election from him. He is the first president to be impeached twice and convicted of a crime. Trump is also the oldest major party nominee in history and this summer survived two assassination attempts.Chase Oliver, 39, is the little-known candidate for the Libertarian party. Oliver ran for a Georgia state senate seat in 2022 and garnered 2% of the vote. The party, which prioritises small government and individual freedoms, typically gains 3% or less of the national vote but its members could yet prove crucial in swing states.Jill Stein, 74, a physician who ran under the Green party in 2016, is running again in 2024. She launched her current campaign accusing Democrats of betraying their promises “for working people, youth and the climate again and again – while Republicans don’t even make such promises in the first place”.Cornel West, 71, is running as an independent candidate. The political activist, philosopher and academic is making an effort to attract more progressive, Democratic-leaning voters.What are the paths to victory?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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      Democrats have won the national popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections. But the Republicans George W Bush and Donald Trump won the White House by gaining more than 270 votes in the all-important electoral college.Each state counts its votes separately. With two exceptions – Nebraska and Maine – the winner of a state gets all of its electoral votes. Each state has a number of electors based on the number of congressional districts it has, plus two additional votes representing the state’s Senate seats. Washington DC has three electoral votes, despite having no voting representation in Congress.This year the electoral college will probably come down to seven crucial battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Harris and Trump campaigns are eyeing multiple combinations that could put them over the top.Pennsylvania, which carries 19 electoral college votes, is the ultimate prize and has been the focus of much campaigning. Along with Michigan and Wisconsin, it forms a “blue wall” won by Barack Obama, lost by Hillary Clinton and won by Joe Biden. Trump is targeting rural blue-collar voters; Harris is aiming to turn out Black voters in big cities.Losses in these states might be offset by victories in Arizona, where Trump has made gains among Latino voters; Nevada, the most diverse swing state; and Georgia, long a red state which Biden narrowly flipped in 2020. Republicans have won North Carolina in every election since 2012 but Democrats are running close this time.Democrats currently control the Senate but face a tough map this year. Democrats and senators who caucus with them currently occupy seven of the eight most competitive seats, including Montana and Ohio, which generally lean Republican.The House is likely to hinge on 42 of the most competitive elections. Republicans could retain control by winning just 12 of the 26 seats rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report if they also win seats deemed “likely” or “lean” Republican.What are the main issues that will decide the White House?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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      Abortion. This is the first presidential election since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion. Many Republican-led states have since imposed total or near-total bans on the procedure. Harris has made reproductive rights and personal freedoms a rallying cry and backs a national law codifying access to safe abortion. Trump has struggled to find his footing on the issue, insisting that it is a state matter and belatedly ruling out a national ban. Constitutional amendments that would protect or expand abortion rights will appear on the ballot in 10 states, which Democrats hope will drive higher turnout.Democracy. Democrats have warned that Trump poses an existential threat to democratic norms, citing the 6 January 2021 insurrection, when a mob of his supporters attempted to overturn his election defeat. Harris has described her opponent as a fascist who has said he would be a dictator on day one and who would yield to foreign autocrats such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. Trump has sought to turn the tables by claiming – without evidence – that Harris is the true threat to democracy, citing alleged online censorship and the criminal cases against him. He has refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. A recent a Washington Post-Schar School survey of voters in seven swing states found that slightly more trust Trump to handle threats to democracy than Harris.Economy. The Economist magazine describes the US economy as the envy of the world, contending: “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” But despite strong growth, low unemployment and stabilising inflation, Biden and Harris have consistently trailed Trump in opinion polls. Harris’s economic plans include tax cuts for most Americans, price-gouging bans, more affordable housing and a new child tax credit as well as efforts to boost domestic manufacturing. Trump has vowed to cut taxes, impose sweeping tariffs on imported goods and protect social security and Medicare.Immigration. This has been Trump’s signature issue since he trundled down an escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to launch his presidential bid. This time, even as border crossings drop to 2020 levels, he has pledged what he calls the biggest deportation operation in US history. He has also used dehumanising language reminiscent of the Nazis to claim that undocumented immigrants are “animals”, have “bad genes” and are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Harris has shifted to the centre on the issue, underlining her support for a bipartisan proposal in Congress that would have hired thousands of new border security agents and closed the border if crossings hit an average of more than 5,000 people a day over a week.What is the state of the race?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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      Excruciatingly close. Harris and Trump are tied at 48% each for the popular vote, according to the final New York Times/Siena College national poll published on 25 October.After Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the 27 June debate, Trump held a four-percentage-point lead over Biden among registered voters, according to the Pew Research Center. Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, who then surged to parity and a small lead over Trump amid a wave of energy and enthusiasm.In recent weeks the race has stabilised and an equilibrium has been restored.The national race is less important than swing states that will decide the electoral college. These too are tantalisingly close. As of 17 October, for example, the Guardian’s poll tracker showed Trump narrowly leading in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris ahead in Nevada and Pennsylvania and a dead heat in North Carolina – but all could still go one way or the other.The election will provide another test for a polling industry battered by the 2016 and 2020 elections when it seemed to underestimate Trump’s strength. Conversely, in the 2022 midterms, Democrats overperformed the polls and headed off the predicted “red wave”.Political analysts and commentators are understandably reluctant to stick out their necks and guess the outcome. Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster, said: “You can’t call it. Anyone who calls it is an idiot.” But Allan Lichtman, a historian with a predictive method that has been right nine times out of 10, has declared he thinks Harris will win.Does the US have exit polls?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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      Exit polls are surveys conducted with voters immediately after they have cast their ballots. Major news networks such as CNN, ABC and Fox News use them to make early projections about who is likely to win, though these are subject to revisions as actual vote counts come in. Traditionally, media outlets agree not to release exit poll data before all polls have closed to avoid influencing people still voting.Exit pollsters position interviewers at selected polling stations, chosen to represent a cross-section of the voting population. Voters leaving polling stations are asked to voluntarily complete anonymous questionnaires covering the candidate they voted for, key issues and demographic information. Interviewers typically phone in the results three times during the day.Exit poll data is analysed quickly to generate insights about the voter base such as who is winning certain demographic groups. Dearborn, Michigan, for example, will be studied closely for any evidence that the war in Gaza affected turnout of Arab and Muslim Americans.Exit polls include absentee voters by conducting phone, text and email surveys. In states with a high level of early in-person voters, exit polls are carried out weeks before election day as these voters leave the polling place. The results are then combined with data from election day.There is a strict embargo on exit poll data until 5pm ET on election day. Within the next hour some initial demographic information about voters and their policy views begins to emerge. Networks are not allowed to project a winner while voting is still taking place. 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      If the polls are wrong and one candidate has a clear lead over the other – think Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide victory in 1984 – the result will be obvious within hours. But given the closeness of the elections in 2016 and 2020, a nail-biter that runs through the night and possibly days beyond is more likely. Prolonged court cases are also possible: Republican donors and conservative billionaires have given $140m to 50 “election integrity” groups ready to do battle.News organisations such the Associated Press (AP) often project a winner on election night based on an analysis of votes already counted, the number of outstanding votes and the margin between the candidates. (The AP says its accuracy rate for the past several general elections is above 99.9%.) The losing candidate typically concedes in the early hours of the next morning, signalling that the contest is in effect over.Officially, however, there is still work to do. Local officials finish counting ballots in the days after the election and send their results to state officials. They approve the results and send them to federal officials. Every state must name individuals known as electors by 11 December; they must meet in their respective state capitols to cast their votes for president and vice-president on 17 December.On 6 January the House and Senate will count and tally the electoral certificates in a joint session. The vice-president serves as the president of the Senate and formally presides over the receiving and counting of electoral ballots cast and announces the result. In this case, Harris will proclaim her own victory or defeat on the fourth anniversary of the insurrection at the US Capitol.The election could be a big payday for lawyers. In 2000, when the Republican George W Bush and the Democrat Al Gore were the candidates, polling day fell on 7 November but the result was not called until 12 December. All eyes were on Florida, where votes were subject to an automatic recount because of Bush’s gossamer-thin margin of victory. The dispute went all the way to the supreme court, where justices voted to terminate the recount, prompting Gore to concede.In 2020 the AP declared Joe Biden the winner four days after election day – at 11.26am ET on Saturday 7 November. Trump had declared victory three days earlier, even as more than 1m ballots remained uncounted, and went on to lose more than 60 legal challenges. 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      The president-elect forms a transition team to plan for the transfer of power. This works on setting up policy priorities, vetting candidates for key administration positions and coordinating with the outgoing administration. The president-elect and key members of their team begin receiving classified national security briefings to prepare for handling ongoing or emerging global threats.The 47th president will be inaugurated at 12 noon on 20 January at the US Capitol. Big crowds will be expected to return next year after Biden’s scaled-down pandemic version. The outgoing president typically attends the inauguration as a symbol of the peaceful transfer of power, although Trump boycotted in 2020. The new president begins work immediately, often signing a series of executive orders to reverse or continue certain policies and holding meetings with their team.Design, development and production: Rich Cousins, Pip Burkett and Bruno Haward. More

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      in US Politics

      Harris grabs unexpected last-minute lead over Trump in Iowa poll

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      A poll in Iowa that has unexpectedly put Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in what was previously expected to be a safe state for the Republicans has sent shockwaves through America’s poll-watchers.The Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed Harris ahead of her Republican rival by three points.Midwestern Iowa is not one of the seven battleground states of the 2024 election, which have consisted of the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the Sun belt states of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona.While political experts and pollsters are very wary of putting too much store in any one single poll, Selzer is a widely respected polling organisation with a good record in Iowa. If Harris were even competitive in Iowa – which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 – it could radically reshape the race.The Selzer poll has Harris over Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters. A September poll showed Trump with a four-point lead over Harris and a June survey showed him with an 18-point lead over then-candidate Joe Biden.“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” pollster J Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co, told the Register. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.”The poll showed that women are driving the late shift toward Harris in the state. If true and borne out more widely, that would also be significant as the Harris campaign has focused on turning out women amid a broad gender gap with Republican-trending male voters. Harris and her campaign have focused on the overturning of federal abortion rights by the conservative-dominated US supreme court.The reaction among pundits and pollsters was largely one of shock and surprise, though it was also pointed out that a rival polling group still had Trump leading in Iowa.“This is a stunning poll. But Ann Seltzer [sic] has as stellar a record as any pollster of forecasting election outcomes in her state. Women are powering this surge. Portents for the country?” said David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama.“I mean, margins of error exist and polls can be outliers and I doubt Harris will win Iowa, but Selzer is extremely well-regarded and a within-the-margin race in Iowa is not impossible particularly if the reported late shifts to Harris were real,” said Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.Selzer is the highest-rated pollster on the national US survey done by polling guru Nate Silver, one of the most closely watched polling experts in the US.“In the world where Harris wins Iowa, she is probably also cleaning up elsewhere in the midwest, particularly in Michigan and Wisconsin, in which case she’s already almost certain to win the electoral college,” Silver said on his website.However, he also cautioned that another survey had been published on Saturday in Iowa that still had Trump ahead. The Emerson poll put the former US president up by nine points in the state compared with Harris.“It is incredibly gutsy to release this poll. It won’t put Harris ahead in our forecast because there was also another Iowa poll out today that was good for Trump. But wouldn’t want to play poker against Ann Selzer,” Silver said.That seemed to prevent any premature celebrations on behalf of many Democrats.“Celebrate the Selzer poll for 90 seconds and get back to work. We have an election to win,” said Christopher Hale, a former Democrat congressional candidate in Tennessee. More