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      European voters – even some on far-right – want Harris victory, poll finds

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      Most western Europeans – and even many who vote for far-right parties – would like Kamala Harris to win the US presidential election, polling suggests, but fewer are confident that she will and most expect violence if Donald Trump is not elected.The YouGov Eurotrack survey of voters in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Denmark found that the Democratic vice-president was the preferred winner in every country , with sizeable majorities in favour of Harris in all except Italy.Denmark’s voters were the most eager to see Harris in the White House at 81%, followed by 71% in Germany, 65% in Spain, 62% in France and 61% in the UK; the 46% of Italians who shared the same view was still almost double the percentage of those who instead opted for Trump.Unsurprisingly, support for the Democratic candidate was strongest among Europe’s left-leaning and centrist voters, reaching 80% to 90% among backers of parties such as the Social Democrats and the Greens in Germany, Sumar in Spain, Emmanuel Macron in France, the Social Democrats in Sweden, and the Liberal Democrats in the UK.However, those who recently cast their votes for traditional centre-right parties also preferred Harris over Trump, by often significant margins: 89% of Venstre voters in Denmark, 78% of Christian Democrat (CDU/CSU) voters in Germany, 66% of People party voters in Spain and 58% of Conservative party voters in Britain.And even among western Europeans who recently voted for far-right, nationalist and populist parties, sizeable numbers of respondents in all seven countries said they would rather see Harris elected president than her Republican rival.Trump was the favoured candidate of far-right voters in Spain, the UK, Germany and Italy, with 54% of Vox voters (against 23% who preferred Harris), 51% (27%) of Reform UK voters, 50% (36%) of Alternative for Germany voters in Germany and 44% (32%) of Brothers of Italy voters saying they wanted the former president to secure a second term.But among far-right Sweden Democrat voters, 49% said they would prefer Harris in the White House against 31% who favoured Trump, while 46% who voted for Marine Le Pen in the second round of France’s 2022 presidential election said they would rather the US Democratic party candidate won, against 31% who preferred Trump.Western Europeans were less sure, however, that their wish would become reality. The general expectation was that Harris would emerge victorious on 5 November, but the numbers were lower, ranging from 43% in Italy, 46% in Sweden and the UK, 47% in France and 52% in Spain to 61% in Germany.Asked whether they considered the outgoing Democratic president, Joe Biden, had done a great, good, average, poor or terrible job, the most common assessment across the countries surveyed was “average”, with percentages of people sharing that view ranging from 39% in Britain to 46% in Spain and 47% in Germany.They mostly think Harris would do a better job, with the most widely-held belief in each country being that the current vice-president would make either a “great” or a “good” head of state. About 37% of Italians held that view, climbing to 45% in Spain, 57% in Germany and a high of 64% in Denmark.Expectations were markedly worse for Trump. In each country, the most common view – ranging from 48% in Italy, through 59% in France and 69% in the UK to 77% in Denmark – was that the Republican candidate would make a “poor” or “terrible” president.If Trump is defeated at the ballot box next week, western Europeans expect violence. As many as 73% in Denmark think there will “definitely” or “probably” be violence if Harris wins, with between 62% and 67% sharing the same assessment in most of the other countries surveyed.Italy was again the exception, with the poll, carried out over a period of 10 days in mid-October, suggesting only 47% thought violence was likely. But there, too, the percentage was greater than the 32% who thought violence was unlikely. More

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      US election answers the question: how do you spend a billion dollars?

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      It was one of the most striking images of the final full week of the presidential election campaign: a giant projection of Kamala Harris’s face on the 516ft-wide, 366ft-tall Las Vegas Sphere.At a reported $450,000 per day for what is believed to be the first political ad to appear on the futuristic new attraction, it was also one of the most expensive. But even at those rates, it barely made a dent in the staggering election war chest of almost $1bn that Harris has built since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket this summer.What the Vegas investment did answer, in part at least, was the question of how a campaign spends a billion dollars – an amount larger than the gross domestic product of at least 14 countries, according to the World Bank – in a single election season.Cash-hungry stunts such as this one in battleground Nevada are often targeted at undecided voters in specific swing states and regions; and Republicans and Democrats alike have shown a penchant for splashing out on costly endeavors to try to reach those who are still persuadable, and therefore the most high-value. Bang for the buck, in other words.As another example, the campaigns of Harris and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, booked pricey prime-time spots during games involving Pennsylvania’s two professional NFL teams – the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers – on Sunday and Monday nights.Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes could tip the election one way or the other, and with polling showing the state on a knife edge, Democrats in particular have made younger, male voters – a demographic they see as politically less engaged – a priority. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported, the Democratic National Committee paid “a six-figure sum” to fly pro-Harris banners over four NFL games involving teams from six of the seven key swing states, Pennsylvania among them.“It is an extraordinary amount of money that the candidates are raising, and there’s no shortage of places to spend it,” said Steve Caplan, a professor who teaches a course on political advertising at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.“Back in the stone age before the explosion of digital media, there were four TV networks in the US, and even after cable there was only so much what we would call inventory, or space, to get your message out.“Now, because of an explosion of channels and media outlets, there’s countless ways to spend that money, to slice and dice it by audience and by demographic, whether it’s on digital advertising, YouTube, Facebook and other social media. Interestingly, Snapchat has become a really big channel for Kamala Harris. It’s very cost-efficient and can reach younger voters.”Caplan said campaigns had invested in honing their digital content creation, from videos to podcasts, into a powerful and effective messaging tool.“There’s an entire infrastructure of producers, writers, editors and ad makers who just crank these things out for every conceivable audience, almost 24 hours a day for weeks and weeks,” he said.“We’ve also seen massive changes in the last few years where more consumers are cutting the cord: you get a smart TV and can stream through your provider. Those sort of platforms were really in their early stages just four years ago, and now they’ve become massive and very important. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are now being spent on these platforms in swing states. It was virtually zero in 2020.”Other expenses that campaigns must cover include staff costs, printed materials and advertising, staging rallies and transportation. But broadcast advertising, especially television, remains king.Analytics company AdImpact says Democrats have spent $1.1bn on aired ads and future reservations alone since Harris became the candidate in July, $400m more than Republicans. Jointly, the two presidential campaigns have spent an eye-watering $2.1bn since March.For the entire election cycle, including Senate, House and partisan down-ballot races, plus ballot initiatives in many states, political advertising is expected to reach a record $10.7bn, a 19% increase from 2020, AdImpact says.Democrats have significantly out-raised and outspent Republicans in this cycle, disclosures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show, in both campaign funding and money raised by and for political action committees (Pac), which are allied with the presidential candidates but, by law, are set up and run independently of them.Up to 16 October, the most recent date for which returns were available, Democrats hauled in $1.05bn and spent $883m, leaving almost $120m in hand. Republicans, by contrast, raised $565m and spent all but $52.6m of it.When Pac money is included, however, the figures swell exponentially. While individual contributors are limited to $3,300 donations directly to the presidential candidates, there are no such limits for Pacs, which raised $13.5bn between January 2023 and the end of last month, according to the FEC.The rules, framed by the 2010 Citizens United v FEC supreme court ruling, allow corporations, special interest groups and wealthy individuals – such as the billionaire Elon Musk through his controversial Trump-aligned America Pac – to make eye-popping and almost unrestricted contributions, and to buy oversized influence in elections and their aftermath.“Citizens United, and subsequent other cases, opened the door for corporate contributions to related entities to campaigns, and allowed for what are commonly referred to as dark-money groups to spend money on politics without disclosing who that money came from,” said attorney Noah Bookbinder, president and chief executive of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).“Wealthy people have always been a political force, but a small group of billionaires have become just a huge part of the machine, fueling political campaigns now, both in terms of giving to dark-money organizations and giving to Super Pacs. In the case of Elon Musk, his Super Pac is essentially operating as an unchecked piece of the Trump campaign apparatus.“It’s troubling because we don’t want this country to slide into being the kind of oligarchy you see in a place like Russia where a small number of very wealthy individuals have outsize influence over the people in charge.”Musk’s self-funded Pac reported $130m in receipts, the latest FEC disclosure showed. Democratic-aligned Pacs ActBlue, the Harris Victory Fund and the DNC, filled three of the top four places with receipts of more than $5bn. The leading Republican Pac, WinRed, reported $1.4bn.A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), meanwhile, shows Musk in third place among individual donors, behind banking and oil magnate Tim Mellon ($172m) and the Las Vegas-based Adelson family of hoteliers ($137m). All three donated to Republicans.In all, the ATF said, 150 billionaire families have so far contributed $1.9bn among them to Pacs supporting presidential and congressional candidates in the 2024 cycle, a 60% rise from the 2020 total given by more than 600 individual billionaires.“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.Bradley Smith, professor at Capital University law school and FEC chair during the administration of George W Bush, said it was wrong to blame Citizens United for the cash swishing around in Harris’s, or Trump’s, coffers.“The vast majority of the money is coming from individuals subject to campaign finance limits. All the money Kamala Harris has raised directly in her campaign comes from individuals in amounts of $3,300 or less,” he said.“The law has played a part but more than that, it’s maybe a little bit of a cultural zeitgeist. People seem to really feel there’s a lot at stake in this election and one of the few ways people can participate in a campaign beyond voting is by giving money.“Most people don’t have time to go knock on doors, and a lot of it has been supercharged by the internet, which makes it really easy and low-cost to get small donors to contribute: ‘Click on this button, send us $20.’ Some of these people do that 30, 40, 50 times, and all of a sudden you’re talking real money.” More

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      US presidential election updates: false videos of voter fraud spread as election approaches

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      The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said a video that claimed to show a Haitian immigrant who voted multiple times is “false”, “targeted disinformation” and likely the work of a Russian troll farm.“As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us,” said Raffensperger, who also asked that “Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms … take this down.”Meanwhile, Musk has deputised his followers on X to spot and report any “potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities”. The election integrity community he spawned is rife with unfounded claims passed off as evidence of voter fraud.As Americans race towards the presidential election, claims of voter fraud – as well as real example of political violence – are growing, with burning vote boxes, attempts to steal ballots and online hoaxes all reported this week.Here is what else happened on Thursday:Kamala Harris election news and updates

      Kamala Harris said on Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”.

      Harris, who has been receiving a slew of celebrity endorsements, got an A-list boost from pop star and movie actor Jennifer Lopez in Las Vegas, after basketball great LeBron James endorsed her earlier in the day. “I like Hollywood endings. I like when the good guy, or in this case the good girl wins,” said Lopez.

      The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies also came out in support of Harris. In a video posted first on Vanity Fair, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.
      Donald Trump election news and updates

      Trump acknowledged that Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr could be “influential figures” in a potential second administration as he sat for a lengthy interview with conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson in battleground state Arizona. Trump also called Liz Cheney a “war hawk” who should be placed in the line of fire to “see how she feels about it”. The former congresswoman has become one of his most prominent Republican critics.

      Trump made stops in New Mexico, a traditionally Democratic state, and the swing state of Nevada. Trump predicted he would defy experts who said campaigning in New Mexico was futile. “They all said ‘Don’t come. You can’t win New Mexico.’ I said, ‘Look, your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico,’” Trump said.

      Trump’s refusal to publicly acknowledge his defeat in 2020 and suggestion that if he loses this year, he will once again claim fraud, have changed the lives of many formerly low-key election offices and secretaries of state nationwide, who now regularly face threats and harassment, Chris Stein reported from Arizona.

      Elon Musk failed to show up to a required hearing in a Philadelphia case challenging his $1m-a-day sweepstakes. His absence would have risked contempt of court had the case continued in Pennsylvania court, but it was moved to federal court in response to a motion filed by Musk’s attorneys, who did attend the hearing. No hearings were immediately scheduled in the federal case.

      Musk’s get-out-the-vote effort for Donald Trump has come under renewed scrutiny after paid canvassers reported not knowing beforehand that they were being hired to support the former president. Workers recruited by Musk’s America Pac to canvass in the battleground state of Michigan only discovered they were working for the Space X and Tesla entrepreneur to drum up voter turnout for Trump after signing non-disclosure agreements, Wired reported.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      Practising witches from around the world gathered in Salem by the hundreds on Thursday night to honour Stormy Daniels at their annual “magic circle” ceremony recognising loved ones who have died. Daniels – the adult film actor who allegedly had an affair with Trump and was at the centre of his May criminal trial that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felonies – was chosen to be honoured in the Halloween ceremony as the organisers believe that she has been the victim of a modern-day witch-hunt.

      White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two US government officials and an internal email obtained on Thursday by the Associated Press.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

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      Avengers stars assemble to endorse Kamala Harris – by brainstorming an election catchphrase

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      The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies have come out in support of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris less than a week before the US election.In a video posted first on Vanity Fair on Thursday evening, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.The video, which runs for just over 90 seconds, opens with the actors taking an incoming video call from Johansson. On screen, they brainstorm ideas for a catchphrase for Harris, landing on the dubious “Down with Democracy”, which they spin into a brief Marvel-style Harris/Walz campaign video with dramatic music and comic-style graphics. The final frame of the video encourages viewers to vote on November 5.Sharing the video on X, Ruffalo, a vocal Democrat supporter who is best known for his role as the Hulk, wrote: “Don’t sit this one out. It’s the one where we will lose big: Project 2025, women’s reproductive rights, climate change, LGBTQIA+ rights, public education, student debt relief, Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and as of today, life saving vaccines. This shit is real and it’s going to come for you.”Speaking to Vanity Fair about the making of the video, Johansson, who played Black Widow in the Marvel films, said, “It just immediately turned into people trying to one-up each other with one-liners,” and joked that Downey Jr and Ruffalo were “bickering like two old ladies. And, of course, I’m the person that’s just trying to organise everybody. It’s very similar to what our dynamic is in the films. It was wonderful to feel everybody assemble around it, and hopefully it will engage our fans in the process of voting.”Johansson initiated the project, reaching out to her fellow MCU alumni via their group chat and reminding them: “We’ve got a lot of powerful people on this thread, and it would be great to unite … in hopefully creating a bit of a viral moment for Kamala.”The Avengers cast join a list of celebrities who have endorsed the Harris/Walz campaign, including Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Oprah. In the last week alone, Beyoncé, Madonna, Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, LeBron James and the former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger have all come out in support of Harris. More

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      Harris hits out at Trump for calling himself protector of women ‘whether they like it or not’ – US election live updates

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      Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.“There’s a saying that you gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” she said. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.”Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has endorsed Kamala Harris, writing: “When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me.”The endorsement isn’t a surprise – James has supported Democrats before, and been critical of Donald Trump.Supporters of Donald Trump, gathering for a campaign rally in Henderson, near Las Vegas in Nevada, are confident that he will win next week’s presidential election – and some refuse to contemplate defeat.Bob Diaz, 69, who is Latino and teaches at a college, said Trump is doing “a lot better” with Latino voters this time. “People will be blown away about how much he actually won by,” he said. “He’s going to get the electoral votes and the popular vote as well.”His wife, Audrey, also 69, a homemaker and mediator, added: “Polls are just polls. I believe he’s going to win. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve been involved with other campaigns. I’ve never seen so many age groups, so many cultures, so many countries, so many languages. I’ve never, ever seen this before.”She believes that border security is a winning issue for the Republican nominee. “I wish he didn’t cuss, I wish he didn’t say weird things, but he’s going to protect our borders and clean it up from the inside and protect it from the outside. Bottom line.”Some here say they would not accept a Trump defeat. Kathy Holesapple, 56, an entrepreneu, pilot and aircraft mechanic, said: “We won’t. None of us will. We know he didn’t lose in 2020 either.“God’s going to bring it in and take down the wicked. The righteous will be lifted up and the wicked will fall and those who support the death of innocent children in America and around the world will not survive in this nation. They will not be in power for much longer.”Enrique Lopez, 32, a physical therapy student and military veteran, warned: “No matter what happens, there’s going to be a lot of chaos on both sides. Whether Trump wins or loses, there’s going to be so much chaos.”Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.“There’s a saying that you gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” she said. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.”Donald Trump has baselessly claimed that Democrats are acting like the “gestapo” in forcing people to adopt electric vehicles, during a rally in New Mexico today.In his latest broadside against electric cars, the former president said that trucks made 50 years ago are better than electric versions today but that people are being forced to switch by a Joe Biden administration that is using tactics he likened to Nazi Germany.“So, I said, did you explain that to the authorities as they burst into your office to demand that you go all electric?” Trump said, in reference to a conversation he’d had with someone. “He said: ‘I explained it.’ ‘What did they say?’ ‘We don’t give a damn. We want you to go all electric.’“This is what we’re dealing with. It’s like gestapo stuff, OK? They use that term. It’s like gestapo stuff. What they’re doing to our country is unbelievable.”Trump’s accusation is based on a falsehood – there is no obligation to switch to electric cars nor any ban on gasoline or diesel cars. Despite this, Trump’s campaign has repeatedly claimed otherwise, assailing Kamala Harris in TV adverts for adopting an “EV mandate”.Electric cars have long stirred antipathy in Trump, who has said incentives to buy them are “lunacy” and that their supporters should “rot in hell” even as Elon Musk, the billionaire chief of electric car giant Tesla, has become one of Trump’s most prominent backers.The president acknowledged this incongruity in August when he said: “I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly.”The ceasefire against electric vehicles now appears to be over, however. Should he win next week’s election, Trump is expected to roll back vehicle pollution standards that nudge people to buy electric alternatives, as well as repeal tax rebates for people to buy electric models.Gasoline cars, trucks and other forms of transport are the largest sectoral contributor of planet-heating gases in the US, as well as a major source of the air pollution that routinely causes tens of thousands of respiratory and cardiovascular health problems, and deaths, among Americans each year.Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is quite present at this Quakertown voting location, where there’s a long line of people waiting to vote.They have a table set up with coffee and donuts, and volunteers are going up and down the line giving voters the forms they need to fill out to request their mail-in ballots on demand.I chatted with Betsy Cross, a Trump campaign volunteer from New Jersey who was handing out forms to people in line to request their mail-in ballots on demand. She had been there since 2.30 and estimated people were waiting two hours to vote. Was she surprised that so many people were there? “No,” she said. “People want to bank their vote for president Trump.”I just stopped by a voting location in Bucks county, a Pennsylvania battleground where a local judge extended the deadline for voters to cast ballots after a Trump campaign lawsuit.Voters here can request and return an absentee ballot on the spot – Pennsylvania’s clunky version of early, in-person voting – until Friday. The deadline for the rest of the state was Tuesday, but the Trump campaign successfully sued the county to get voting extended until Friday. The county had been wrongly preventing people from voting if they weren’t in line by 5pm.I arrived a little after 3pm at the government offices in Quakertown and saw that there was a pretty long line stretching around the corner. Just before he went into vote, a man at the front of the line told me he had been waiting about an hour.One of the people in the back of the line was Phil Haegele, a 47-year-old plumber who was celebrating his sixth wedding anniversary. He said he was supporting Donald Trump and that he’d heard about voting being extended on the radio yesterday and got “probably 50 text messages” encouraging him and his wife to come vote.Haegele usually votes on election day but said that he had decided to come out and cast his ballot early.“We had saw that on a lot of the news agencies that we follow, they were saying that they were trying to get as many Trump supporters to vote early to try and ward off as much fraud as they could,” he said.He predicted that the election would be a “blowout”, even though the polls show an extremely tight race in Pennsylvania and across the country.“If they call the election on election day, it’s gonna be a blowout,” he said. “If they need to take a week to print more ballots, then yes, it’s gonna be tough.”Supporters of Donald Trump in Henderson, near Las Vegas in Nevada, are giving short shrift to a controversy over his remark on Wednesday that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not”.Awaiting a Trump campaign rally, Patty Periva, 74, a retired education worker, said: “I don’t care. The Democrats do not protect women. They allow abortions. How many of those abortions are women? They’re killing women and they don’t protect women. It’s a lie.”Lisa Consigilo, 60, a retired personal trainer, added: “My family’s from New York. Some things he says people take literally but I know how he speaks: it’s how my dad spoke. You don’t need to take stuff so literally.“All their campaign is running on lies. He’s not going to ban abortion across the country. You can’t: it’s impossible. He’s not for that. Everything that they’re running on is not true about Project 2025. He’s a dad, he’s a grandfather, it wasn’t literal like: ‘I’m going to protect women.’”Opinion polls suggest a historic gender gap in the presidential election, with women supporting Kamala Harris by a wide margin. But Kathy Holesapple, 56, an entrepreneur, pilot and aircraft mechanic, said: “They’ve weaponised the women against this party but the truth is that they’ve also held down the women in this nation by calling us Karens.“We’re not allowed to stand up and speak for our beliefs. They call us a Karen every time we speak up. So the American woman needs to stand up – and they will – and they’re going to realise that Trump is for American women. He’s for women all over the world.”Raids and mass deportations lie at the heart of the former president’s second-term vision – a web of policies so vast that critics say their collective implementation would challenge the very ideal of the United States as a nation of immigrants.Should he win in November, the Republican nominee has vowed not only to restore many of his most controversial immigration policies, but to go even further. While a number of his first-term plans were stymied by the courts and Congress, immigration rights leaders believe a second Trump administration would likely be more sophisticated and strategic.“It is different this time. There’s a plan. There is a sense of urgency that they’ve created around this issue,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “And they know how to use the levers of government in a way they didn’t in 2016.”Donald Trump would also be operating in a changed political landscape. Since leaving office, the political center of gravity has shifted rightward, amid a post-pandemic rise in global migration that saw a record number of people arriving at the southern border and claiming asylum. Americans have become less tolerant of illegal immigration while a growing minority is increasingly concerned about its impact on the country’s economy and national identity.Though border crossings have plummeted this year following the president’s asylum clampdown, a sense of disorder persists. Voters continue to broadly disapprove of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the situation. Trump and his team are confident immigration remains a potent political issue for voters – and one that he has long played to his advantage.When Trump first descended a golden escalator in 2015, he pledged to construct a “great wall” along the south-west border with Mexico to keep out immigrants he disparaged as “rapists” and drug dealers. Now, in the final weeks of his third presidential race, Trump has again escalated his threats against immigrants, but this time he is turning his vitriol inward toward those already here.“The United States is now an occupied country,” Trump claimed recently at a rally in Atlanta. “But on November 5, 2024, that will be liberation day in America.”The vice-president will be appearing in Phoenix alongside the musical group Los Tigres del Norte.Then, she’ll be heading to Las Vegas, where she will be campaigning alongside Jennifer Lopez and Maná.In both cities, Harris will seek to energize Latino voters, who could help decide the outcome of the race in the key swing states of Arizona and Nevada.Happy Halloween! There are barely five days left in the 2024 US presidential election and polls show the candidates – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – remain neck and neck in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. More than 60 million Americans have cast ballots so far.Harris and Trump are traveling across the western half of the country in states like New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona in the final days of their campaigns.Here’s a summary of the day so far:

      Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque, where Trump is holding a rally, said last Friday that the Republican presidential candidate owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills from his last visit. The Trump campaign owed the city $200,000 for when he hosted his last rally at its convention center in 2019, which has climbed to almost $445,000 with interest. The costs covered police coverage, barricades and other expenses. Trump is banned from rallying in the city over the unpaid bill – his event is being held instead at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque international sunport.

      Billionaires have flushed the election with cash – roughly $1.9b to be exact, largely to the benefit of republican candidates like Trump. “Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.

      Voter enthusiasm is at a historical high for a presidential election, a Gallup poll found. Similar to November 2020, 70% of registered voters nationwide said that they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting now compared to March, when only 56% expressed enthusiasm.

      Trump’s former attorney Kenneth Chesebro has been suspended from practicing law in New York. Chesboro was indicted on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia.

      Harris has received more endorsements today. Former New York mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and the Economist have publicly expressed their support.

      Harris said on Thursday that Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”. “I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

      Harris will be joined by Jennifer Lopez for her rally in Las Vegas, Nevada – a critical swing state.

      Ex-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson will interview Trump in Arizona before the former president heads to his own rally in Nevada.
      Of the more than 60 million Americans who have gone to the polls early – some 32 million and counting did so in person. Here are some of the best pictures of early voting from the newswires:Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque, where Trump is holding a rally, said last Friday that the Republican presidential candidate owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills from his last visit.“Trump now owes almost a half a million dollars to the city of Albuquerque … We’ve had collection agencies calling and so forth for about two years now,” Keller said.The Trump campaign owed the city $200,000 for when he hosted his last rally at its convention center in 2019, which has climbed to almost $445,000 with interest. The costs covered police coverage, barricades and other expenses. Since the Trump campaign still allegedly hasn’t paid its bills, he was banned from rallying there. Instead, the rally is being held at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque international sunport.The general manager for the Albuquerque convention center, Ray Roa, confirmed to the Albuquerque Journal on Monday that members of the Trump campaign contacted them to try to rent the convention center but were denied.Trump called his supporters smarter than “crooked Joe’s or lyin’ Kamala’s” and denounced Joe Biden over his “garbage” remark.Trump took several digs at his opponent, telling his crowd that Harris “doesn’t have the stamina, the intellect or that special quality” that certain leaders have. More

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      Nevada is in a profound economic rut. Its working-class voters could swing the election

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      Urbin Gonzalez could be working inside, in the air conditioning, at his regular job as a porter on the Las Vegas strip. Instead, in the final few days before the US election, he chose to go door-knocking in the 104F (40C) heat, with the hopes of mobilising a few more voters to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris.“I don’t care because I’m fighting for my situation,” said Gonzalez: for his retirement in 10 years, for a more affordable life, for housing that he and his family can afford. “I’m doing this for me.”Gonzalez – like many workers on the strip – has struggled to keep up with rising costs in recent years. While the US economy broadly bounced back from the pandemic, Nevada has lagged behind. Nearly a quarter of jobs here are in leisure or hospitality, and although the Las Vegas Strip, where Gonzalez works, is back to booming with tourists, unemployment in Nevada remains the highest of any US state.And working-class voters are wrestling with a big question: which candidate will help dig them out of a profound economic rut?Their decision will help decide the election. Nevada is one of seven US swing states that help determine the outcome of the presidential race. With its six electoral votes, Nevada has leaned Democratic in every presidential vote since 2008 – but winning candidates have scraped by with slim margins. This year, the outcome could come down to working-class voters who have been worn down by low wages and ever-higher costs.“Nevada is a blue state, but it’s a very, very, very light blue state,” said David Byler, chief of research at the polling firm Noble Predictive Insights. “It wouldn’t take a lot of swing to turn any of those into a functional tie or a Republican win.”Both presidential campaigns are pitching solutions that – at least at first glance – look nearly identical.Trump raised the idea of ending taxes on tips at a June campaign rally. Harris came out with a plan to do so in August, and combined it with a promise to end the federal sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, which is $2.13 an hour.JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, floated the idea of expanding the child tax credit to $5,000. Harris and Walz have made their plan to expand the child tax credit and cap childcare costs one of their top campaign priorities.Gonzalez doesn’t believe Trump will do anything to help workers – after all, the glittering hotel and casino that bears the former president’s name on the strip fought fiercely to block workers from unionising ahead of the 2016 elections. “All Trump wants to do is cut taxes for his buddies, for his rich friends, not for us,” he said. “He has shown us that.”View image in fullscreenIn past years, the state’s powerful, politically engaged unions have helped buoy Democratic candidates to victory – and this year, the Culinary Union alone aims to knock on at least 900,000 doors. The AFL-CIO has also been canvassing for Harris, and the Nevada Teamsters have made a point to endorse Harris, even as the national organization declined to make an endorsement.“The people I talk to, they hear talking points from the Trump campaign, they hear a plan from the Harris campaign,” said Max Carter, a state assemblyman and former union electrician who has been canvassing on behalf of the Harris campaign.But Republicans have also positioned themselves as the champions of workers. “Trump’s big innovation was really going after these working-class voters,” Byler said. The former president has messaged populism and managed to distinguish himself from a past era of Republicans focused on fiscal and social conservatism, and hawkish foreign policy.Increasingly, voters say they trust Trump over Harris to improve economic conditions and follow through on policy promises. A September poll from Noble Predictive Insights, for example, found that 47% of voters trusted Trump to ban taxes on tips, compared to 40% who trusted Harris more on the matter.Many voters remember the days early in the Trump administration when costs were just lower. “I think the economy was just better when Trump was president,” said Magaly Rodas, a 32-year-old mother of two who was deciding on the cost of groceries at her local Latin market.Her husband, an electrician, has struggled to find work since the pandemic, she said – even as rent and other expenses have continued to climb. He’s also an immigrant, who has struggled to attain legal status in the US for more than a decade. Biden, Rodas said, keeps letting immigrants into the US, without any plan to help those who are already in the country. “What have the Democrats done for us in four years?” she said.That’s a common complaint that canvassers for Make the Road Action in Nevada, a progressive group focused on turning out Latino and other minority voters. “A lot of people think – ‘Oh, the economy was better under Trump,’” said Josie Rivera, an organiser for the group.” And it’s been really disappointing to hear that a lot of Black and Latino men especially are turning more conservative or just sitting out the election and staying home.”A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in the weeks leading up to election day found that Trump trailed Harris by just two percentage points among Hispanic men.Canvassers for Make the Road have been working to fact-check Trump’s rhetoric that the economy was at its “best” under his presidency. They have also been talking to voters about Project 2025 – the ultra-conservative roadmap that details how the former president and his allies would restructure the US government – launching mass deportations, or dismantling education and climate programs, with disastrous consequences for immigrant and Black communities.View image in fullscreen“Still, we’re facing a lot of misinformation,” Rivera said. “We try to combat that, when we go door to door, with one-on-one conversations and personal testimonials. But it can still be hard to get to voters.”Many voters of color are turned off by the president’s racist rhetoric about immigrants, but don’t necessarily take him seriously, or believe he will actually enact the extreme policies he says he will, Rivera noted. Many voters do, however, seem to trust the former president’s business acumen.“I don’t like him as a person, but I like his economic standpoint,” said Maile McDaniel, a 22-year-old resident of Reno. “Because he’s shown that he can do it before. He’s shown he can keep inflation down, he’s shown he can make things affordable.”As an expecting mother, McDaniel said, she’s especially concerned about childcare costs and inflated prices at the grocery store.Childcare in Nevada is also more expensive than elsewhere in the country, and other basic expenses in the state remain, for some, unattainably high. The median home price in the Las Vegas area, for example, has far outpaced national averages, and the average rent increased by nearly a third between 2020 and 2022.Democrats argue that Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan brought in billions to fund everything from education to housing programs. And the president’s Inflation Reduction Act has also brought in unprecedented funding for new construction. But many of these projects are in the early stages, and it may take a while before Nevadans see the benefit.The potential benefits of the rival proposals not to tax tips are also unclear. An analysis from the Yale Budget Lab estimated that more than a third of tipped American workers already pay no federal income tax because they earn too little.Harris’s version of the plan would also aim to end the practice of paying tipped workers less than minimum wage, though in Nevada, all workers already are entitled to a minimum of $12 an hour, regardless of whether they earn tips. And a tax exemption for tips could also leave some workers worse off – disqualifying them from other tax credits.Voters leaning toward either candidate also wondered why either Trump or Harris hadn’t tried to pass any of these reforms already.“Trump was president for four years,” said Kenneth Logan, a retired bartender who lives in Las Vegas. “He says a lot of things, but he normally doesn’t follow through on them. I say if somebody tells you who they are, believe what they tell you.”For decades, Nevada has been an election bellwether, voting for the winner of every presidential contest since 1912 with two exceptions – the state broke for Gerald Ford in 1976, and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Still, this year, even seasoned strategists and pollsters have struggled to predict which way the Silver state will swing.Indeed, reaching voters has long been a struggle in Nevada. Its largest cities – Reno and Las Vegas – are home to a transient population, many of whom work unpredictable shifts in the state’s 24/7 entertainment and hospitality industries. The state is also incredibly diverse, and home to several immigrant communities who primarily speak Spanish or a language other than English.Residents’ political affiliations can also be difficult to parse. Many Nevada voters have been fiercely independent for decades – voting for Democratic and Republican candidates. But new changes to the voter registration system – which automatically registers eligible voters at the DMV, and lists them as “non-partisan” by default – has increased the ranks of voters who are unaffiliated with any political party, even as voters beliefs have grown increasingly entrenched and polarised. Campaign operatives have been struggling to find these independents and figure out if they can be swayed.Another uncertainty is how the state’s mostly Mexican American Latinos, who make up nearly 20% of Nevada’s electorate, will sway. Latino voters here have traditionally backed Democrats, though the party’s popularity is slipping. And both parties have struggled to strategically and thoughtfully message to Latinos, even as they seek desperately to win their votes.Asian-American voters – who make up 12% of the state’s population – are another increasingly important voting bloc, and the Harris campaign especially has worked to court a growing constituency of Filipino-American voters in the state.In addition, there are indications that Nevada’s Latter-day Saints, who make up 6% of the state’s population and have historically been reliable Republican voters, have been turned off by Trump’s Christian nationalism.More than any other group, however, the campaigns in Nevada have remained focused on winning the state’s workers.“I think it’s time for all the people like us who work in those hard jobs in this country to have someone working hard for us,” said Claudio Lara, 49, who works as a housecleaner in Vegas.He is voting for Harris, he said, because she is a child of immigrants, and a woman. “It’s time for a woman, and it’s time for a change,” he said. “We need a strong change, a sharp change in this country.” More