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      Seth Meyers on Trump’s garbage truck stunt: ‘I think you should stay there’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump dressing up as a garbageman as a late campaign stunt and Kamala Harris’s lead among suburban women.Seth Meyers“All politicians pander,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night, “but Donald Trump is the most shameless and prolific panderer in American history”. And “one of Trump’s favorite pandering tactics is playing dress-up”.On Wednesday, the former US president donned his “latest and perhaps most insane outfit yet” at a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Wearing a reflective orange vest, Trump climbed into a garbage truck emblazoned with his name and asked reporters: “What do you think of my garbage truck?”“You want to know what I really think of your garbage truck? I think it’s awesome and I think you should stay there,” Meyers replied. “I think you should drop out of the race and host a reality show where you try out different jobs while wearing exactly one piece of that job’s uniform.”Trump continued to wear the vest at a rally after the garbage truck stunt, designed to distract from the backlash to racist comments about Puerto Rico at his rally over the weekend. At his rally, he danced to his trademark campaign song, the Village People’s YMCA. “How is this real life?” Meyers wondered. “He doesn’t look like he’s running for president. He looks like he’s at a Halloween party at an assisted living facility.”In truth, “Trump could never make it as a sanitation worker,” Meyers added. “It’s a tough job with actual stakes and genuine responsibility, and no amount of cosplaying can make up for the fact that he’d be really bad at it. He wouldn’t last a day.”The stunt underscored the “central lie” of Trump’s political career: “that he’s a populist, an everyman, a champion of the working class. It’s a fraud.” Meyers reminded that Trump has cozied up to the world’s richest people, promised deregulation to please billionaires like Elon Musk, promised a tax cut for the wealthy and said he would not continue overtime pay. During his presidency, corporate profits soared while manufacturing jobs declined.“This is the one discernible throughline of Trump’s presidency in his three campaigns: billionaires will flourish, while regular people will suffer,” said Meyers.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert mocked Trump’s stumbling ascent into the garbage truck. “Looks like Trump is taking walking lessons from Rudy Giuliani,” he quipped.Trump tried to give a press conference from the truck, which devolved into rambling that ended with “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck.”“That’s an inspiring closing message,” Colbert deadpanned, before imitating the former president. “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck, by which I mean, this campaign. It has been a true honor and a bone-chilling dumpster fire.”At his rally, Trump mused about how he was advised not to say he wants to “protect women” by allowing Roe v Wade to be overturned. “I said, well, I’m gonna go do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” he said.“Now, I know that seems weird and creepy there, but I promise you, it sounded much sweeter in his wedding vows,” Colbert quipped.The host also noted that over 60 million people have already voted, with a 10-point gender gap in early turnout. The polls show that Harris has a 19-point lead among suburban women. “That’s right, Harris is almost as popular among suburban women as cocktail napkins that say ‘Wine do you mean we’re out of wine?!’” he joked.The gender gap has led to a rise in online queries such as: “Can my husband find out who I voted for?”“No, he can’t,” said Colbert. “But if that’s really a concern, the two of you should just sit down, and while he’s watching TV maybe look up your old college boyfriend on Facebook.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also relished Trump’s brand-emblazoned garbage truck “because he is a ridiculous person”.Nevertheless, Trump’s cronies, such as Sean Hannity, tried to spin the photo op as a triumph. “The dumber Trump gets, the deeper Sean digs to spin stupid into smart,” said Kimmel.The Fox News host tried to claim the photo op was an “iconic, epic moment that we will remember for a long time”.“Washington crossed the Delaware, Trump hitched a ride on a garbage Trump,” Kimmel quipped. “The garbage drove the truck.”Kimmel also noted the absurdity of Trump’s subsequent rally with the reflective vest still on. “If there is a single image that we will look back on and think ‘this defines what America was going through in 2024’ I think it will be the Republican nominee for president dancing to the song YMCA in a garbageman costume,” he said.“That vest will come in handy when he’s on the side of the road picking up trash with the other inmates.” More

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      ‘Leaning into the whiteness’: journalist Paola Ramos on why some Latinos have turned to the far right

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      When the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made racist and disparaging comments about Latinos and referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”, at a Donald Trump rally in New York on Sunday, it was met with outrage from many Latino politicians, voters and celebrities. Still, those comments did not deter some Republican Latinos from affirming their support for Trump.“If you were already supporting Trump, I don’t think this is a comment that will make you reconsider that choice,” said the journalist Paola Ramos, the author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What it Means for America.However, Ramos said that she has talked to some Latino voters who are now realizing that Trump’s xenophobia could include them: “The question is for those that are independent, or those that were flirting with the idea of voting for Trump. The biggest difference is that the narrative, for the first time in a while, shifted from being targeted at immigrants to suddenly being targeted, not just directly at Latinos, but even US citizens. That has sort of awakened a lot of people for the first time to be like, ‘Oh, wait a second.’“We’ve been so used to pinpointing a narrative at the border, on immigrants, on migrants, on undocumented people, and then suddenly the conversation has shifted to people within us and inside us.”

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      In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump has gained inroads from Latino voters, a base that was once reliably Democratic. While the majority of Latinos favor Kamala Harris, the shift is pronounced among Latino men, with 44% saying that they support Trump, up from 37% in 2020, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat political shift toward far-right sentiments in Latino communities can be attributed to tribalism, traditionalism and trauma, Ramos writes in Defectors. Tribalism refers to internalised racism, while traditionalism is based on conservative moral values and the ongoing effects of colonialism, and trauma comes from grappling with political upheaval in Latin America. Additionally, fantasy heritage, a concept coined by the civil rights activist and historian Carey McWilliams in the late 1940s in which Latinos whitewash their Indigenous or Black roots in favor of their Spanish ancestry, draws some Latinos to white supremacist values.“One of the entry points for far right Latinos into the world of white supremacy and white nationalism is by leaning into the Spanish heritage, leaning into the whiteness,” Ramos said. For instance, she interviewed Mexican American border vigilantes who held anti-immigration beliefs because they distanced themselves from their immigrant roots.Ramos also spoke with African Dominican Trump supporters in the Bronx who highlight their Spanish ancestry over their African roots, although they are racialized as Black in the US. “But in their minds, because of fantasy heritage, they see themselves more aligned racially with Trump’s America than they do with Blackness, and so I think that that’s where Trump is able to tap into some of that racial grievance.”View image in fullscreenThe path toward democracy in Latin American countries has often involved an authoritarian strongman, Ramos writes in her book. In the late 1970s, for instance, 17 out of 20 Latin American nations were ruled by dictators. Ramos interviewed Eulalia Jimenez, the leader of the conservative parents rights group Moms for Liberty, and Anthony Aguero, a border vigilante in Texas, whose political trauma manifested into far-right sentiments.Trauma is also what drew some supporters, such as the Cuban American Gabriel Garcia, a Proud Boys member, to join the January 6 insurrection after Trump lost the election. Garcia’s parents, who were unaccompanied minors airlifted out of Cuba during a covert US program in the 1960s, instilled in him a fear of communism and conservative sentiments that would inform his political beliefs. “At a time when democracy seems to feel a little messy for some folks,” Ramos said, “the elements of authoritarianism [aren’t] as scary for some Latinos.”In order to win back Latino votes, Ramos said, progressives must understand the complicated and rich nature of Latino identity and their quest for belonging in the US – which is all the more important now, as the country is projected to become a majority minority nation in 2045.Younger Latinos over the past decade have grown emboldened to challenge the Democratic party. “Part of that requires a level of curiosity to understand why internalized racism works so well, and why colorism is so present, and why anti-Blackness and these anti-immigrant sentiments can really manifest themselves,” Ramos said. “And I think part of that is just having conversations around identity that I think in the party they haven’t had.”Since her book launched in September, Ramos has talked to Latino voters while touring cities from New York to Los Angeles, an experience she described as “group therapy”. Some readers shared the pain that they felt of having undocumented immigrants as well as Trump supporters in their family, or young Latinos seeking acceptance from their religious families. “They’ve been really emotional, really personal, and I think painful too.” She urged progressives to understand “the pain that a lot of people are going through with not feeling a big solidarity right now”.While it is easy to see Trump supporters as radical, Ramos said that a deeper understanding of Latin American history is crucial to regaining the trust of Latino voters who are disillusioned by politics. Toward the end of Defectors, Ramos illustrated a future in which Latinos embrace their complex history and identity in a quest for collective liberation. “In that future, we finally wake up freer,” Ramos concluded in the book. “Welcome to the year 2045.” More

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      The women ‘cancelling out’ their Trump-loving partners’ votes: ‘No one will ever know’

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      Mackenzie Owens and her boyfriend strut toward the camera like models on a catwalk, posing as she takes a dramatic sip from her Stanley cup. “Just a bf and a gf going to cancel each other’s votes,” reads the caption of their TikTok – the couple, who live in Pennsylvania, support separate candidates this election season.Owens made the TikTok to join in on a trend of women disclosing that they’re voting against their partners’ preferred candidates. In one video, a woman mischievously tucks away a strand of hair as she mails in her ballot, “proudly” cancelling out her boyfriend’s ballot – “because someone paid attention in US History & has to care about keeping the Dept of Education!!!!” In another, a woman dances to Ciara’s Level Up before driving off to “cancel out” her “Trump loving Husband’s vote in a swing state”.View image in fullscreenThe dozens of women participating are, for the most part, Democrats supporting Kamala Harris’s bid, while their male partners are voting for Donald Trump. (Owens did not disclose who she or her boyfriend voted for.) Though their posts provide levity in the final days of an ugly presidential race, they also underscore the pivotal role gender is playing in the election.A late October national poll from USA Today/Suffolk University found that women resoundingly back Harris over Trump, 53% to 36%, a “mirror image” of men’s support for Trump over Harris, 53% to 37%. A September poll from Quinnipiac University similarly found a 26-point gender gap. An unknown – but certainly sizable – number of women are seeing this gender gap in their own relationships.Owens, who is 19, isn’t particularly bothered by her boyfriend’s politics. “Nowadays, people think that you have to have the same political opinions as your partner, because [hyper-partisan politics] is a big problem in society, but I personally think it’s cool to co-exist and learn about the other side, and get different opinions I didn’t think of before,” she said. “But in a way, that’s not socially acceptable.”Meanwhile, liberal TikTokers are weighing in to say they could never date or marry a Trump supporter, given the former president’s sexist remarks about women and his appointment of anti-abortion justices to the supreme court, which resulted in the 2022 reversal of Roe v Wade. “What do you mean you’re on your way to cancel out your husband’s vote?” reads one viral tweet. “You should be on your way to the courthouse. Divorce babe. Divorce.”Harris needs women to turn out on Tuesday, especially those who might take a page from the TikTokers’ playbook and vote differently from the men in their lives. But those posts come from mostly young, liberal women who feel safe publicly disagreeing on candidates. In recent days, Democratic groups have made overtures to Republican women, or women who project conservatism to their friends and family but quietly harbor doubts about Trump.Republican turnout among women – especially white women, who backed Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections – can be partially explained by their husbands, who are seen as wielding influence over the family vote, said strategists and advocates who spoke with the Guardian.“Women often give deference to the presumed expertise of their husbands on politics, and then the men reinforce that presumption and express their intensity and so-called greater expertise,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “We try to reinforce to women that you have your own way of doing things, your own point of view, you focus on what’s good for the whole family. Then we emphasize that the vote is private.”That’s a sentiment echoed in a new ad, narrated by Julia Roberts, from the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good. In the ad, a woman whose husband appears to be a Trump supporter enters the voting booth to cast her ballot for Harris. “In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the voiceover.Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, said the group first conceptualized the ad during the 2022 midterms. “We kept hearing from women that they were going to pay an emotional price with their families, friends and church if they didn’t continue to toe the line [and vote for Trump],” Pagitt said.On a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Michelle Obama told swing state voters: “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.” Liz Cheney, a never-Trump Republican who campaigned alongside Harris in Detroit last week, reminded Republican women that there is no official way to look up how someone voted: “You can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody, and there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5.”The Lincoln Project, a moderate political action committee, also released a bluntly titled ad, Secret, where two Trump-supporting men assume their wives also back their candidate. However, when the couples get to the polls, one of the women mouths “Kamala” to the other, and after an affirmative nod, both fill in their ballots for the Democrat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis messaging is stoking anger among conservative personalities, who say it is sexist and retrograde to assume women only vote for Trump to appease their husbands. They also, paradoxically, say this messaging is undermining traditional family values. Charlie Kirk, who last year said the “radical left” was being “run by childless young ladies” on antidepressants, called the ads “the embodiment of the downfall of the American family” on Megyn Kelly’s podcast.The Fox News host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife had secretly voted for Harris, “that’s the same thing as having an affair … it violates the sanctity of our marriage”. This, despite the fact that Watters had an affair with his current wife while still married to his first wife.In the final stretch, these complex – and often secretive – relationship dynamics are affecting Democrats’ ground game, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research and scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. “You see it in public women’s bathrooms or places where women can be directly appealed to without the barrier of the man in their life. There are stickers or signs that say, ‘Remember, your vote is private,’” she said.Nancy Hirschmann, a political scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added that canvassers for Harris were trained to avoid outing wives who may be registered Democrats to their Republican husbands: “If a man answers the door who’s clearly in favor of Trump, you don’t ask for the woman by name, you ask if there are other voters in the house you can speak to.”View image in fullscreenIt is too early to tell if Republican-coded women may in fact turn out to be secret Harris voters. But back on TikTok, women vocally share their 2024 picks, even if they go against their partner’s choice – or an ex-partner’s choice.Jamisen Casey, a 21-year-old student who goes to school in California but is registered to vote in her home state of Tennessee, took part in the trend, with a twist. “My absentee ballot on its way home to cancel out my ex boyfriend’s vote,” Casey wrote in the caption of a video showing her dancing with the envelope while We Both Reached for the Gun from the musical Chicago plays.“It’s really hard to know that there are men out there who want to vote against reproductive rights, even though they shouldn’t have a say in it at all,” Casey, who voted for Harris, said. She doesn’t think she could date someone who doesn’t share her views again. “As a political science major, I made a decision that I don’t want to put myself in that position.” More

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      Some Maga men seem to think women don’t have rights – starting with their wives | Rebecca Solnit

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      This week, the fundamentalist Christian pastor Dale Partridge argued in a series of tweets that “in a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband’s direction”. In other words, he pits his version of the religion against the constitution, which, since the 19th amendment passed a century ago, guarantees adult citizens the right to vote regardless of sex. He argues that in marriage, the husband annexes and owns his wife’s voice and rights, so that he in effect gets two votes and she gets none. The far-right preacher is not alone in this argument that women should not have the right to participate in public life and act on their views and values.Jesse Watters, the Fox News personality, has argued that if he found out his wife “was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair”. It violates “the sanctity of our marriage; what else is she keeping from me?” Rightwing agitator Charlie Kirk also got upset about the idea that women might vote according to their agenda and not their husband’s.These men are offering warnings about what awaits women who marry men like them. Maybe it’s worth noting here that the rightwing opposition to marriage equality as same-sex marriage is in part because they’re opposed to marriage equality within heterosexual marriage. They want marriage to be an inherently unequal relationship with a subordinate wife and an entitled husband, a cozy little authoritarian regime at home.One of the things the 2024 US presidential election is about is whether or not women should be free and equal full citizens of this republic. Right now too many women are not – women in conservative states are denied reproductive rights, meaning jurisdiction over their own bodies and in some cases survival if an abortion or pregnancy becomes a medical emergency.But there’s another way that women are not free and equal which a few videos, a lot of tweets and reportedly some Post-It notes in women’s bathrooms have addressed – when women are afraid to vote for their chosen candidate, when their husbands or boyfriends are Trump supporters and they are Harris supporters. I just wrote a Guardian piece about the fact that so many women apparently are bullied over their political beliefs, despite assurances that there are ways to vote without being tyrannized, is troubling. It suggests that there’s a whole other kind of voting suppression and coercion that deserves investigation and raises questions about voting at home.The responses cited above confirm that a lot of women have good reason to fear their partners and hide their choices (and attention to the videos may be making Maga husbands even more angry and controlling). These Maga men don’t think that wives and girlfriends should be free to vote as they choose, nor that wives and girlfriends have the right to privacy in their political choices. They, in other words, do not believe she should have a choice. Which boils down to not believing she has rights, and if they don’t believe women have rights here, they don’t believe they have them in a lot of arenas.This aligns with the Republican party’s enthusiasm for ending reproductive rights and birth control and no-fault divorce and with Vance’s suggestion that women should stay in violent marriages. Vance’s campaign has said his remarks were taken out of context. It fits in with Trump’s ominous campaign speech on Tuesday in which he declared, “I want to protect the women of our country … I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.”Those are alarming words from an adjudicated rapist who’s facing new sexual assault charges from both former model Stacey Williams and beauty pageant contestant Beatrice Keul. Or not facing, since neither of these stories have garnered much attention, Trump’s long history of adjudicated or alleged sexual abuse apparently being acceptable, denied, or both with his supporters.This election is about a lot of things, and whether women are endowed with certain inalienable rights is one of them.

      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

      This piece was amended on 1 November 2024 to clarify that the 19th amendment was passed 104 years ago, not 124 More

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      Kamala Harris will be a president for the labor movement – and for working women | Liz Shuler

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      The 6.6 million union women in this country – nearly half of today’s labor movement – know an ally when we see one. We know we have one in Kamala Harris.As president of the AFL-CIO, representing 60 unions across the United States in every sector of the economy, I’ve crisscrossed the country seeing our union members get out the vote for Harris in this election. So many of us – whether we’re retail workers, caregivers, teachers, nurses, construction workers or in any line of work – see in Vice-President Harris’s story something that mirrors our own.When I joined my union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, in Portland, Oregon, I got used to being the only woman in a room full of mostly men. We organized new members, fought against corporate greed and achieved some hard-won gains at the statehouse, which put me on the path to leadership in the labor movement and to becoming the youngest-ever member of the AFL-CIO executive council.That’s when I crossed paths with Richard Trumka, a true labor legend. In 2009, when he decided to run for president of the AFL-CIO, Rich asked me to join his ticket as secretary-treasurer. Trumka was brilliant, forward-thinking and committed to making way for a new generation of labor leaders. He commanded respect as a Pittsburgh mine worker turned president of the United Mine Workers of America, with labor deep in his bones.Then, in August 2021, I got a phone call that changed everything. Rich had suffered a heart attack on a camping trip. He passed away suddenly – and my world was shaken. At the same time as I grieved the loss of Rich, I had to unexpectedly prepare to then lead the labor movement.One of the first people to reach out was Harris. She expressed her condolences, full of the same empathy and compassion that the whole country has now seen in her campaign. We talked about our common bond as women who had come up in male-dominated fields and what it means to her to be able to fight for working women as vice-president.Three years later, when she found herself in a similar moment that required her to step up, she did so admirably. It wasn’t her plan, but it’s what her love for this country required. Duty called, and Harris answered – and when I spoke to the vice- president again that day, I told her we’d be there for her every step of the way.She will lead an administration that honors with action the countless contributions of working women, just as she has for her entire career. As attorney general in California, she protected the jobs of nurses across the state and won back millions of dollars for women and workers who had been illegally underpaid by greedy companies. As a senator, she stood with fast-food workers by walking the picket line in our fight for a $15 minimum wage, and fought to end “right to work” laws.And for the past three-plus years, the vice-president has been a critical part of this historic pro-worker administration – passing massive legislation to create millions of union jobs and protecting millions of workers’ pensions. And when we elect her as president, Harris has outlined her bold vision to finally give care economy workers the pay and protections they deserve, while also lowering prices for all working families.That’s a stark contrast to the Project 2025 agenda of Donald Trump and JD Vance. They fundamentally disrespect women and devalue what we bring to the table. The men on the Republican ticket call us “childless cat ladies” because name-calling is all they can do in response to the electoral power we wield. They have no plan to support working women and our families – their only aim is to claw back the rights we’ve earned. We know that a second Trump term will bring the destruction of unions and contracts, the end of our rights in the workplace and control over our own bodies. From rolling back women’s economic opportunity to robbing us of reproductive freedom, the Trump–Vance platform would undo a century of progress.Because so much is at stake for women and all workers, I proudly worked with the affiliated union leaders of the AFL-CIO to present a unanimous endorsement from our federation for Harris, just 24 hours after she announced her candidacy.The AFL-CIO includes 60 unions of nearly 13 million workers in every sector of the economy – which also makes us the largest working women’s organization in the country. In these past months, I’ve been traveling the country and talking with them directly. I can assure you: we are ready to meet this moment. Our polling shows union women’s support for Harris – a margin of 32 points over support for Trump – is nearly three times the support of women overall.When you smash through a glass ceiling, you’re bound to suffer some wounds. Donald Trump shows his misogyny every day, but the vice-president dismisses these attacks as what we have all come to expect from him – and her focus is locked on our future. Kamala Harris is in the business of uplifting working women. In contrast, a second Trump term would mean catastrophe for the precious liberties that our foremothers have pried from the hands of men just like him.When working people need Harris’s help, she always answers the call. And working women have her back to make sure she continues to deliver the policies and support we need to create a just and equal society for women across the country.

      Liz Shuler is the president of and first woman to lead the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, representing 60 national and international unions and nearly 13 million workers. Her home union is IBEW, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers More

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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