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      Jimmy Kimmel on US election: ‘It feels like the country is waiting to get results of a biopsy’

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      On the eve of election day, late-night hosts talked polls, the exhaustion of an endless campaign cycle and their closing arguments for Kamala Harris.Jimmy Kimmel“We are now one day away from having to wait another week to find out who won the election,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Monday evening. “It feels like the whole country is waiting to get the results of a biopsy.”Donald Trump declared his candidacy nearly two years ago, on 15 November 2022. “And now, 720 days, 88 criminal charges, 34 felony convictions, four indictments, two Democratic opponents and one garbage truck later, here we are. Election day,” said Kimmel.According to most national polls, the race is a dead heat, but Kimmel had harsh words for the pollsters. “These polls? They’re mood rings. That’s all they are,” he said. “They bring you up, they bring you down. Poll is short for bipolar.“There’s no magic involved, it’s heads or tails,” he added. “At the end of this, the pollsters who were wrong will quietly disappear. The other ones will be like ‘I told you, 1%.’ What did you tell us? You called 800 losers who didn’t have enough sense to not answer an unknown call.“I still don’t understand how this race is close,” he continued, referencing recordings obtained by the Daily Beast of Jeffrey Epstein talking about Trump as his “friend”.“Epstein said Trump told him he likes to have sex with the wives of his best friends, to the point where Epstein described Trump as having no ‘moral compass’. Do you know what kind of lowlife you have to be for Jeffrey Epstein to say you have no moral compass?” he fumed. “It’s like if R Kelly got mad at you for leaving the toilet seat up.”Kimmel concluded with his final message regarding the election: “Take a moment to imagine a world in which you wake up in the morning, you check the news, and no one says the words ‘Donald’ or ‘Trump’. Just a bunch of normal, boring stuff. Wouldn’t that be nice? No lawn signs. No red hats. No arguing with your grandfather.“Let’s remove this cancerous polyp from our collective national colon,” he added, “and move on already.”Seth Meyers“None of us can control what happens tomorrow, we can only control how drunk we are when it happens,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night, staring down a batch of polls declaring the election a “toss-up”.“How can so many polls be tied?” he wondered. “Are they doing the first half of the poll at an artisanal coffee shop in Williamsburg and the second half of the poll in a beer line at a Kid Rock concert?“How is it possible that exactly half the country think Trump is an amoral psychopath who would wreck American democracy, and the other half thinks he’s an amoral psychopath who would wreck American democracy … but it’s worth it because he’s an incredible dancer!”Meyers devoted a good chunk of his monologue to reminding voters what they were choosing between. Republicans’ closing message, he argued, was: “Are you going to vote for a woman whose laugh they don’t like, or are you going to vote for a guy who fomented a violent coup attempt after a months-long campaign against the 2020 election, undercut the nation’s response to a deadly pandemic that spiraled out of control because he tried to cover it up, lied about its severity, promoted sham treatments for it, said we could cure it by injecting disinfectant and shining powerful lights inside the body, became the first president since Herbert Hoover to oversee a net job loss?”He listed more disqualifying credentials up to and including January 6 – full transcript here – and concluded with a note of exhaustion. “I’ve been talking about this man for nearly a decade now, as evidenced by the fact that everything I just listed is in my brain still somehow,” he said. “The symptoms that gave rise to him will not immediately go away if he loses tomorrow, but we do have an opportunity to say as a nation that we want him to go away. And I really hope that happens, mainly so I never have to think about this ever again.”Stephen Colbert“After a two-year campaign, we have finally made it through all 20 years,” said Stephen Colbert on Late Night. “We’re all in some true sense about to witness history. Good or bad. I’m guessing this is how the people of Pompeii felt when Vesuvius was trying to get re-elected.”Like Meyers and Kimmel, Colbert was frustrated by the dead-heat polls. “I could get a clearer prediction from a magic 8 ball!” he joked.One ray of light, however, was J Ann Selzer’s highly regarded Des Moines Register poll in Iowa, which found Harris leading Trump by three points, with senior women breaking for the vice-president 63% to 28%. “Oh, senior women are AAR-pissed,” Colbert quipped. “Save me, Gam-Gam!”The Harris campaign cautioned about getting too excited, but “too late!” Colbert chirped. “I have to be excited, because I’ve only got two other choices. Absolute terror or Absolut vodka. I need this. There’s no in between.”Meanwhile, in the final days of the campaign, Trump was “presenting a very good case that his brain done broke”, Colbert quipped. In North Carolina, Trump tried to “out-Tim Walz Tim Walz” with a football pep talk that went awry. “All we have to do is carry that ball over that … thing,” he said.“Oh yes, exactly,” Colbert joked. “Just carry the ball over that … thing.” More

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      Harris’s home town is hopeful she will make history: ‘she is going to win big’

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      As the extremely divisive election over who will next lead the United States wrapped up, California’s Bay Area was enveloped in a quiet calm. Far from the massive political rallies and the rousing rhetoric that has overtaken battleground states many voters here are decided; the communities to the east of San Francisco were among the counties that voted most strongly for Joe Biden in 2020, and they will show up again hoping to defeat Donald Trump.Even so, some ballots in Oakland and Berkeley will be cast with an extra sense of pride. In the towns where Kamala Harris was born and raised, locals are hopeful their hometown hero will make history.“Words cannot express how excited I am for Kamala Harris to become the first woman president, the first Black woman president and the first south Asian woman president,” said Oakland resident Kim Thompson. “She will also be the first president from Oakland, California,” Thompson added.Not all voters in the mid-sized cities that hug the shores of the San Francisco Bay are aware that the Democratic nominee got her start there. But as the self-proclaimed “daughter of Oakland”, Harris staged her campaign around her connection to the area, claiming the diverse city that’s steeped in cultural and political history with pride.View image in fullscreenThose are also the attributes that drew Thompson to lay down roots and raise her family in Oakland after moving there in 1987. As a Black woman and a lawyer who is deeply connected to civic life in the city, she delights in its ties to a potentially historic moment should Harris be elected.“How great would it be for Oakland if the rest of the country looks to us and says, ‘Wow. That is not just the birthplace of the Black Panthers, not just a place that stood side by side with San Francisco and Berkeley where a lot of the civil rights movement started,’” she said. She’s looking ahead to a future where a presidential library is hosted in the town. “That will be such a positive mark on our city – we are the place where it all began for her.”Born in a Kaiser hospital near the heart of Oakland, Harris and her small family moved frequently in her early years, settling in the midwest and in Montreal in between spells in California. But Harris left a mark on the places where she grew up that still lingers today.A mural depicting her alongside the civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, female education activist Malala Yousafzai and other impactful women now stands in the tree-lined neighborhood where she attended elementary school in north Berkeley, bussed across town from her apartment as part of a 1967 plan to desegregate schools.View image in fullscreenBerkeley and Oakland each offer lists of important sites for Harris-themed tours, including where she launched her first bid for the presidency – one she ended before primaries began back in 2019 – in front of roughly 20,000 people near the steps of Oakland’s city hall.These towns left an indelible mark on her too. Those early years, which she chronicles in her memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, are filled with remembrances of joy but also the budding awareness about injustice, the fight for equality and rich cultural traditions of activism and art.Harris credits her upbringing, including trips to the Rainbow Sign, a once vibrant African American cultural center in Berkeley that she attended with her mother, Shyamala, and her sister, Maya, for seeding her political ambitions.View image in fullscreen“Being from a place that’s so diverse it helps shape our ideals and our morals and to accept people for their differences,” said Derreck Johnson, an Oakland resident and close childhood friend of Harris. And, he said, even if Harris hasn’t devoted a lot of campaign time to the area, understandably focusing resources and face time in areas where votes are harder-won, she hasn’t forgotten about her home town or the friends who still live there.When Johnson opened his restaurant, Home of Chicken and Waffles, she called to congratulate him. He returned the favor, driving to Nevada to join her in the crucial final days of campaigning. He’s also planning to add a temporary menu item that bears her name – chicken lasagne cooked with collard greens – for those back home.“I am overwhelmed with joy – I don’t even know how to describe it,” he said. “I feel she is going to win. I feel she is going to win big.”

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      In the Bay Area, whether voting with hometown pride, a desire to see history made or a dedication to progressive values – perhaps even all three – large numbers are expected to cast their support. Close to 80% of Alameda county, of which both Berkeley and Oakland are part, voted for Biden in 2020, the landmark election that made her the first female vice-president.View image in fullscreenStill, “everybody’s holding their collective breath and that’s all we can do”, said Joyce Gardner, who has owned a women’s clothing shop in Rockridge, one of Oakland’s lively shopping districts for more than two decades. She’s dedicated her storefront to depictions of the candidate, adding Harris’s face to mannequins clad in classy suits and adorning it with cardboard cutouts.For Gardner though, Harris’s hometown heritage isn’t the draw.“It’s not about her connections to here,” she said. “It’s about what she’s going to do to lift up people.” Gardner is one of many who is voting in this election with a specific purpose: to ensure Trump doesn’t get another shot at the White House.“We need this country to move forward with a decent human being who cares about people, and not just lining his pockets,” she said.“We will see,” she added. “I believe this country is going to do the right thing.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      When do polls close?

      How the electoral college works

      Where is abortion on the ballot?

      Senate and House races to watch

      Lessons from the key swing states

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake in this election

      What to know about the US election More

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      ‘If Harris wins, it’s because of abortion’: election tests fallout from Roe reversal

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      Leslie Lemus’s top issue in the 2024 election is probably the economy. But she has a close second: “Them fucking with abortion.”Really, for the 26-year-old Arizona native, the two issues are one and the same. On Monday, she got an abortion at Camelback Family Planning, one of the last abortion clinics in Arizona, in large part because Lemus feels like she can’t financially care for a child right now.“I look at the world and it’s not very pretty. I’m not ready for that yet, to bring a child into the world right now, where the economy is not OK,” said Lemus, who said she lived paycheck to paycheck. Some months, she has to choose between making her car payments and paying off her credit card debt. “Everybody’s struggling left and right.”View image in fullscreenLemus is registered to vote in Maricopa county, which is home to 60% of the Arizona electorate and may determine whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the valuable swing state. Harris has made access to reproductive rights a key part of her policy platform – particularly as a contrast to Trump, who appointed three of the US supreme court justices who overturned Roe v Wade and who has toggled between branding himself as a champion of reproductive rights and as “the most pro-life president”.Lemus is a passionate supporter of Harris, who she calls “my homegirl”.Majorities of Americans have backed abortion access and Roe v Wade for decades, but it was rarely their top issue in the voting booth. Now that the US supreme court has overturned Roe, permitting more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions and several more to ban it at six, 12, or – as in Arizona – 15 weeks, abortion may become the deciding issue of the 2024 election. It is now the most important issue for women under 45, like Lemus.“If Harris wins the election, it will be because of abortion and women voting for her in large part because of that issue,” said Tresa Undem, a pollster who’s been surveying people about abortion for more than two decades.On Monday, Camelback had about 40 patients to see; at least one had traveled in from Texas, which bans almost all abortions. Visitors to the lobby were greeted by a sign urging them to register to vote while they waited for their abortion. The sign advised: “The health of our democracy is in our hands.”‘That gives me hope’On Tuesday, Arizona will become one of 10 states where voters will decide whether to amend their state constitutions to add or expand abortion protections. (In one of those states, Nebraska, voters will vote on both a ballot measure that could expand abortion rights and on the nation’s sole anti-abortion measure.) Five of those states, including Arizona, have some kind of abortion ban on the books. If any of the measures supporting abortion rights pass, it would be the first time that a state has overturned a post-Roe v Wade ban.Democrats have long hoped these measures would boost turnout among their base, but the rosy polling for the measures in steadfastly red states indicates that a significant swath of voters are essentially splitting their votes by supporting both abortion rights and Republicans, the party that helped engineer Roe’s downfall. Although the measure looks likely to pass in Arizona, for example, polling suggests that Trump will win the state.View image in fullscreenJulio Morera helped collect signatures at the Arizona state fair in order to get the measure on the ballot. His group’s booth, he recalled, was set up next to a man who was hawking rightwing memorabilia adorned with eagles, guns and the slogan “Don’t Tread On Me”. When asked to sign the petition, the man demurred. “I got customers to think about,” he said.But at the very end of the fair, Morera said, the man added his signature.“That gives me hope that this is gonna pass,” Morera said. “There are quite a few people that may not be Democrats or left-leaning who would support this access to abortion.”A vote for Trump, however, may ultimately cancel out a vote for a ballot measure. If Trump wins the presidency, he will be able to skirt Congress and use a 19th-century anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act to ban the mailing of all abortion-related materials – which would result in a de facto national abortion ban and render these measures’ successes moot.Project 2025, an influential policy playbook for the next conservative administration, suggests using the Comstock Act to at least ban the mailing of abortion pills, which account for roughly two-thirds of US abortions. It also suggests rolling back privacy protections for abortion patients and reshaping the nation’s largest family planning program, which would curtail access to contraception, among a bevy of other anti-abortion policies.Harris, meanwhile, has forcefully defended abortion rights. “Over these past two years, the impact of Trump abortion bans has been devastating,” she told a rally in Texas in October. “We see the horrific reality that women and families face every single day.”For Lemus, abortion bans all come down to one thing: “Men being in control of women.”View image in fullscreenThe economy was not the only reason that Lemus sought an abortion on Monday. She is also worried about the mental toll of having a child. At 18, Lemus gave birth to a son who was born prematurely and died just a month after birth.“I was there with all the medical stuff, seeing my child in the incubator until he passed away,” she said quietly. Eight years later, Lemus is not ready to have another one.“We fought so hard to have choices,” she said. “Why do they feel like we can’t have a choice?”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      When do polls close?

      How the electoral college works

      Where is abortion on the ballot?

      Senate and House races to watch

      Lessons from the key swing states

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake in this election

      What to know about the US election More

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      Red or blue? The bellwether counties that could swing the US election

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      With recent election polling showing a dead heat – or slim victory for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris within the statistical margin of error – seven swing states are all but certain to decide the race.As pollsters scramble to make sense of these results, amid questions about reliability given bad calls over support for Trump in 2016 and 2020, analysts are taking an even more granular approach in interpreting battleground state voters, focusing on a handful of counties in these hotly contested regions.They are often referred to as bellwether counties. This in effect means counties that could tip the scale in determining a swing state’s outcome.Here are the counties that analysts – ranging from seasoned election-watchers to Wall Street financiers – are focused on.Maricopa county, ArizonaIn 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump in Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes. Biden’s victory was bolstered by voters in Maricopa county, which encompasses the Phoenix metro area.View image in fullscreenFour years ago, Maricopa comprised more than 60% of Arizona ballots. Biden won Maricopa by 45,000 votes – with 50.3% of voters casting their ballots for him – underscoring just how important this county is. The Associated Press explained the importance of this: “In states where voters are so overwhelmingly concentrated in a single county, even a narrow win can produce big shifts in the statewide numbers.”Also worth pointing out: Maricopa has large proportion of demographics both campaigns have courted aggressively, such as centrist suburban Republicans, Latino voters, and senior citizens, per US News & World Report.Miami-Dade county, FloridaThe Sunshine state has taken a sharp right turn in recent election cycles. Trump boasts almost a double-digit advantage over Harris. Florida, once a purplish swing state, is bright red.Analysts are keeping an eye on Miami-Dade county, which includes Miami and many surrounding communities. Long a Democratic stronghold, with Hillary Clinton winning the county by a 30-point margin in 2016, it has since moved right.View image in fullscreenBiden beat Trump by seven points in 2020. But, the state’s most populous county is expected to post results “relatively early” after polls close at 7pm, Reuters notes.Some analysts believe Miami-Dade could foreshadow Harris’s overall results. If she underperforms, especially among Latinos, this could bode poorly for her overall, the news outlet said.Metro Atlanta counties in GeorgiaThe Atlanta, Georgia, metropolitan area is considered by virtually every analyst as integral to deciding this swing state. Some have focused on Forsyth county, located 40 miles from Atlanta, as the decisive county, while others have insisted that a collection of suburban and exurban counties will determine the race.In addition to Forsyth, analysts have pointed to Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties as potentially decisive. Of course, Fulton county, which encompasses Atlanta, is seen as key.View image in fullscreenOn a recent episode of Pod Save America, NBC’s election expert Steve Kornacki noted that nine counties, which he referred to as the “blue blob”, comprised more than 40% of Georgia’s vote. This region “is just getting bluer and bluer every election”.Kornacki said this race could indicate whether it’s expanding.“There’s one county in that area, it’s been moving dramatically towards Democrats but just missed – Fayette county – the last time around,” he said. “If the Democrats are flipping that this time around and expanding that blob, I think that’s a sign, because that’s talking about enthusiasm in the suburbs.”Saginaw county, MichiganLocated in the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan, Saginaw county is considered the pre-eminent swing county in the most decisive swing state. There are multiple reasons for this, among them Saginaw’s voting record.Barack Obama landed Saginaw in 2008 and 2012. In 2016, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by just over 1,000 votes. The margin thinned still more in 2020, when Biden won by a mere 303 ballots.View image in fullscreenBiden’s 2020 win in Saginaw, however, was complicated by Trump’s votes actually increasing in that county. His loss was also attributed to Democrats who didn’t vote in 2016 but decided in 2020 to boot Trump out.Harris could need the same voter turnout in Saginaw to win. The outcome of this county could well reflect national trends, as voters’ concerns there echo that of those in other crucial contests.Clark county, NevadaBiden beat Trump by just three points in Nevada’s 2020 presidential race. Clark county, which is home to Las Vegas, has approximately 50% of Nevada’s population.If Trump wants to win Nevada, he would have to sap Democratic votes in Clark county, Reuters explains. Observers are also paying attention to Washoe county; this is Nevada’s second-largest population center, containing the city of Reno.Similar to Las Vegas, Trump would have to chip away at Democratic margins in the Reno area as well. As a testament to the tension surrounding Washoe, observers from both sides of the aisle have been closely monitoring the count following recent controversies over voting there.The Republican county commissioners recently voted against certifying results in this year’s primary, prompting legal action, before they reversed course. The elections office, meanwhile, has been answering an onslaught of questions and public information requests, in an effort to allay the public’s concerns about the election.While Democrats have won every presidential vote in Nevada since 2008, economic stressors – such as increased prices and decreased affordable housing – have spurred questions about working-class voters’ leanings.Mecklenburg county, North CarolinaRepublicans have won every presidential election in North Carolina since Obama’s run in 2008. Reuters notes that tight polling has turned North Carolina into a swing state this year.Mecklenberg county, which includes Charlotte, is strongly Democratic. Analysts are also eyeing adjacent Cabarrus county: Trump beat Biden there in 2020, but his lead slimmed by 10 points compared to 2016, Reuters noted.Wake county, which contains the highly educated city of Raleigh, is similarly drawing attention. This higher-than-average income county once skewed Republican but has favored Democratic presidential candidates since 2008 “by generally increasing margins”, US News & World Report notes.Erie county, PennsylvaniaErie county, which contains the city of Erie, has been described as “a bellwether area in a bellwether state”. Per US News, “No county in Pennsylvania – and possibly in the country – is as consistently swingy as Erie county.”Indeed, Trump won the working-class county in 2016, followed by a slim Biden win there in 2020. Some analysts are also paying attention to Lackawanna county.Scranton, Pennsylvania – Biden’s birthplace – is in this county. Unlike Erie county, Lackawanna has become more Republican of late. If Trump performs well in Lackawanna, it could spell broader success for him across this pivotal state.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      When do polls close?

      How the electoral college works

      Where is abortion on the ballot?

      Senate and House races to watch

      Lessons from the key swing states

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake in this election

      What to know about the US election More

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      Remember, remember, the fifth of November, when a bad guy tried to blow up a political system | Marina Hyde

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      Well … we finally got to 5 November. Of course, you know the story. Once upon a time, there was a bad guy who wanted to set fire to a country’s political system. Metaphorically, but also literally. I mean, he wasn’t subtle, this guy. This Guy, I should say, because his name was Guy Fawkes. Why – who did you think I was talking about?Because time’s a great healer, Britons now celebrate the thwarting of this truly awful Guy’s insurrection with fireworks, fires and organised effigy-burning. But the good version of those things – not the kind we do when we go out of a football tournament in the later stages. We’re still working on teasing out the family fun in those particular moments.Incidentally, before I proceed further, a word about the timing of this column, which I am writing on Tuesday morning but which will appear in the Wednesday print edition of this newspaper. That is My Struggle, assuming there isn’t a monopoly on that working title in the current news cycle. And even without those challenges of the calendar, it is impossible to know how many people out there are catching up with the Gunpowder Plot on a time lag. Furthermore, there will be long-view historians who will argue that we still don’t actually really know the ultimate knock-on results and/or fallout of it all. So if you are catching up with the whole story on tape delay, beware of spoilers that will follow. Please look away now if you want to experience the magic/horror [delete as applicable] as if in real time.So anyway, our Guy. Not only was he a very bad hat, but he wore a very bad hat – a signature piece of headgear that simply screamed MAKE ENGLAND PAPIST AGAIN. And this Guy swore he’d overthrow the political leadership of the country by any means necessary. Blow it all up, burn it all down – this was his plot. He could really drone on about it for hours to like-minded people. Other details? He sometimes went by Guido, because nobody – NOBODY – loved Hispanics more than him, or had done more for Hispanics than him.Anyway, the fateful day approached. Despite the highest possible stakes, some of his henchteam couldn’t quite keep their mouths shut about it all. One of them actually wrote down a semi-cryptic warning about what was coming, and sent it to a lawmaker called Lord Monteagle. I think it was done on parchment, but it could have also been a social media post on X (which back in the 17th century was known as Twitter).Even though people will say any old thing on parchment, something about the message properly unsettled Lord Monteagle, who shared the post with King James I. As for the precise mechanics of that share, let’s assume Monteagle quote-posted it, adding a topper along the lines of: “They hath said the quiet part out loud.” Or maybe “out Loude”. My understanding is that spelling was a bit of a free-for-all at the time, and there was a lot of unnecessary capitalisation in some people’s posts.At this point, the king had a number of options. He could have regarded engaging with the incendiary language about incendiary devices as beneath his dignity, and not at all befitting the civility politics of which he regarded himself as the perfect embodiment. He could have got a period celebrity to come out in his favour and denounce it. Which one? I don’t think James would have nailed down the composer William Byrd (he’d gone Catholic in the 1570s and might have endorsed Fawkes) – but William Shakespeare was coming off a huge box-office hit with Othello and was in development with King Lear. He’d have been ideal; people always do what playwrights say.But in the event, the king basically responded by going: “OMG Monteagle – if someone tells you who they are, BELIEVE THEM THE FIRST TIME.” Two of his team officials were immediately dispatched to parliament.By this stage, the Guy was in situ and well on his way to realising his plan. He was found by law enforcement down in the palace of Westminster’s cellars, with a slow match and a watch – presumably one from the Fawkes Signature Collection (advertising slogan: “Time is money so you wear a watch that matters”. There was also a pail of Diet Coke to sustain him through the night, some touchwood, and 36 barrels of gunpowder.Despite being busted in what you’d think was a pretty open-and-shut way, I imagine that aides from Fawkes’s conspiracy scrambled to “walk back” the idea that some bad stuff was in the process of going down. Their precise words are lost to time, but no doubt they’d have wheeled out a few of the classics. “This is just Guy being Guy – you shouldn’t take him so seriously.” “It truly saddens us to see ye olde fake news media lying that he meant any harm.” “He was just dressing up as a bomb-maker to show solidarity with our great blue-collar munitions workers.” Or my personal favourite: “These barrels of gunpowder are just a metaphor.”What a Guy. The rest is both history, and the future that liberals want. So whichever stage of the great timeline we’re at by the time you read this, I suppose we have to at least consider that one day, people will simply enjoy some kind of jolly annual commemoration of whatever it was that happened. In the meantime, I desperately hope Guy Fawkes day is/was everything you wished it to be.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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      Here is what my final polling data says about the US presidential election | John Zogby

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      The final six public polls that have been released pretty much tell the same story as each other and the previous polls in October. The race to become the 47th president of the United States is on a razor-thin margin. Three of those last six polls were actual ties; one has Kamala Harris ahead by three points; the others have Donald Trump up by one point and two points.My own firm, John Zogby Strategies, just released a final survey for our clients of 1,005 decided voters nationwide showing Harris leading with 49.3% of the vote and Trump polling at 45.6% of the vote – a margin, or difference, of 3.7 percentage points.That is close, and even more of a squeeze because of the current relationship of the popular vote to the electoral college. Harris is certain to receive millions of “excess” votes in large states such as California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts which will beef up her total popular vote nationwide but not do anything for her in key battleground states such as Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – all of which are too close to call as we approach election day.Harris’s lead in the John Zogby Strategies poll is within the margin-of-sampling error, but it reveals some dynamics that portend changing demographic support for both the Democratic and Republican parties. These are some findings and possible trend lines that not only explain what may happen once the votes are counted, but also suggest possibly significant realignments within both parties.For one, Harris appears to have underperformed with 18- to 29-year-olds nationally; in contrast Trump is leading among them, capturing 47% of the vote, while Harris polls at 45%. Ironically, in our poll, she did best among those over 65 with a 58%-39% margin. Those age cohorts usually produce opposite results, with older voters tending to be more conservative. The gen Z and millennial voters also revealed a huge “gender gap” of well over 60 points between men and women.There is also a substantial “marriage gap”: Trump won married voters by four points – not as big as in 2020 (seven points), but Harris won among non-married people by eight points (51%-43%), not as much as Joe Biden’s 18-point victory, but still enough to see that marital status is a key to how people vote. Notably, married women, who usually tend to be on the conservative side, chose Harris in our poll.Harris leads among voters who identify as independents by 13 points (51% of independents polled say they will vote for her, compared with just 38% saying they will vote for Trump), about the same as Biden, who received 54% of independent votes, compared with Trump getting 41% of their vote in 2020.The candidates chose messages and styles that aimed at different groups of voters. Trump stayed with his dark and isolationist theme, focusing on rallying his base first, then hoping to pick up more moderate independents who feel that the Biden-Harris team have led the US down the wrong path. Harris opted for directing her campaign with an appeal to those who were tired of Trump’s negativity and, at times, bizarre behavior. Her approach appears to have paid off, as she leads with 56% of self-described moderate voters. That puts her 19 points ahead with moderates than Trump, who polls at 37. This was a group that Biden won by 30 points last time.Harris did, as was suggested throughout the year’s polling, underperform in our poll among Black voters (73% said they would vote for her, and 19% said Trump) and Hispanic voters (Trump polls at 48% with Hispanic voters, Harris at 44%), but she is doing much better among white voters – down by only five (she polls at 46% and Trump polls at 51%), compared with Trump’s 17-point victory in 2020, where 58% voted for him and 41% voted for Biden.Harris is down considerably among Catholics (43% back her, compared with 55% backing Trump) and Protestants (36% back her, compared with 59% backing Trump), but scores well among those with no religious affiliation and with atheists. Democrats have been getting 30% or so of born-again evangelical voters in recent elections, but Harris only shows 24% in our poll.Harris not only leads in cities (53% of city-dwellers back her, compared with 43% backing Trump) but also in the suburbs (she was backed by 50% of the suburban voters polled, compared with 44% backing Trump) – the latter powered by a solid performance among suburban women. Biden won both in 2020: he won 60% of votes in cities (while Trump only got 38% of the vote in cities), but barely scraped by in suburbs, where only 50% voted for him, compared with 48% voting for Trump.There is a wide “education gap” in US politics. Harris has the backing of 57% of those with college degrees, compared with 39% for Trump. In 2020, Biden won the same group by 12 points (he received 55% of their vote, while Trump received 43%). Trump leads among those without degrees (50% of voters without college degrees back him, compared with 44% backing Harris). That was 50% for Biden and 48% for Trump last time.The gender gap propels Harris’s lead, with 49% of Trump voters being men versus 43% of Harris voters being men. (In 2020, 45% of Trump voters were men, while 53% of Biden voters were men.) Women back Harris by 12 points, with 55% of women supporting her to 43% supporting Trump (Biden won 57% of women, while Trump only received 42% of the women’s vote). There is in our poll an 18-point gender point gap.All of these “gaps” suggest a very real issues gap between Harris and Trump supporters. For those selecting Harris, the top issues are abortion (45%), the economy/Inflation (39%), democracy (37%) and climate change (19%). For those backing Trump, the top are the economy/inflation (68%), immigration (61%), keeping the US out of war (15%) and crime (14%). Two different worlds.Some key states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, both hotly contested, will not finish counting ballots until later in the week, and other states likely to be very close will have automatic recounts. It is not likely that we will know who won for a while. Our poll is thus far the only one that polled through Sunday 3 November; we left the lights on longer to try to capture late-breaking trends.

      John Zogby is senior partner at the polling firm of John Zogby Strategies and is author of Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read the Polls and Why We Should More

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      US elections 2024 live updates: Trump launches insults at final rally as Harris ends campaign promising to ‘get to work’

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      In Michigan, Trump then goes on to talk insultingly about President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and representative Adam Schiff, the lead investigator in Trump’s first impeachment.“Joe Biden in one of his crazy moments said that we were all garbage,” Trump remarked adding “They stole the election from a president,” in apparent reference to Biden’s dropping out of the campaign to be replaced by Harris.He then says of Pelosi “she’s a crooked person … evil, sick, crazy b… oh no! It starts with a ‘b’ but I won’t say it! I wanna say it.”He said of “Adam Shifty Schiff”: “He’s got the biggest head, he’s an unattractive guy both inside and out.”Leading forecaster Nate Silver released his final election forecast overnight – and the race looks almost as tight as it could possibly be. He said that Harris won in 40,012 out of 80,000, or 50.015% of, simulations run using his model.Polls released on Monday found Harris had a marginal lead in Michigan but was tied with Trump in Pennsylvania and other key swing states. Trump maintained a lead over Harris in betting markets, but odds had narrowed somewhat.Silver earned his reputation as a forecasting guru by correctly calling 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election. He also predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 elections. In 2016, however, he gave eventual winner Trump just a 28.6% chance of becoming president.Yesterday, several US security agencies released a joint statement on foreign interference in the election.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said they had been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of US elections and stoke divisions among Americans.The agencies warned that they expect these activities to intensify through election day and in the coming weeks, and that foreign influence narratives will focus on swing states.“Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences, judging from information available.“Iran also remains a significant foreign influence threat to US elections. As noted in a prior update, we have assessed that Iran has conducted malicious cyber activities to compromise former president Trump’s campaign.“Iranian influence actors may also seek to create fake media content intended to suppress voting or stoke violence, as they have done in past election cycles.”Donald Trump should concede defeat and “go and play golf” in Scotland if he loses to Kamala Harris, Nigel Farage has said, but added that the Democratic candidate should pardon Trump to “dampen down” the threat of unrest.Farage, a friend of Trump who has spoken at the former president’s rallies in the past, said he hoped Harris would look “magnanimous” if she secured a “clear and decisive” victory.The Reform UK leader is in the US for the election but said he hoped there would be no unrest after the result. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts and is facing sentencing later in November for falsifying business records over payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels days before his victorious 2016 election.Farage, who has criticised Labour activists for travelling to campaign for Harris, said: “If she gets in on Tuesday I hope she pardons him. She could look magnanimous and it would dampen down potential tensions.“If it was clear and decisive then maybe it’s time to go and play golf at Turnberry,” he said. “It’s all hypothetical and I still think he is going to win.”Farage attended Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, a key swing state where both candidates held rallies the day before the election.An incumbent president stepping down late in the campaign, a guilty verdict in a criminal case for one of the candidates and a couple of assassination attempts – this election campaign has been a wild ride.Here are 15 moments that defined the US election campaign:The influential podcast host Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”Rogan, 57, described recently by Bloomberg as “widely accepted as the most popular podcaster on Earth”, has an overwhelmingly male audience. He recently interviewed Donald Trump on the show, and, as recently as last week, was negotiating for a sit-down with the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, though no interview went ahead.Trump’s interview on Rogan’s show ten days ago currently has 45m views on YouTube, while JD Vance’s interview has 14m views.With a fairly hefty time difference, the US election will play out at different times of the day depending on which side of the pond you are on. Archie Bland breaks down how the race for the White House will unfold for British viewers.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied with three votes each in the tiny New Hampshire town that traditionally kicks off voting on election day.Since the 1960s, voters in Dixville Notch, close to the Canadian border, have gathered just after midnight to cast their ballots.Votes are then counted and results announced – hours before other states open their polls.According to CNN, four registered Republicans and two undeclared voters took part in the vote just after midnight on Tuesday.Leslie Otten was seemingly the disaffected Republican voter that backed Harris in the six-person ballot. “I’ve been a Republican most of my life, but I find myself in conflict with the Republican Party at this time,” he said. “It’s been loudly said by Trump that I’m now an enemy because I don’t back him.”The Guardian’s video team has made an explainer on the feisty history of US political mudslinging. In it, they argue that the insults didn’t start with Trump:The video is part of It’s Complicated, a new YouTube channel dedicated to all forms of explanatory journalism, helping bring clarity, context and understanding in a complicated world.Streeting also spoke about Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK who was at a Trump rally last night.Farage last night tweeted a clip from the rally where Trump was speaking about their relationship – which perhaps didn’t start as a resounding endorsement of the Reform leader, but ended up there.“We have a man from Europe, I don’t know if he’s here, I saw him backstage.“What he is doing is sort of what we did a few years ago. He’s doing a great job, he’s a fantastic … he’s always been my friend for some reason. He liked me, I liked him and he’s shaking it up pretty good over there. He was the big winner of the last election.”Streeting said of the Reform leader: “To be fair to Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party who is currently State-side, he is a firm supporter of Donald Trump.“He was reflecting overnight that whatever some of the noise we’ve heard about, you know that legal action or indeed things that that we said about president Trump in the past, that we’ll be able to work effectively together as partners and and as allies.”The UK government has been working to ensure the “deep ties” that bind the UK and the US will be “as strong as they have ever been”, whatever the outcome of the US election, the UK’s health secretary Wes Streeting said, PA reports.Wes Streeting told LBC Radio: “The prime minister, the foreign secretary and others have been working hard to make sure that whatever the outcome of the US presidential election, the deep ties that bind our two nations are as strong as they have ever been.“I think that is particularly important in a world in which we see war on the continent of Europe, in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, wider geopolitical risks and threats where the US and the UK have common history, but also common cause in terms of the future we want to build, in the future of democracy.“The American people will decide who their president is and we will work with whoever they choose.”He added: “I think it’s fair to say that we may not be ideological bedfellows with President Trump, but if he’s returned as president of the United States, there will be a really good working relationship.“And I think we saw that with the warmth of the exchange between president Trump and the prime minister after they met recently.”US judges have denied requests from the Republican-led states of Missouri and Texas to block the federal government from sending lawyers to their states on election day to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws, Reuters reports.Both states are among the 27 that the US Justice Department (DOJ) said it would send staff out to monitorvoting locations, as it has done regularly during national elections.Federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered the DOJ early on Tuesday to confirm that “no observers” would be present in polling locations in Texas but denied issuing the restraining order the state had requested.“The Court cannot issue a temporary restraining order without further clarification on the distinction between ‘monitoring’ and ‘observing’ on the eve of a consequential election,” Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, said in the ruling.Texas attorney general Ken Paxton had earlier said that sending monitors “infringes on States’ constitutional authority to run free and fair elections.” The lawsuit argued that “under Texas law, the list of persons who may be present in voting locations or central counting stations does not include federal authorities.”District judge Sarah Pitlyk in Missouri also denied that state’s request for a temporary restraining order, saying late last night: “the harms that the State of Missouri anticipates are speculative.”Missouri’s lawsuit had accused the DOJ of making an 11th-hour plan that intended to “displace state election authorities” by sending poll monitors to locations throughout St. Louis.The DOJ said two election monitors were in Missouri to monitor one polling station in St. Louis.While some of the locations the DOJ will monitor on election day include key counties in the seven battleground states expected to help decide the election, it is also sending personnel to other locations such as counties in Massachusetts, Alaska, South Dakota, and New Jersey. Neither Missouri nor Texas are considered among the seven battleground states.AP reports on a tiny Indian village where Kamala Harris has ancestral roots that is praying for her victory.
      There’s little to distinguish the village of Thulasendrapuram from any other rural community in Tamil Nadu, except its connection to a woman who could become America’s first leader with South Asian roots.As millions of Americans vote, Harris has people rooting for her from thousands of miles away in a village surrounded by rice paddies and coconut trees, where her mother’s family has ancestral ties. They talk about her at the local tea shop. Banners and billboards bearing her face are seen throughout the community.“Our deity is a very powerful God. If we pray well to him, he will make her victorious,” said M. Natarajan, the temple priest that led the prayers in front of the image of Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva.Harris’ maternal grandfather was born in the village, about 350 kilometers (215 miles) from the southern coastal city of Chennai, more than 100 years ago. As an adult, he moved to Chennai, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.Harris has never visited Thulasendrapuram and she has no living relatives in the village, but people here still venerate the family that made it big in the US.“Our village ancestors’ granddaughter is running as a US presidential candidate. Her victory will be happy news for every one of us,” Natarajan said.Harris hasn’t visited India much — particularly not since becoming vice president — but she has often spoken emotionally about her ties to her late mother’s country of birth. On Tuesday, she released a campaign video highlighting her mother, who arrived in the US at age 19 and became a cancer researcher.Titled “Mother,” the video ends with a narrator saying: “This daughter of Shyamala, this daughter of the American story, is ready to lead us forward.”Village residents also prayed for Harris’ victory in 2020, and set off firecrackers when she became the US vice president.
      Last night The Guardian reported that betting markets had narrowed on the eve of the election.The Trump campaign and its supporters had been pointing to Trump’s lead over Harris at leading bookmakers as a more accurate forecast than tight polls that were too close to call in the run up to the election.But the odds have narrowed somewhat, as the below data visualisation shows:The current odds on the Betfair betting exchange still favour Trump – giving him about a 60% chance of winning the election to Harris’ 40%.The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt provides some analysis on Trump’s final rally ahead of the election …Trump said this was his “last rally”, and if that’s true, it was a somewhat ignominious end. More than half the crowd left during a meandering, nearly-two hour long, speech that saw Trump attack Kamala Harris, criticise the thickness of Adam Schiff’s neck, and muse that god may have saved him from an assassin’s bullet so that he could become president.“Kamala, she is a very low IQ person and we don’t need a very low IQ individual. We’ve had that for four years and our country is going down the drain,” Trump said early in his rally, one of a series of typically vicious critiques on his opponent.Trump arrived almost two hours late for the rally, and by the time he started speaking about how divine intervention saved him from an assassination attempt, people had already begun to leave.“Many people say that god saved me in order to save America,” Trump told the crowd. “It’s a beautiful expression and I think it might be true.”Away from the reverie on god, this “last rally” offered up much of the grievance and doom that has characterised Trump’s politics.“Some of the greatest criminals in the world are pouring into our country,” Trump said, mirroring his very first campaign rally, at Trump Tower on June 16 2015.As well as blasting Harris, he called Nancy Pelosi a “crazy horrible human being”, adding: “She’s a sick crazy… oh no… it starts with a b but I won’t say it.”Trump continued: “These are bad people. Adam shifty Schiff. I call him pencil neck.” He said of the California Democrat: “He’s an unattractive guy in and out.”At 2.10am, with the audience bleary eyed, Trump finally left the stage after declaring, without specifics, that he would fix all America’s ills. The now familiar sound of Village People’s YMCA played the former president out, and now only time will tell whether he wins re-election.Donald Trump continued to attack Kamala Harris and gave dark warnings about a dystopian future under the vice-president in the early hours of Tuesday morning.Speaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump also mused that god may have saved him from an assassin’s bullet so that he could become president, as he claimed that he has a “95% chance or something” of winning the election.Trump has said he will not run for president again, and if this is to be Trump’s last rally, it was a somewhat ignominious end. More than half the crowd left during a meandering, nearly-two hour long, speech that saw Trump attack Nancy Pelosi, criticise the thickness of Adam Schiff’s neck, and demonise immigrants.“Kamala, she is a very low IQ person and we don’t need a very low IQ individual. We’ve had that for four years and our country is going down the drain,” Trump said early in his rally, one of a series of typically vicious critiques on his opponent.“If you vote for lying Kamala you’ll have four more years of misery, failure and disaster our country may never recover from,” Trump added, to loud jeers.Trump arrived almost two hours late for the rally, and by the time he started speaking about how divine intervention saved him from an assassination attempt, people had already begun to leave.This “last rally” offered up much of the grievance and doom that has characterised Trump’s politics.“Some of the greatest criminals in the world are pouring into our country,” Trump said, mirroring his very first campaign rally, at Trump Tower on June 16 2015.That day the then-reality tv host descended on an escalator to announce what was seen as a long shot run for the presidency. He offered grave, racially charged warnings about immigration, characterised cities as crime-addled hellholes, made vague, hyperbolic promises about how only he could fix the country, and launched vicious attacks on political rivals.Fast forward November 2024, and little has changed.As well as blasting Harris, he called Nancy Pelosi a “crazy horrible human being”, adding: “She’s a sick crazy… oh no… it starts with a b but I won’t say it.”At 2am, as the rally drew to a close, he returned to the dark motifs that have been such a hallmark of his political career. Trump’s first rally and his last rally may have been nine years apart. But at this final event, held hours before voting begins in what could be one of the most consequential elections in modern history, it was clear that little has changed.Kamala Harris welcomed a slew of celebrities to her rallies in the closing moments of the election campaign, PA reports.Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, Will.i.am, Lady Gaga, Jon Bon Jovi and Christina Aguilera were among the superstars lending their voices to support Harris.Lady Gaga was one of the stars who performed at Harris’ multi-city rally on the evening before the election, where she sang God Bless America before warning the audience “the country is depending on you”.Meanwhile, talk show host Winfrey said she travelled across the country to appear at the rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wearing a t-shirt that read “Yes she can”.“If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again,” the TV star warned.Black Eyed Peas singer Will.i.am performed his Harris endorsement song titled “Yes she can”, which includes the lyrics: “So register and vote for your life, do it for your daughters and your sons and your wife.”It came moments after Gaga’s performance at the rally, where she told the crowd: “For more than half of this country’s life, women did not have a voice … But tomorrow, women will be a part of making this decision.”“Today, I am holding in my heart all the tough, tenacious women who made me who I am. I cast my vote for someone who will be a president for all Americans.”Crowd size has been a persistent talking point for Trump, right from the beginning of his political career more than eight years ago. But Democrats have recently been mocking him over his obsession, pointing out that people have been leaving his lengthy rallies early and that seats at some rallies have been empty. AP has this report:
      Donald Trump has spent nearly a decade bragging about his crowds. Lately, he’s been making the same boasts to swaths of empty seats.In his third presidential bid, Trump for the first time is facing an opponent who stages her own massive rallies, calling further attention to the fact that his crowds, however enthusiastic they are, sometimes have failed to fill large venues and often thinned out as he spoke.In North Carolina this weekend, the former president and Republican nominee spoke at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro, where the lower level of the 22,000-seat arena remained unfilled, with the upper level blocked off altogether.“We’ve had the biggest rallies in history of any country. Every rally’s full,” he falsely claimed anyway. “You don’t have any seats that are empty.”He began Monday, the eve of the election, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a late-arriving crowd came close to filling the venue but left a smattering of empty seats. In Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump took the stage in Santander Arena, where there were sections of empty seats in the 7,200-seat arena. The campaign hung a large American flag near the back of the arena, blocking the view of several seating sections that remained unfilled.He then went to PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, where the upper level seating was again blocked off.The former president’s crowds still routinely number in the thousands and they roared regularly as he spoke. And his supporters this year remain engaged enough that his final event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was inside a packed arena even though it started after 12:15 am Tuesday, nearly two hours late. Some rallygoers told a reporter they arrived at 7 am the day before.But the occasional scenes of empty seats offered a notable contrast to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ biggest events this fall — and to the volume and vibe of Trump’s crowds eight years ago when he sought and won the presidency for the first time … The former reality television star and consummate showman clearly remains invested in the performative aspect of presidential politics and obviously concerned that Harris, unlike Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, can match and even exceed his signature campaign tactic. Harris, for example, recently filled the large coliseum in Greensboro. More