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      Harris and Trump are tied in the polls – so I conducted my own less traditional research | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Polls! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing, except for driving yourself bonkers. Oh look: Donald Trump is up by two points. Wait, it looks like Kamala Harris is up by five points. Yikes, now Trump is up by one-nineteenth of a point. Now, according to a much discussed NBC News poll that came out on Sunday, Trump and Harris are neck and neck.As the US election draws closer, I have developed a severe case of poll-tigue. Can we just give the damn things a rest already? As we all know, polling is an inexact science at the best of times. More importantly, pretty much all the results of recent Trump-Harris polls have been within the margin of error. The fact that this new poll shows Harris tied with Trump (within the margin of error) while a poll in September showed that Harris was leading Trump (also within the margin of error) might signal that the Harris honeymoon is officially over, but ultimately, it’s not that big a deal. You can scrutinise the numbers ad infinitum, but when it comes down to it, the truth is that nobody knows what is going to happen in November other than it’s (probably) going to be very close. Polls are basically astrology for political nerds at this point.Speaking of which, professional astrologers have their own murky methods for predicting the outcome of elections and they seem just as confused as everyone else. Laurie Rivers, a political analyst turned astrologer with more than 235,000 TikTok followers, told the Economist she sees Harris winning “overwhelmingly”. Meanwhile, Amy Tripp, another influential astrologist, has said Trump will win and she can make “objective” forecasts because she is an Aquarius.I’m not an Aquarius, but I’ve also been dabbling in some “objective” forecasting. I recently devised two unorthodox polling methods, the results of which I will exclusively present in this column. In terms of methodology, both surveys were conducted by me in Philadelphia – the biggest city in Pennsylvania, which is probably the most important swing state in the US. In other words: very serious stuff.Let’s start with Arwa’s Little Walk poll. On Monday I counted all the political signs I saw displayed in people’s houses on the 10-minute walk from my house to my child’s preschool. The final tally? Twenty-six Harris/Walz signs, zero Trump signs and one sign for “Giant Meteor 2024”. (That sign did not belong to me, but I share the sentiment.) In short: a giant meteor has a better chance of winning my little stretch of Philadelphia than Trump. What does this mean? Well, it means I live in a liberal bubble. And, also, that I might be on some kind of neighbourhood watch list now because I peered into so many strangers’ windows.We’ll call the next experiment the Rascal Eats a Treat poll. I put a brown treat in one hand (representing Harris) and a pink treat in another (representing Trump), then I asked my dog Rascal to pick a hand. Much to Rascal’s delight, I conducted this experiment multiple times. And guess what? Every single time he picked the Harris indicator. At first I thought that meant my dog was a savant trapped in a chihuahua’s scruffy little body. Then, of course, I realised Rascal could smell the difference between the treats and simply preferred one artificial flavour to the other. As an objective Aries, I will admit that this poll would probably not stand up to serious scrutiny.That said, the Rascal treat test is not quite as ridiculous as it might sound. The Busken Bakery in Cincinnati has been running a presidential Cookie poll since 1984. It sells cookies with candidate’s faces on them and the highest-selling cookie candidate has won nine out of 10 elections (2020 was the outlier). A random bakery has been right just as many times as Allan Lichtman, the distinguished professor who is famous for his 13 “keys” to the White House. (Lichtman got 2020 right but 2000 wrong.) And the bakery has certainly done better than many pollsters.In all seriousness – and before the Guardian gets inundated with complaints from the Association for Preserving the Reputation of Political Polling – I should clarify that polls aren’t a complete waste of time. The latest NBC poll is yet another reminder that the US is a deeply divided country and this election will be won on the margins. And my own polls show that Rascal is a dog of discerning taste. More

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      Pelosi says she still hasn’t spoken to Biden since pressuring him to drop out

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      Nancy Pelosi has admitted she still has not spoken to Joe Biden since her crucial intervention in July led to his decision to drop out of the presidential race, following a disastrously frail performance in a debate against Donald Trump.The former speaker of the House told the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland on the Politics Weekly America podcast that although she continues to regard the US president as a great friend and longtime political ally, she felt a cold political calculation was necessary after the evidence of Biden’s failing mental acuity.“Not since then, no,” she said when asked if she had spoken to Biden since. “But I’m prayerful about it.”She added: “I have the greatest respect for him. I think he’s one of the great consequential presidents of our country,” she said. “I think his legacy had to be protected. I didn’t see that happening in the course that it was on, the election was on. My call was just to: ‘Let’s get on a better course.’ He will make the decision as to what that is. And he made that decision. But I think he has some unease because we’ve been friends for decades.”“Elections are decisions,” she added. “You decide to win. I decided a while ago that Donald Trump will never set foot in the White House again as president of the United States or in any other capacity … So when you make a decision, you have to make every decision in favor of winning … and the most important decision of all is the candidate.”Pelosi admitted that some in Biden’s campaign may not have forgiven her for her role in limiting Biden’s legacy to one term, but that a Trump victory would have equally reflected terribly on his legacy.Known as a uniquely influential House speaker, particularly during a Biden administration that passed major legislation on infrastructure and climate, Pelosi was widely seen as a senior Democrat willing to indicate that Biden should reconsider his bid for re-election when the polls showed Trump beating him badly.After Biden did step aside, Pelosi then encouraged the party to endorse Kamala Harris – and scored yet another victory when the vice-president named former congressman Tim Walz as her running mate.Pelosi has also been a longtime thorn in Trump’s side, frequently antagonizing him into posting long rants about her on social media, and publicly ripping up his State of the Union speech in 2020 on the podium of the House of Representatives, calling it a “manifesto of mistruths”.Explaining her unique ability to hold together a fragile coalition of centrist and progressive Democrats, Pelosi explained that she thought “leadership is about respect, about consensus building”, while deriding Trump’s ability to do anything of the sort, particularly with his hateful rhetoric towards immigrants, who he has described as “poisoning the blood of this country”.“I hardly ever say his name,” she says of Trump, instead describing him as “what’s-his-name”.“I think [Trump is] a grotesque word … You just don’t like the word passing your lips. I just don’t. I’m afraid, you know, when I grew up Catholic, as I am now, if you said a bad word, you could burn in hell if you didn’t have a chance to confess. So I don’t want to take any chances.“It’s up there with like, swearing.”In her new book, The Art of Power, Pelosi describes being the first woman speaker of the House, and her disappointment at the failure of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president in 2016, but says she remains optimistic that Harris will make history where Clinton could not.“I always thought America was more ready for a woman president than a woman speaker of the House,” she told the Guardian. “The Congress of the United States is not a glass ceiling there. It’s a marble ceiling. And it was very hard to rise up there. But the public, I think, is better disposed … In Congress, they would say to me: “Understand this, there’s been a pecking order here for a long time of men who’ve been waiting for openings to happen and take their turn.” And I said: “That’s interesting. We’ve been waiting over 200 years.”She praised Harris, however, for not running as “the first woman or first woman of color. She’s running on her strength, her knowledge of policy and strategy and presentation and the rest. And I think that’s a different race than Hillary Clinton ran.”Noting that more women support Harris and more men support Trump by considerable margins, Pelosi said: “The reason that there’s such a gender gulf is because there’s such a gulf in terms of policies that affect women.”“A woman’s right to choose is a personal issue. It’s an economic issue, but it’s also a democracy issue. This is an issue about freedom, freedom to manage your own life.”“What is a democracy? It is free and fair elections. It’s a peaceful transfer of power. It’s independent judiciary and is the personal freedoms in the bill of rights of our constitution. And he is assaulting those by particularly harshly on women, harshly on women. Did you see the other day? He said Kamala Harris was retarded. This is a person running for president of the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Has he no respect for the office? Has he no decency about how to communicate?”Pelosi spoke about her fear of political violence, noting that misinformation spread by Trump had caused an atmosphere in which US disaster response agency Fema had to withdraw rescue workers from parts of North Caroline hit by a hurricane after reports of trucks of militia saying they were hunting Fema workers.“This is springing from the top,” she said of Trump’s role in fomenting political violence. “He’s taking pride in doing it. Don’t take it from me, take it from him.”After an armed assailant attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, in their home after breaking in with an intent to harm her, many Republicans made jokes – including Trump’s son Donald Jr, who suggested he would dress as Paul Pelosi for Halloween.“When it happened, what was so sad for my children and grandchildren was that [some Republicans] thought it was a riot – they were laughing and making jokes … his son, all those people making jokes about it, right away. We didn’t even know if he was going to live or die.”Asked if she agreed with the recent remarks of the former chairperson of the joint chiefs, Mark Milley, a Trump appointee, that Trump was “a fascist to the core”, Pelosi said:“Yes, I do. I do. And I know it’s interesting because Kamala Harris says, I’ve prosecuted people like Trump. I know men like that. No, I know him,” she said, stressing Trump.“There’s one picture of me leaving the Roosevelt Room at the cabinet meeting. And I’m pointing to him and I’m saying, I’m leaving this meeting because with you, Mr President, all roads lead to Putin. [Milley’s] comment, ‘fascist to the core’, speaks to the actions that he has taken. Trivialize the press, fake news – that is a tactic of fascist governments.”She added that a possible repeat of January 6 was a key reason for the importance of Democrats at least winning the House in 2024. “Hakeem Jeffries must have the gavel, which means that we have the majority of the votes to accept the results of the electoral college for the peaceful transfer of power.”‘“Nobody could have ever seen an insurrection incited by the president of the United States. But an outsider, as a loser in this election, once again, he might try that.”Later in the interview, Pelosi said Trump’s name, then caught herself. “I said his name. Oh my gosh. I hope I don’t burn in hell.” More

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      US election briefing: Harris airs clips of her opponent while Trump hosts a ‘musical-fest’

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      With just over three-weeks until voting begins, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both campaigned in Pennsylvania, which promises the most electoral votes of any swing state. The Guardian’s poll tracker has Harris ahead by one point in the state.Harris spoke in Erie, a county that is one of the state’s most reliable bellwethers – its “boomerang” electorate has backed the election winner in the last four races. Harris played clips from Trump’s recent media appearances and condemned his call for the military to be deployed against opponents he labelled “the enemy within”. “He considers anyone who doesn’t support him, or who will not bend to his will, an enemy of our country,” Harris said at the rally. “This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America”.Trump meanwhile took questions from voters at a town hall in Philadelphia, but was twice interrupted by medical emergencies in the room. The former president then called for the event to be turned into a “musical-fest” and it continued with Trump standing on stage for 40 minutes, swaying to hits from his campaign playlist – including Hallelujah, November Rain and Nothing Compares 2 U – before walking off into the crowd. Fox News reporter Bryan Llenas called it a “very strange Trump Town Hall”. Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called it a “love fest” and “something very special”.Here is what else happened on Monday:

      Kamala Harris will do a sit-down interview with the broadcaster Fox News on Wednesday. The interview with Fox News’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, comes as Democrats have increased their presence on Fox News, part of a media spree and outreach to undecided voters.

      Donald Trump railed against a just released biopic about his life, in a social media screed early on Monday, calling it a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” meant to thwart his presidential candidacy.

      Kamala Harris has revealed a plan to give Black men more economic opportunities, as anxiety mounts in her campaign that some in the Black community are less supportive of the Democratic presidential ticket than in recent elections, and may sit this one out – or support Donald Trump.

      The White House said on Monday that the United States has been closely tracking Iranian threats against Trump for years and it warned of “severe consequences” if Tehran was to attack any US citizen. “We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority, and we strongly condemn Iran for these brazen threats. Should Iran attack any of our citizens, including those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences,” said White House national security council spokesperson Sean Savett.

      Arab Americans in Michigan are deserting Democrats over Gaza, according to reports. In past elections, Arab Americans were a solidly Democratic voting bloc, especially in the years after 9/11 and given Trump’s overtly anti-Muslim rhetoric. But with Kamala Harris reportedly “underwater” in Michigan, Muslim and Arab American communities across Michigan could play a major role in the outcome of the presidential election.

      The Arab American Political Action Committee said on Monday it could not endorse Harris or Trump, citing what it called their “blind support” for Israel in wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

      A man arrested on gun possession charges near a Donald Trump rally in California on Saturday, said that he was a major supporter of the former US president and would never harm him. “Yes, I’m 100% a Trump supporter,” the man, Vem Miller, told Fox News Digital in an interview.

      If Donald Trump wins the election, he is expected to pursue a spree of executions that could fast-track the cases of people on federal death row, and threaten the life of a man with a longstanding innocence claim. Advocates for people on death row fear a second Trump term could be worse than his first, which saw an unprecedented 13 federal executions. Under Trump, more people incarcerated in the federal system were put to death than under the previous 10 presidents combined, a staggering number that raised grave human rights concerns. More

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      The hurricanes shaking the US election – podcast

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      In the last few weeks, the United States has been hit by two hurricanes, Helene and Milton. Oliver Milman, an environment reporter for Guardian US, tells Michael Safi: “The rapid analysis found that global heating had caused the rains to be heavier, the winds to be stronger, and in both the cases of Helene and Milton. Storms of this size were made about twice as likely because of the climate crisis.” Why have these storms not put the climate crisis front and centre in the presidential campaign? Oliver tells Michael that the environment is a complicated issue for Democrats, because oil and gas production in the US has hit a record high under Joe Biden’s premiership. Oliver also discusses the disinformation and conspiracy theories that have been spread – in part by Donald Trump – in the aftermath of the hurricanes. Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More

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      Harris calls Trump a ‘risk for America’, after former president’s ‘enemy within’ remarks

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      Kamala Harris has said a second Trump term would be “a huge risk for America”, in a renewed effort to paint her Republican opponent as a threat to democracy, after the former president threatened to use US armed forces against those he has branded “the enemy within”.At her own campaign rally in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the US vice-president showed a montage of clips of Trump, including the former president saying “those people are more dangerous – the enemy from within – than Russia.”At a speech in Coachella in California on Saturday, Trump referred to Democratic opponents as “the enemy within”, saying they posed a bigger threat to the US than the country’s foreign foes, and targeted Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman who is running for the US Senate.In an interview on Fox News the following day, he repeated the phrase to describe those he claimed were planning to create “chaos” on the day of the presidential election. He said the military should be deployed against them.“A second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous. Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged,” Harris told the crowd in Erie, Pennsylvania, after playing the clip.She went on to say that Trump poses a danger because he believes those who do not agree with him are the enemy.At the same time, Harris’s campaign released a new campaign advert, titled The Enemy Within, featuring some of Trump’s recent ominous comments about his adversaries and warnings from two former members of his presidential administration about the danger he would pose if elected.The 30-second video, complete with footage of Trump walking in front of a row of helmeted riot officers and showing troops on the street during his presidency, tries to concentrate voters’ minds with contributions from Olivia Troye, a one-time national security adviser to Mike Pence, and Kevin Carroll, a former senior counsel in the Department of Homeland Security.“I do remember the day that he suggested that we shoot people on the streets,” Troye says in the ad, which is accompanied with a dramatic musical soundtrack.Carroll adds: “A second term will be worse. There will be no stopping his worst instincts. Unchecked power to no guardrails. If we elect Trump again, we’re in terrible danger.”Harris, who has embarked on a late-campaign round of high-profile interviews after being accused for weeks of avoiding the media, is seeking to highlight the increasingly authoritarian tone Trump has been striking at his rallies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s use of extreme language has coincided with an increase in his vitriol to describe Harris, who he last week described as “mentally impaired”. He called her “retarded” while addressing Republican fundraisers in September, the New York Times reported.Harris’s campaign is also trying to draw attention to what it says a dearth of mainstream interviews given by Trump, who instead has chosen to make himself available to sympathetic interviewers, such as the rightwing radio host Hugh Hewitt.“As of today, it has been **one month** since Trump’s been interviewed by a mainstream media outlet, as he has backed out of 60 Minutes and refuses to debate again,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams posted on Twitter/X.By contrast, Harris is due to be interviewed on Wednesday by Bret Baier on Fox News, an outlet that is usually a go-to platform for Trump but unfriendly terrain for Democrats. More

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      Kamala Harris agrees to interview with Fox News

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      Kamala Harris will do a sit-down interview with the rightwing broadcaster Fox News on Wednesday, the news channel announced on Monday, in the most dramatic moment yet in a recent media blitz by the Democratic presidential nominee.The interview with Fox News’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, comes as Democrats have increased their presence on Fox News, part of an outreach to undecided voters and after CBS News’s 60 Minutes became embroiled in a controversy when rightwing critics have said they edited an interview to make Harris appear more succinct.In a press release, Fox said the interview with the vice-president would take place on Wednesday 16 October and hit the airwaves on Special Report with Bret Baier and be broadcast at 6.00pm.Harris’s appearance comes after weeks of criticism that she was avoiding all but the softest of sit-downs, including with Oprah Winfrey, ABC’s morning talk-in The View, with the former shock jock Howard Stern and with Late Night’s Stephen Colbert.Harris has also appeared on the podcast Call Me Daddy. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is reported to be going on Joe Rogan’s Full Send before election day.The Fox announcement comes after the Time magazine owner, Marc Benioff, complained on Sunday that Harris had denied multiple interview requests. Benioff said the denial was “unlike every other presidential candidate”, including Biden and Trump.“We believe in transparency and publish each interview in full,” Benioff wrote on X. Why isn’t the Vice President engaging with the public on the same level?”Harris’s sit-down with Fox News will be her first formal interview with the network – but not the first for Democratic campaign surrogates. With at least three times the viewership of CNN and MSNBC, candidates looking for votes often make Fox a pragmatic choice.Nielsen Media Research shows Fox News is the highest-rated network in all swing states. According to a recent YouGov poll – 54% of Republicans, 22% of Democrats and 28% of independent voters had watched the cable station in the past month.Jessica Loker, vice-president of politics at the network, told Bloomberg that the network saw ratings go up when Democrats are on. Baier told Axios: “If you build it, they will come.”It’s also well-worn path for Democrats in this election cycle. The Transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has been on the network so often he introduced himself at the Democratic party convention in August with: “I’m Pete Buttigieg and you might recognize me from Fox News.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionButtigieg said he was proud to go on conservative outlets to speak on behalf of the Democrats because their arguments and facts might not otherwise be aired to a Fox audience.So too have the Democratic governors Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore and Gretchen Whitmer, and the senators Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, John Fetterman and Chris Coons also dropped in on the network.Harris appearance points to an effort to escape Democrats’ ideologically aligned media bubbles in the effort for votes.“We have so many hyper-close elections in swing states that even if you only get a point or two that you take away from Republicans and put in your column can be the 10,000 votes that give you that swing state,” the University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato told the Guardian last month. More