Candidates make final push in battleground states after Iowa poll shows Trump trailing Harris – US election live updates
Frantic campaigning by Trump amid Iowa poll shock
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the 2024 US presidential election as we move into the final hours before polls open on Tuesday.
It’s set to be a busy day for Donald Trump with appearances in three swing states and it comes amid a surprise setback in Iowa with a poll showing him trailing Kamala Harris in what was previously expected to be a safe state for the Republicans.
The Republican nominee will kick off this morning with a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, followed by an afternoon event in Kinston, North Carolina, and rounding the day off in Macon, Georgia.
Harris, meanwhile, will head to Michigan later today where the Democratic hopeful is due to speak at a campaign rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Last night, she broke from the campaign trail to embrace her reputation as a “joyful warrior” with a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live. Harris portrayed herself, appearing in a mirror opposite the actor Maya Rudolph, who first played her on the show in 2019 and has reprised the role this season.
If you missed it, you can read David Smith’s fun report here:
In other developments:
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A Georgia judge rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person. The lawsuit only targeted Fulton county, a Democratic stronghold. Trump falsely blamed Fulton county workers for his loss of the 2020 election in Georgia.
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Americans took to the streets in cities across the country for a day of women’s marches. Marches were planned in all 50 states for the eighth annual gathering, which began the day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017.
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Vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday. Kennedy said in a social media post that he would remove fluoride from all public water.
Key events
Donald Trump kept his speech short in Kinston, North Carolina, sticking to most of the talking points he uses during his rallies.
He accused Kamala Harris of ruining the economy, delivered anti-immigrant remarks, promising to impose harsher measures on the southern border, and encouraged members of the crowd to “fight, fight fight”.
FCC regulator claims Harris appearance on SNL violates ‘equal time’ rule
Edward Helmore
A US government communications regulator has claimed that Vice-President Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live violates “equal time” rules that govern political programming.
Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the federal communications commission (FCC), claimed on the social platform X that Harris’s appearance on the show “is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule”.
Carr made the claim in response to an Associated Press alert to Harris being on the show that night.
“The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns,” said Carr, who was nominated by both Trump and Biden and confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.
FCC guidelines state: “Equal opportunities generally means providing comparable time and placement to opposing candidates; it does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate.”
A spokesperson for the FCC issued a statement: “The FCC has not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”
Harris joined comedian Maya Rudolph at the start of the show in a sketch that skewered Donald Trump for his recent rally speeches, including wearing an orange and yellow safety jacket, a riff on the ongoing garbage controversy, and pretending to fellate a broken microphone.
Harris began her “mirror image” sketch opposite Rudolph, the SNL cast member selected to impersonate her, on the other side of a mirror.
“I’m just here to remind you, you got this, because you can do something your opponent can’t do – you can open doors,” Harris told Rudolph, seemingly referring to a video from earlier in the week in which Trump had struggled to reach the handle of a garbage truck he briefly rode in to a Wisconsin rally.
Here’s more on the claim by the FCC regulator:
Senator Raphael Warnock condemned Donald Trump after saying that, whether women like it or not, he will “protect women”.
Warnock told NBC News that the comment ‘sounds rather ominous coming from the mouth of a convicted sexual predator. We don’t need a predator, we need a president in the Oval Office, and that person is clearly Kamala Harris.’
Donald Trump holds rally in Kinston, North Carolina
Donald Trump started delivering his remarks in Kinston, North Carolina, about two hours behind schedule.
So far, he’s accused his opponent Kamala Harris of doing “the worst job ever on hurricane salvage and removal” and attacked Senate GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell.
“Hopefully we get rid of Mitch McConnell pretty soon,” Trump said. “Can you believe he endorsed me? Boy, that must’ve been a painful day in his life.”
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, said he expects the winner of the presidential election to be declared on election day.
In an interview with ABC News, the former president was asked whether he thought there was any way he could lose.
“Yeah, I guess, you know,” Trump said. “I guess you could lose, can lose. I mean, that happens, right? But I think I have a pretty substantial lead … Bad things could happen. You know, things happen, but it’s going to be interesting.”
He also told the outlet’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, that he has “a substantial lead” in the presidential race.
Kamala Harris dodged a question on whether she voted for California’s Proposition 36, which would make it easier for prosecutors to send repeat shoplifters and drug users to jail or prison, after submitting her ballot.
“I am not gonna talk about the vote on that because, honestly, it’s the Sunday before the election and I don’t intend to create an endorsement one way or the other,” Harris told reporters.
The measure would roll back provisions of Proposition 47, which downgraded low-level thefts and drug possession to misdemeanors.
Harris dodges if she voted for CA’s prop 36–a measure to up crime/drug penalties.
“I am not gonna talk about the vote on that because, honestly, it’s the Sunday before the election and I don’t intend to create an endorsement one way or the other”
pic.twitter.com/00AHqRIt0K— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) November 3, 2024
Trump says ‘I shouldn’t have left’ White House, despite losing 2020 election
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump told supporters that he should have stayed in the White House, despite his losing the 2020 election, while at Lititz in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Saturday.
The former president’s remarks were made during one of his final rallies of the campaign, where he also denounced public polls putting him behind his rival Kamala Harris and joked that reporters could take a bullet for him.
The comments were off script – an acknowledgment of how he has become increasingly uninhibited as the fatigue of doing multiple rallies a day has inexorably taken its toll.
Trump stayed on message for some of his remarks, saying illegal immigration was down and the economy was up when he was president. His team has noted with satisfaction for weeks that they remain the top two issues for undecided voters across the battleground states.
But Trump could not resist reverting to his most problematic impulses of describing Democrats as “demonic” and then lamenting about the 2020 election, an issue that polls poorly and his team had thought they had convinced him to let it go.
“We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” and then abruptly cut himself off.
The remark reflected what Trump told aides and allies in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat, a loss he has never conceded, and how he sat in at least one meeting at the end of his first term where he mused about refusing to leave the White House, a person familiar with the matter said.
Once Trump started on the 2020 election, he could not stop. He revived debunked conspiracy theories from 2020 and suggested anew that voting machines would be hacked, and efforts to extend polling hours in Pennsylvania – what his own team has pushed for – amounted to fraud.
Trump also spent time at the rally lashing out at a series of recent polls, notably a Des Moines Register poll in Iowa that put him four points behind Harris in the state of Iowa. Harris is universally not expected to win Iowa, but it could be indicative of her momentum in the final days.
Here’s more context on the rally:
The Harris campaign condemned former president Donald Trump’s comments at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier today, where he accused Democrats of stealing the elections from President Joe Biden and expressed it “should be illegal” to release polls that are bad for him.
“Trump is spending the closing days of his campaign angry and unhinged, lying about the election being stolen because he’s worried he will lose,” said Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign.
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth and will walk into the Oval Office focused on them – that’s Vice President Harris,” she added.
Donald Trump said Robert F Kennedy Jr’s proposal to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected “sounds OK to me”.
“Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me,” Trump told NBC News. “You know, it’s possible.”
Trump was asked whether banning certain vaccines would be an option during a second term, and he said he would talk to Kennedy and others before making a decision.
“But he’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” Trump said of the former independent presidential candidate.
Kamala Harris stopped by Kuzzo’s Chicken & Waffles in Michigan on Sunday, joined by the state’s governor Gretchen Whitmer and the mayor of Detroit Mike Duggan.
The visit comes as Harris campaigns around the Detroit area on Sunday, stopping by and delivering remarks at a church earlier today. A stop in East Lansing is also scheduled for later today.
Kamala Harris will have a star-studded set of events a day before the presidential elections
DJ Cassidy, Fat Joe, Freeway and Just Blaze, Lady Gaga, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Ricky Martin, The Roots, Jazmine Sullivan, Adam Blackstone, and Oprah Winfrey are slated to make appearances in support for the vice-president at an event in Pennsylvania on Monday.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, Fantasia Barrino, James Taylor, Remi Wolf, and Sugarland will also perform at a campaign event on election day eve.
Meanwhile, performances by 2 Chainz, Anthony Hamilton, Ciara, and Joy of Jesse & Joy, with remarks by Usher, will take place in Atlanta, Georgia.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign said that Trump’s comments about a potential assassin having to “shoot through” the press to get to him at a rally today had “nothing to do with the Media being harmed”.
“President Trump was brilliantly talking about the two assassination attempts on his own life,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director.
“President Trump was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also,” Cheung said.
During a rally in Pennsylvania earlier, Trump said:
I have this glass here. But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much.
He did not mention that the media should also have protective glass.
The Harris-Walz campaign announced a slew of election day Eve events, including rallies in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada.
In Arizona, Harris-Walz supporters will rally in Phoenix with a performance by the band La Original Banda El Limón. On Monday, the campaign will also hold an event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with D-Nice, Katy Perry and Andra Day slated to perform.
In Detroit, Michigan, the Detroit Youth Choir, Jon Bon Jovi, and The War and Treaty will take the stage in support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Eva Longoria is scheduled to make remarks at an event with performances by Christina Aguilera, Los Tigres Del Norte and SOFI TUKKER.
Kamala Harris delivers remarks at a Sunday service in Detroit
Kamala Harris delivered remarks at the Greater Emmanuel Institutional church of God in Christ in Detroit, Michigan.
Harris is making several stops in Michigan and is slated to hold a rally in East Lansing later today.
“So church, in just two days we have the power to decide the fate of our nation, for generations to come,” Harris said at Sunday’s service.
Harris said that God’s plan is to “heal us and bring us together as nation”, but that it is not enough to believe in those plans, we “must act”.
“Not enough to only pray, not enough to just talk, we must act on the plans he has in store for us. And we must make them real through our works, in our daily choices, in service to our communities and yes, in our democracy,” the Democratic nominee said.
Former president Donald Trump concluded his remarks in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, home to the largest Amish community in the country.
Later today, Trump is scheduled to hold another rally in Kinston, North Carolina, at 2pm ET. Four-and-a-half hours later, he’s scheduled to deliver remarks in Macon, Georgia.
More than 100 former US senators, members of Congress, governors, top-ranking military veterans, and White House officials released a bipartisan statement emphasizing the importance of American trust in elections and the peaceful transfer of power.
“Election workers must be supported, not threatened. Upholding public confidence in how elections work and in the members of our communities across the country who are working tirelessly to administer safe and secure elections strengthens us as a nation,” they wrote.
Some of the signatories include former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, former defense secretary Leon Panetta, former director of national intelligence Dan Coats, and retired Gen Stanley McChrystal.
Donald Trump invited David McCormick, the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania for the US Senate, to the stage.
McCormick took a stab at his opponent Bob Casey, calling him a candidate “born with a silver political spoon in his mouth”.
Polls show the Democratic incumbent ahead in the race.
Former president Donald Trump told a crowd in Lititz, Pennsylvania, that he wouldn’t mind if a shooter were to “shoot through” the press.
“To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much,” Trump said.
He also called the press “seriously corrupt people”.
