Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have addressed crowds in North Carolina – a swing state that could be crucial in deciding who ends up in the Oval Office – ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Sunday 3 November 2024 08:58, UK
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With just days left before election day, here is where the presidential candidates are today…
Kamala Harris
The vice president is in Michigan today, a swing state which has picked the winning presidential candidate in the last two elections.
She will host a rally in East Lansing rally at 11.30pm (UK time).
Donald Trump
The former president will start his day in Lititz, Pennsylvania – another swing state.
He will then visit Kinston in North Carolina and Macon in Georgia.
Pennsylvania proved pivotal in the 2020 election, when it backed Joe Biden and is considered by some pundits to be a key state on the electoral battleground map.
We brought you the report overnight that Kamala Harris had pulled ahead of Donald Trump in a poll in Iowa, a state Donald Trump easily won in 2016 and 2020.
Here is what we know…
The vice president has a three-point lead in the midwestern state, according to a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll of 808 likely voters.
“The poll shows that women – particularly those who are older or who are politically independent – are driving the late shift toward Harris,” the poll said.
The poll shows Ms Harris leading Mr Trump 47% to 44%.
It has a 3.4 percentage point margin of error and follows another Iowa Poll in September that gave Mr Trump a four-point lead, the newspaper reported.
Taking Iowa would give the winner six Electoral College votes, with 270 needed to become president.
Both contenders for the US presidency have been concentrating on key battleground states such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as they seek to pull ahead in a tight race for the White House.
You can read more here…
Kamala Harris appeared on the Saturday Night Live TV comedy show yesterday.
The presidential hopeful appeared as the mirror image of herself alongside actress Maya Rudolph, who reprised her role impersonating the vice president, during the show’s cold open.
Ms Harris was scheduled to be heading to Detroit, Michigan before her campaign revealed she was making an unscheduled stop in New York City.
The final show before Tuesday’s election opened on a CNN parody, before cutting to a Trump rally with Austin Johnson portraying the former president and his most recent Liz Cheney remarks.
It then cut to a conversation between Rudolph as Ms Harris and the vice president herself.
The pair give each other a pep talk before resolving to “end the dram-ala” and “keep Kamala and carry on-a-la”.
You can watch the full segment below…
Donald Trump yesterday addressed a crowd in Greensboro, North Carolina.
He has been rallying supporters in North Carolina – the only swing state that he won in both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns – ahead of Tuesday’s election.
During his speech, the former president encouraged supporters to vote early or in person on Tuesday, saying “we’re winning by a lot. But, you know, you can lose by a little.”
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris headlined a star-studded event, following musical performances from Jon Bon Jovi and Khalid.
She was interrupted by protesters but used the moments to emphasise her campaign theme of democracy, and said she would work as president to end the war in Gaza.
It was the fourth day in a row that the candidates campaigned in the same state.
We’re back with our live coverage of the US election on the final weekend of campaigning.
Before we get started with today’s events, let’s run you through some lines you may have missed:
Thanks for following along tonight, that’s it for our live coverage for now.
Before we go, let’s summarise what happened this evening.
North Carolina hosts both candidates
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris spoke in North Carolina – a swing state that could be crucial in deciding who ends up in the Oval Office in January.
Its importance wasn’t lost on Mr Trump, who told his crowd in Gastonia: “If we win this state, we’re gonna win the whole ball game.”
“We have overcome every attack, every abuse and even two assassination attempts,” he added. “And now it all comes down to this.”
Ms Harris meanwhile headlined a star-studded event in the Old North State, following musical performances from Jon Bon Jovi and Khalid.
She was interrupted by protesters but used the moments to emphasise her campaign theme of democracy, and said she would work as president to end the war in Gaza.
“It’s alright, y’all,” she responded. “Democracy can be complicated. This is what democracy looks like.”
Early votes surpass 70m
A little over 73.5 million people have already voted in the election, according to the latest figures from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
The figure is below the record set in 2020 of 101.5 million, though this figure was impacted COVID-19.
It is, however, greater than the number of early votes cast in 2016 (47.2m) and 2012 (46.2m).
Shock poll puts Harris ahead in Iowa
A shock new weekend poll from Iowa suggests Ms Harris has leapfrogged Mr Trump, taking a three-point lead in the midwestern state.
The poll, for the Des Moines Register/Mediacom, shows
Ms Harris leading Mr Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters.
The Democrats had all but written off the state and the Republicans had assumed victory to be near certain. Neither candidate has campaigned in Iowa since the primaries in the summer.
In both 2016 and 2020 the state delivered Donald Trump a solid victory.
By Jess Sharp, live news reporter in Washington DC
The economy, war in the Middle East, and immigration are just some of the issues voters have mentioned to me today, but for Kelsye Adams the most important issue in this election is getting statehood for DC.
The organising director of DC Vote is just one of the many people that have headed to Metrobar to share their message.
Washington DC, despite being home to the federal government buildings, is not and has never been a state.
Instead, Washington is a city inside the District of Columbia territory.
This means, residents do not have any elected officials in the Senate, and the area’s House representative does not have full voting powers.
Kelsye explained to me that the district has no representation in government, despite having a bigger population than two states.
“We are the only country where the people who live in its nation’s capital doesn’t have a voice in the federal government,” she said.
“You would think that America was the hegemon, and based on all these principles of freedom and democracy, I guess we left out fairness, because we forgot 700,000 Americans.
“This is a target on people of colour. We did nothing but be born, and they say we can’t have a voice in congress and ‘no senator for you’.”
The 33-year-old said that DC was made to house the federal government after an insurrection during the creation of the constitution in Philadelphia in 1776.
But she added that the January 6 riots showed it was no longer a “safe space” for elected officials.
“It was created to protect the federal government from being insurrected, but it was insurrected and a lack of statehood is why it couldn’t defend itself,” she said, explaining that the mayor was unable to call the national guard.
“If we had been a state, we would have avoided an insurrection,” she added.
So what has all of this got to do with the presidential election?
In order to become a state, a bill has to be passed by congress or the president.
“When you think about power, gaining anything in a political space, there has to be a shift of power, and nobody wants to be the person who lost power,” Kelsye said.
“We know for a fact that Harris will be fighting for DC statehood.”
I asked what she thought a Trump presidential would mean for her cause, and she said it “would be chaotic for DC for sure”.
She stressed the importance of voting, saying she wants “folks in the 50 states” to realise Washingtonians do not have a representative who can fight for them.
“If you don’t want to fight, that is perfectly fine, but what I ask people to do is to vote for him. The fact that I don’t have representation in congress is just a furious feeling,” she added.
Harrison Ford has endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the presidential election in a series of videos posted online today.
The actor, best known as the titular character in the Indiana Jones franchise and as Han Solo in Star Wars, does not typically endorse political candidates but did endorse Joe Biden in 2020.
“I’m Harrison Ford – I’ve got one vote – same as anybody else, and I’m going to use it to move forward. I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris,” he said in a video released in conjunction with the Harris-Walz campaign.
“When dozens of former members of the Trump administration are sounding alarms, saying, ‘for god’s sake, don’t do this again,’ you have to pay attention,” Ford stated.
“They’re telling us something important. These aren’t soft people. They’re governors, generals, standing up against the leader of the party they spent their lives advocating for.”
Donald Trump has just taken to the stage in North Carolina.
The former president has already appeared in the battleground state once already today, and is back again following a pit-stop in Pennsylvania.
He walks out to the theme music used by WWE wrestler The Undertaker.
“We’re winning by so much,” he says.
Mr Trump has already won North Carolina twice before, and polls suggest he has a slight lead over Kamala Harris.
He references Hurricane Helene, which caused at least 101 reported deaths in North Carolina and significant destruction of infrastructure and residential areas.
Mr Trump gets cheers from the crowd when he says Ms Harris’s response to the disaster was “a disgrace and a betrayal of her duty”.
He then repeats a falsehood that FEMA money was handed to immigrants by Democrats instead of going to victims of the hurricane.
In his closing statements, Mr Trump refers to his stream of consciousness style of rhetoric, which he refers to as ‘weaving’.
“They used to say, ‘he’s the greatest rambler’. No, I’m not rambling, it’s genius,” he says.
Donald Trump Jr. slammed the media at a Republican campaign event in Arizona earlier today.
He was speaking alongside JD Vance at an ammunition manufacturer in Scottsdale, where the son of the former president called the press “full-on propaganda”.
“Whatever disdain you have for the media, it is not enough,” he added.
Donald Trump announced he had sued CBS on Thursday, alleging the network’s editing of a recent “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris was “deceitful”.
The network called Mr Trump’s claims “completely without merit.”
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