Poll finds Harris viewed more favorably than Trump, former president losing edge on economy
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released this morning contained some positive news for Kamala Harris, though there’s no telling if it is predictive of the election outcome.
The survey found that Harris is viewed more favorably than Donald Trump, including among the independent voters that could decide the seven swing states. It also reported that Trump no longer appears to have the advantage he once did on handling of economic issues, even though the former president has made that a centerpiece of his campaign with accusations that Democratic policies have driven up prices. That’s one of two main messages he’s been pushing, along with promises to crack down on migrants – an area on which the poll finds Trump maintains his advantage.
Here’s what it found about the two candidates’ favorability:
Registered voters’ opinions of the candidates have not changed much since last month. In general Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are viewed more positively than Trump or JD Vance. A large majority of Democratic voters have positive views of Harris and Walz, and Republicans voters feel favorably toward Trump and Vance. Independent voters are closely divided in their opinion of Harris while most have a negative view of Trump. Independent voters have similar opinions about both vice-presidential candidates.
When it comes to economic issues, 40% of registered voters trust Harris to handle the cost of groceries and gas, and 42% trust Trump. Six percent trust both equally, and 12% neither. On the cost of housing, Harris is more trusted with 42% support to Trump’s 37%, while 7% truth both and 14% trust neither.
Key events
Kamala Harris will sit for an interview with NBC News tomorrow from her home at the Naval Observatory in Washington DC, the network announced.
The vice-president will speak to Hallie Jackson as she steps up her interviews and media appearances ahead of the 5 November election.
The interview is set to air at 6.30pm on Tuesday.
Poll finds Harris viewed more favorably than Trump, former president losing edge on economy
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released this morning contained some positive news for Kamala Harris, though there’s no telling if it is predictive of the election outcome.
The survey found that Harris is viewed more favorably than Donald Trump, including among the independent voters that could decide the seven swing states. It also reported that Trump no longer appears to have the advantage he once did on handling of economic issues, even though the former president has made that a centerpiece of his campaign with accusations that Democratic policies have driven up prices. That’s one of two main messages he’s been pushing, along with promises to crack down on migrants – an area on which the poll finds Trump maintains his advantage.
Here’s what it found about the two candidates’ favorability:
Registered voters’ opinions of the candidates have not changed much since last month. In general Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are viewed more positively than Trump or JD Vance. A large majority of Democratic voters have positive views of Harris and Walz, and Republicans voters feel favorably toward Trump and Vance. Independent voters are closely divided in their opinion of Harris while most have a negative view of Trump. Independent voters have similar opinions about both vice-presidential candidates.
When it comes to economic issues, 40% of registered voters trust Harris to handle the cost of groceries and gas, and 42% trust Trump. Six percent trust both equally, and 12% neither. On the cost of housing, Harris is more trusted with 42% support to Trump’s 37%, while 7% truth both and 14% trust neither.
The Washington Post released a comprehensive new poll this morning that tells us … not much new.
For weeks, surveys of swing states have found Donald Trump and Kamala Harris effectively tied, and the Post’s poll, conducted with George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, is no different. The two candidates are neck-in-neck nationally, and within the poll’s margin of error in the seven states that are expected to decide the election.
Here’s what they found:
A Washington Post-Schar School poll of more than 5,000 registered voters, conducted in the first half of October, finds 47 percent who say they will definitely or probably support Harris while 47 percent say they will definitely or probably support Trump. Among likely voters, 49 percent support Harris and 48 percent back Trump.
Trump’s support is little changed from the 48 percent he received in a spring survey of six key states using the same methodology, but Harris’s standing is six percentage points higher than the 41-percent support registered for President Joe Biden, who was then a candidate.
…
Among these key-state voters, Harris runs strongest in Georgia, where she has an advantage of six percentage points among registered voters and four points among likely voters, which is within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Harris also is slightly stronger than Trump in the three most contested northern states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — but by percentages within the margin of error.
The seventh battleground state, Nevada, is tied among likely voters though Harris is three points stronger than Trump among registered voters.
Our own poll tracker reaches much the same conclusion:
We reported earlier that Kamala Harris has a huge advantage in campaign cash over Donald Trump. But the former president has his own deep-pocketed backer in the former of Tesla boss Elon Musk, who held a strange town hall in swing state Pennsylvania this weekend where he started handing out mammoth checks to voters to get them to back Trump. The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland witnessed the spectacle in person:
Standing before a large US flag, which spanned the breadth of a vast stage, the world’s richest man told an assembled crowd that he loved them.
“This kind of energy lights a fire in my soul,” he said, having just made one of the crowd a millionaire after everyone chanted his name.
His love – and that $1m – of course, was contingent on them all doing exactly as Elon Musk wanted: signing a petition tied to his political action committee (Pac) , which is dedicated to sending Donald Trump back to the White House.
The spectacle was both surreal and potentially illegal. But no one here, not least Musk himself, seemed to care in the slightest.
The billionaire was in Pittsburgh on his final stop across the vital swing state of Pennsylvania, having donated $75m to help get Trump re-elected, and seemingly willing to accept a job offer in Trump’s government should he win.
Musk’s latest ploy to assist Trump to attain more political power, has been to give away $1m every day to a member of the public, provided they also live in a swing state and are registered to vote.
The stunt is prohibited and akin to buying votes, in the view of some experts, as it violates federal election law preventing payments for registering to vote. The state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, on Sunday described it as “deeply concerning” and encouraged law enforcement to “take a look at”. Musk’s America Pac did not respond to a list of questions from the Guardian after the Pittsburgh town hall.
In a statement released as his administration announced a proposed rule that would allow women to receive birth control without a prescription under the Affordable Care Act, Joe Biden signaled that the move was part of an effort to highlight the differences between the two parties on the issue.
“Since Roe v Wade was overturned more than two years ago, Republican elected officials have made clear they want to ban or restrict birth control, defund federal programs that help women access contraception, and repeal the Affordable Care Act. And Congressional Republicans have repeatedly blocked federal legislation to safeguard the fundamental right to birth control for women in every state. It’s unacceptable,” the president said, continuing:
Today, my Administration is taking a major step to expand contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act. This new action would help ensure that millions of women with private health insurance can access the no-cost contraception they need. Vice President Harris and I have worked tirelessly to protect and build on the Affordable Care Act. We lowered costs for Marketplace coverage by an average of $800 per year for millions of Americans, and more Americans than ever before have signed up for health insurance through the law.
At a time when contraception access is under attack, Vice President Harris and I are resolute in our commitment to expanding access to quality, affordable contraception. We believe that women in every state must have the freedom to make deeply personal health care decisions, including the right to decide if and when to start or grow their family. We will continue to fight to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore reproductive freedom and safeguard the right to contraception once and for all.
While the Biden administration has moved to expand contraception access, Donald Trump, if returned to the White House, will likely pursue policies that make it harder to access reproductive care, particularly abortions. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Carter Sherman:
When Jennifer Adkins and her husband were considering having a second child in Idaho, they vaguely thought how the state’s near-total abortion ban could affect them. But Adkins’ first pregnancy had gone so smoothly, she didn’t even use an epidural when she gave birth. Her next pregnancy, she expected, would be similar.
But in April 2023, 12 weeks into her second pregnancy, an ultrasound scan shattered that hope.
The ultrasound indicated a litany of issues with the fetus, whom Adkins and her husband had taken to calling “Spooky”, since Adkins’ due date was Halloween. Spooky, Adkins learned, showed multiple signs of a chromosomal disorder as well as dangerously severe swelling. Together, these conditions usually lead to a miscarriage or death shortly after delivery, Adkins’ doctors told her. And if the pregnancy continued, Adkins herself was at risk of developing life-threatening pre-eclampsia and swelling.
As the mother of a toddler son, Adkins was not willing to take that chance.
“I don’t think that you understand, until you are in that situation, how scary and how awful that actually is,” Adkins said during a recent interview at a coffee shop outside Boise.
Under Idaho law, abortions are permitted in medical emergencies. But although Adkins’ health was in jeopardy, her doctors didn’t believe her case was enough of an emergency to legally end the pregnancy. They were too afraid of Idaho’s ban to even refer her to an out-of-state abortion clinic.
So Adkins and her husband frantically called clinics in Washington, Oregon and Utah, trying to find somewhere within driving distance that was not booked up for weeks with other patients fleeing the abortion bans now blanketing the US. The couple also scrambled for financial support to pay for the procedure and travel. If they had to shoulder all those costs on their own, the family would be at risk of being unable to afford their mortgage.
“We’re thinking about all these logistics when all you want to think about is grieving the loss of a baby that you really wanted,” Adkins said. “None of us feel good about making that decision. But it is a loving choice that we should be able to make for our family.”
Harris cheers proposal to expand contraception coverage under Obamacare
The Biden administration has proposed allowing women with private health insurance to receive birth control without a prescription, in a major expansion of contraception access.
The rule is under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and comes as Kamala Harris and Democrats nationwide seek to make voters aware of their support for reproductive rights ahead of the 5 November election.
Here’s what Harris had to say about the proposed rule:
Today, our Administration is proposing the largest expansion of contraception coverage in more than a decade. This new proposed rule will build on our Administration’s work to protect reproductive freedom by providing millions of women with more options for the affordable contraception they need and deserve. That includes coverage for no-cost over-the-counter contraception without a prescription for the first time in our nation’s history. These lower contraception costs would be in addition to the billions of dollars that women have already saved on contraception under the Affordable Care Act which President Biden and I have strengthened since taking office.
On Thursday, former Democratic US President, Barack Obama, is expected to campaign with Kamala Harris in Georgia, a state Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020. Michelle Obama plans to join Harris for a rally – to encourage people to get out and vote – in Michigan on Saturday as early voting begins in the state that helped propel Donald Trump to victory in 2016, before Biden took it back in 2020.
Barack Obama, who become America’s first black president when he was elected in 2008, campaigned for Harris for the first time, appearing alone in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in early October. He held a rally for Harris in Las Vegas over the weekend on the first day of early voting in Nevada.
As my colleague Michael Sainato notes in this story, the Obamas and Harris have a friendship stretching over two decades.
Harris was an early supporter of Obama’s presidential campaign in the closely contested 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, and one of the few elected officials in California to back him over Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination.
Trump allies spending millions to dissuade voters in key states from polls
Peter Stone
Key rightwing legal groups with ties to Donald Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states that are already sowing distrust of election processes and pushing dangerous conspiracy theories, election watchdogs warn.
They also warn that the groups appear to be laying the groundwork for a concerted challenge to the result of November’s presidential election if Trump is defeated by Kamala Harris.
America First Legal and the Public Interest Legal Foundation together reaped more than $30m dollars from the Wisconsin based Bradley Impact Fund and its parent, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, from 2017 through 2022, according to a financial analysis from the Center for Media and Democracy.
Lawsuits filed by the groups, which overlap with some Republican party litigation, focus in part on conspiratorial charges of non-citizen voting, which is exceedingly rare, and bloated voter rolls, and pre-sage more lawsuits by Trump if his presidential run fails, in an echo of his 2020 election-denialist claims, say watchdogs.
“It seems clear that the lawsuits these rightwing groups are bringing attacking the integrity of the voting rolls, methods of voting and how the ballots are counted are an attempt to make it harder for people to vote, disenfranchise and intimidate legitimate voters, and create confusion,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission.
Noble added: “At the same time, they also appear to be laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the election after November 5, if Trump loses.”
You can read the full story here:
Trump to campaign in North Carolina as Harris visits three swing states
As we mentioned in the opening summary, Donald Trump will be campaigning in North Carolina – a crucial swing state – today.
The Republican presidential nominee is visiting the city of Asheville to survey the damage Hurricane Helene brought last month.
Communities in western North Carolina have been reeling since the storm ravaged the region, killing about 100 people and destroying homes and causing widespread power outages.
Trump has falsely accused Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of deliberately diverting assistance away from Republican areas.
As well as visiting Asheville, Trump will be holding a rally in Greenville this afternoon, before attending a meeting of 11th Hour Faith leaders, alongside his son Eric and Dr Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, former US housing secretary, in Concord. You can keep up-to-date with Trump’s campaign schedule here.
Kamala Harris, meanwhile, will join Republican Congresswoman and vocal Trump opponent Liz Cheney in Chester County, Pennsylvania, for a campaign event before heading to Waukesha County, Wisconsin, and Oakland County, Michigan.
There are mounting concerns from Trump’s Republican allies that crippling damage from Hurricane Helene will depress turnout in the battleground state’s conservative mountain regions.
Trump won about 62% of the vote in 2020 in the 25 counties declared to be a disaster area after Helene, while Biden won about 51% in the remainder of the state. New emergency voting arrangements have been put in place by the state board of election covering some of the most devastated counties.
The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average shows North Carolina is too tight to call with confidence, with Harris, the US vice president and Democratic nominee, trailing behind Trump by 0.7 percentage points.
More than one million North Carolinians have already voted in the November general election, according to estimates. More than 400 early voting sites opened as scheduled on Thursday.
New finance filings show Harris campaign’s huge financial advantage in presidential race
The Harris campaign reported raising $221.8m (£170.4m) in September, compared to Trump’s campaign raising $62.7m (£48.2m), the Washington Post reported after new federal campaign finance filings showed her huge financial advantage in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.
The Federal Election Commission filings, released yesterday, also showed that the Democratic National Committee raised $98.6m (£76m) last month, compared to the Republican National Committee raising $37.8m (£29m).
The Washington Post reported:
New reports filed on Tuesday showed that Harris’s primary fundraising vehicle for big-dollar donations, the Harris Victory Fund, brought in a staggering $633m (£486m) during the third quarter. That was more than four times as much as the $145m (£111m) that the victory fund’s GOP counterpart, the Trump 47 committee, brought in, according to reports filed last week.
Despite that huge spending edge and Harris’s sprawling ground game, her campaign has still struggled to significantly outpace Trump in key swing state polls. The vice president’s campaign has a much larger footprint than Trump’s, which relies on outside groups to help it turn out voters, and her advisers are worried about whether they will have enough money to secure victory. Harris’s advisers believe that the race remains close in all of the key swing states, and point to the high cost of targeting hard-to-reach and infrequent voters in seven very different states.
Harris is running a campaign that is about three times the size of Trump’s operation, spending more money on ads and having more staff, volunteers and a larger surrogate operation than her Republican opponent, according to a Washington Post analysis of campaign spending.
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, is making an unexpected visit to Ukraine today to reaffirm Washington’s support of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he meets him later.
Austin is also expected to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov. US backing is crucial if Kyiv is to get support from other allies for proposals Zelenskyy believes are necessary to strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield and ahead of any peace negotiations.
There are concerns that a second Trump administration could suspend military support for Kyiv, at a time when Ukraine is in desperate need for financial support and military equipment, much of which is supplied by the US. Kamala Harris seems set to follow Joe Biden’s policy towards Ukraine, supplying Kyiv with military aid and supporting them diplomatically. She has ruled out meeting one-on-one with Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine unless leaders from Kyiv are involved.
“It’s been absolutely remarkable that Ukraine has been able to do what it’s done,” Austin told reporters.
“It’s been able to do that, of course, because of the fact that we have supported them from the very beginning, and we’ve rallied some 50 countries to be a part of that support,” he added.
Kamala Harris says Donald Trump’s language ‘demeans office of the presidency’
Good morning, US politics readers.
There are now only 15 days to go until voting day and the attacks traded between the two presidential candidates – Kamala Harris (D) and Donald Trump (R) – are intensifying. On Sunday, Harris celebrated her 60th birthday and gave an interview with Rev Al Sharpton on MSNBC.
Sharpton asked her about Trump calling her a “shit vice-president” at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Harris, who became the first black vice-president and woman in the role after Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election, responded:
The American people deserve so much better. That is how I come at it. And to your point, the President of the United States must set a standard – not only for our nation but understanding the standard we as a nation must set for the world.
We representing the United States of America walk into rooms around the world with the earned and self-appointed authority to talk about the importance of democracy, of rule of law and have been thought of as a role model … of what it means to be committed to certain standards, including international rules and norms, but also standards of decorum.
And what you see in my opponent, a former President of the United States, demeans the office. And I have said – and I am very clear about this – Donald Trump should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States. He has not earned the right … and that is why he is going to lose.
The presidential race is essentially deadlocked, both nationally and in so-called battleground states. The contest on 5 November will be decided by the slimmest of margins. In order to appeal to voters in the critical swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), both Trump and Harris are trying to appeal to moderate, swing voters and ensure their bases are enthused enough to go out and vote.
Later today, Harris will be targeting suburban Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – holding a series of conversations with Republican Liz Cheney that will be moderated by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative radio host Charlie Sykes.
Trump has three North Carolina stops on Monday, including a visit to see storm damage in Asheville. He beat Biden in the state by 1.3% in 2020, but the polls this year are extremely tight, giving the Democrats a rare chance of winning the state.