Election polls live updates: Harris clings to lead over Trump as Vance, Walz campaign in battleground Wisconsin

According to prediction market Polymarket the closest state in the election is likely to be Wisconsin.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a fiercely close race and seven swing states are nearly tied in the polls.

According to the betting 18 percent think Wisconsin will end up being the closest state race.

Joint second favorites are Pennsylvania and Nevada with a 14 percent likelihood of being the closest.

Vice President Kamala Harris warned black men away from supporting Donald Trump for president, suggesting they were falling for a false promise that the former president cared about them.

Harris spoke about Trump and his appeal to black men in an interview released Monday with former NFL star Shannon Sharpe on his ‘Club Shay Shay’ podcast.

‘Don’t think you in Donald Trump’s club … you’re not. He not gonna be thinkin’ about you,’ Harris said. ‘You think he’s having you over for dinner?’

Harris appeared on the podcast and toasted Sharpe with a glass of Le Portier Cognac but said she would not drink it, citing the need to stay awake for a rally with former President Barack Obama later in the day.

President Joe Biden has voted early in the presidential election months after he dramatically dropped out and Kamala Harris replaced him on the Democratic ticket.

The 81-year-old president joined the almost 50 million Americans who have already cast their ballots in what could be one of the closest races in history.

The polls are deadlocked with just eight days left of the campaign as Donald Trump and Harris focusing on the seven swing states that will likely decide the winner.

Biden also took a swipe at Elon Musk for handing out $1million checks to registered voters as he left.

‘Tell him I’m registered,’ the president quipped as he proudly showed off his ‘I voted’ sticker to the press.

As he entered the polling station in New Castle he walked past a voter in a MAGA hat with the message ‘elected that motha f***er’ again.

The commander-in-chief looked like an any ordinary citizen as he stood on line with agents from his Secret Service detail and greeted a woman in a wheelchair.

When he went to cast his ballot, he showed his driver’s license to staff, unprompted.

Donald Trump’s campaign says it didn’t see Tony Hinchcliffe’s offensive jokes in advance of his speech at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

The comedian ignited controversy when he called Puerto Rico a ‘floating pile of garbage,’ joked that he wants immigrants to ‘go back,’ and made a crude joke about Latinos, who he said ‘love making babies, too.’

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Monday the joke was ‘in poor taste’ and doesn’t reflect the views of Trump or the campaign, which said Monday it had not vetted the speech.

The comedian known as Kill Tony does have a reputation for controversy and appeared to be reading some of his remarks from a teleprompter, although he also carried a notecard and appeared to be speaking off the cuff when he made a watermelon joke in reference to a black audience member.

Virginia is taking a battle over noncitizen voting – which is illegal – to the Supreme Court.

On Friday, a federal judge ruled the commonwealth needed to stop removing around 1,600 self-identified ‘noncitizen’ voters from the rolls.

The voters were removed under a state program, but federal law requires states stop systemically removing names of ineligible voters from rolls within 90 days of an election to avoid errors for eligible voters.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin directed his Attorney General Jason Miyares to appeal the ruling to the highest court to try and get the matter resolved quickly before the election.

The filing was submitted to the Supreme Court on Monday.

More than 1.3 million people have already voted in Virginia, where Harris is holding a six-point lead over Trump according to polling averages.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent in Philadelphia

A joke about Puerto Rico being a ‘floating island of garbage’ could have long last effects on Donald Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania of all places.

Puerto Ricans living on the island don’t get to vote in the presidential election but those living in the mainland United States do get to cast their ballot – and many live in the battleground state that could decide the election.

About 580,000 Latinos in Pennsylvania can vote this cycle and most of them are Puerto Rican, according to UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute. The state is home to the third-largest population of Puerto Ricans outside the island.

Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by 81,000 votes in the 2020 election. Trump won it by 44,000 votes in the 2016 contest. Both of those numbers are smaller than the Latino population of the state, showing how close the margin could be on November 5th.

Portland police are investigating after a ballot box in Portland was lit on fire. Another in Vancouver, Washington was also lit on fire early Monday morning.

In Portland, police determined an ‘incendiary device’ was put inside the ballot box to ignite the fire, according to a local report.

In Vancouver, flames and smoke were spotted coming out of a ballot box.

The Clark County elections auditor told a local station that the last ballots were picked up there at 11am on Saturday. Hundreds of ballots were inside at the time it was set on fire, and only a few may be saved.

Voters who could be impacted should reach out to their local election offices. They could be eligible to fill out a provisional ballot to make sure their vote counts in such situations.

About 43.3 million Americans have already cast their ballot in the 2024 election, according to the University of Florida’s election lab.

About half of those votes were in person and about a half were mail-in ballots.

More Democrats have voted than Republicans – 40% to 36%. And more women than men have voted – 54% to 44%.

A reminder: while early voting says who has voted, it does indicate how they have voted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Postal Service warned that voters casting their ballots by mail should have them at the post office by Tuesday to ensure they are delivered by Election Day in states with a Nov. 5 deadline.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter in Michigan:

Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday condemned the racist remarks made at the Donald Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.

The Democratic presidential nominee spoke to reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews before heading to Michigan on Monday.

‘It is absolutely something that is intended to and is fanning the fuel of trying to divide our country,’ Harris said.

The vice president said what Trump did last night ‘is not a discovery.’

‘It is more of the same and maybe more vivid than usual,’ she said.

She accused Trump of trying to get Americans to point fingers at each other full-time and ‘fans the fuel of hate and division.’

She argued that’s why people are exhausted with him.

The vice president also promoted her plan for Puerto Rico, which she unveiled on Sunday, and touted the support of Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez claiming it came before the ‘nonsense last night’ at Trump’s rally.

Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Elon Musk is being sued for his sweepstakes giving $1 million daily to voters in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner filed a lawsuit on Monday to stop the Tesla billionaire from engaging in his ‘illegal lottery.’

Musk kicked off last week a daily giveaway where a different registered voter who signed a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments would receive $1 million every day until Election Day on November 5.

But Philadelphia’s DA claimed in the lawsuit on Monday that Musk’s initiative violated federal laws that bans giving away money to incentivize people to register to vote or vote in an election.

Musk announced winners last weekend and through the beginning of the week, but stopped doing so on Wednesday and Thursday after the Justice Department warned the Space X and X CEO that he was likely breaking the law.

The winners since then have all been in swing states other than Pennsylvania – like Arizona and Michigan.

‘America PAC and Musk must be stopped, immediately, before the upcoming Presidential Election on Nov. 5,’ Krasner’s lawsuit read. ‘That is because America PAC and Musk hatched their illegal lottery scheme to influence voters in that election.’

Krasner is a progressive prosecutor who often faces backlash from Republicans.

Musk celebrates on stage as he hands a $1 million check to Kristine Fishell at Roxain Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 20, 2024

San Francisco 49ers star Nick Bosa delivered a clear message during Sunday Night Football ahead of the US presidential election.

With voters across America set to hit the polls in just over a week’s time, the defensive lineman made it clear who he will be casting his ballot for.

The 27-year-old crashed teammates Brock Purdy, George Kittle and Isaac Guerendo’s post-win interview live on NBC to show his support for Donald Trump.

Bosa interrupted the interview to poke his head between the quarterback and reporter Melissa Stark to show off his cap, which read, ‘Make America Great Again’ – the infamous slogan of the Republican candidate.

He repeatedly pointed to the cap, before Stark laughed off the interruption, saying: ‘Alright, Nick Bosa with a message there.’

Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

New Hampshire is not a state that Donald Trump or Kamala Harris are actively courting as its considered a deeply blue state that likely won’t flip for the former president.

But new polling this week reveals that the New England state might be leaning more red than in previous years.

Although a tiny advantage, Trump is ahead of Harris in New Hampshire by 0.4 of a point – 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent – well within the New Hampshire Journal poll’s margin of error.

With less than 1 million voters in the 2016 election, New Hampshire voted by only a 0.3 percent margin for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Then in 2020, the blue-leaning margin widened with the state going 7.34 percent for Joe Biden over Trump.

The difference between the years was that approximately 80,000 more people voted in New Hampshire from 2016 to 2020 – and around 60,000 of that new votership went for the Democratic candidate.

New Hampshire, which only holds four Electoral College votes, has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since the 2000 election.

by Rob Crilly, Chief Political Correspondent

For two decades Kari Lake’s throaty voice and pixie cut were fixtures on Fox 10 in Phoenix, providing the sort of comforting presence common on local news channels across the nation: Introducing cooking features moments after relaying details of grisly murders.

That all seems like a long time ago.

Now she is running for the Senate as a Trump loyalist who, like him, leveraged TV name recognition into a firebrand political career, rising to national prominence and infamy after refusing to accept election defeat.

‘She’s a killer,’ Trump told DailyMail.com aboard his plane last year when the 55-year-old was frequently floated as a potential running mate.

She has been afforded fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, and some of MAGA world’s top insiders have worked on her run for Senate.

The flip side is that she is a figure of hate on the left. And two weeks before election day her campaign office was evacuated when a package labeled ‘anthrax’ was delivered.

It comes after an extraordinary metamorphosis.

Lake grew up in rural Iowa as the youngest of nine children, in a family where they thought it was normal to do odd jobs to buy their own shampoo and toothpaste.

First votes reported, Nov. 3, 2020: 7:20 p.m. ET.

By midnight ET: about 77 percent of total votes cast were reported

16 awarded to statewide winner.

Georgia state law allows county elections officials to begin tabulating mail ballots at 7 a.m. on Election Day.

As a result, the first votes reported on election night will include much of these mail ballots as well as early in-person votes.

Overall, these ballots have tended to favor Democrats, ever since the issue of early and mail voting became highly politicized during the 2020 election.

This suggests that the Democratic candidate in a competitive contest could take an early lead in the vote count in the initial vote reports after polls close, even though the race may tighten considerably as more votes are tabulated.

In the 2022 U.S. Senate race, for example, Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock took a lead of about 40 percentage points over Republican Herschel Walker after the first batches of votes were released after polls closed, but the vote margin dipped to below 1 percentage point after about two hours and remained there for the rest of the count and through certification. Mail and early in-person votes accounted for about 64 percent of all ballots in that election.

In September, Georgia´s State Election Board adopted a new rule requiring poll workers to hand count the number of paper ballots cast at their polling site.

Critics worried the last-minute rule change could create chaos in local elections offices and significantly delay the vote-counting process. A Fulton County Superior Court judge blocked the rule in October.

In statewide elections, Republicans tend to perform best in the smaller, more rural counties in the northern, central and southeastern regions of the state, while Democrats post their best numbers in the population centers of Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah and Athens.

In particular, the counties in the Atlanta area typically are vital to a statewide victory but for different reasons. Fulton and DeKalb are overwhelmingly Democratic, giving Biden 73 percent and 83 pervcent of the vote in 2020. Hillary Clinton also carried both counties overwhelmingly in 2016 but with 69 percent and 81 peecent of the vote, respectively. She lost Georgia to Trump.

Cobb and Gwinnett counties are more competitive but have both swung Democratic in recent elections.

Barack Obama lost both counties in both of his campaigns, while Clinton narrowly carried the two with 49 percent and 51 perecent of the vote, respectively.

Biden did considerably better in 2020, winning 56 percent and 59 percent of the vote in the two counties.

Trump doesn´t need to win the counties to win the state, as long as he can hold Harris to Clinton 2016 levels rather than to Biden 2020 levels.

The Associated Press doesn´t make projections and will declare a winner only when it has determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap.

If a race hasn´t been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, like candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear it hasn´t declared a winner and explain why.

There is no automatic recount provision in Georgia, but a losing candidate may request a recount if the margin is less than or equal to 0.5 percent of the total vote.

The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

(with Associated Press reporting)

MSNBC has been slammed for comparing Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden to a 1939 Nazi gathering at the same venue.

Host Jonathan Capehart recalled the Nazi rally when speaking about Trump’s event on Sunday, saying that ‘in 1939, more than 20,000 supporters of a different fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, packed the Garden for a so-called pro-America rally.’

MSNBC showed images of the Nazi rally at the Garden, complete with goose-stepping and Hitler salutes, as Capehart accused Trump of holding a fascist event at the iconic venue.

Capehart added: ‘Against that backdrop of history, Donald Trump – the man who has threatened to use the military against opponents he calls “enemies from within, who has threatened to use the troops to quell what he says are lawless cities and to use those troops to carry out mass deportations of immigrants – is once again turning Madison Square Garden into a staging ground for extremism.’

Social media users expressed outrage at MSNBC over the comparison, with many pointing out that that MSG has held many political events in the past, including the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

There was time in America, between 1940 and 2000, when there the country’s presidential elections were more predictable and less of a white-knuckle affair.

Thanks to what’s become known as ‘The Redskins Rule,’ a trend emerged over six decades wherein Washington’s final home game before a presidential election could reliably predict the outcome: A Redskins win meant the incumbent’s party would reclaim the White House, while a loss was good news for the challenger.

But the rule has become less reliable this millennium. It failed to predict the outcomes of the 2004, 2012 and 2016 elections, although an amended version of the rule created by its originator, Elias Sports Bureau’s Steve Hirdt, claimed to account for the variations in the data set.

Still, even after the team changed its name to the Commanders, the franchise’s final home game before an election has accurately predicted more than 90 percent of presidential races since the team moved to the Beltway in 1937.

And that brings us to Sunday night in Landover, Maryland, where Washington quarterback Jayden Daniels’ last-second Hail Mary touchdown pass sealed an improbable 18-15 Commanders win over the visiting Chicago Bears, thereby giving a few Vice President Kamala Harris supporters some confidence heading into Tuesday’s election.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

With one week to go until Election Day, both presidential campaigns are in a battleground blitz.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz plan to hit all seven battleground states this week, starting with Michigan on Monday.

The duo will rally with singer Maggie Rogers.

Harris, on Tuesday, will make her big closing argument to the country with a speech on the National Mall in Washington D.C. while Walz will be in Georgia.

She plans to visit North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Wednesday. She heads to Nevada and Arizona on Thursday.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, will also target some of the same states.

He’ll spend Monday in Georgia, Tuesday in Pennsylvania, Wednesday in Wisconsin, Thursday in Nevada, Friday in Wisconsin again and Saturday in Virginia.

More than 41 million votes have already been cast in early voting. Polls show the race is essentially tied.

In less than two weeks, Americans will decide whether Vice President Kamala Harris will be the first female president, or former President Trump will win a second term.

But experts say another factor will play a big role in this decision: the weather.

In the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, which ravaged the East Coast from Florida to Virginia, many voters are still in recovery mode and may not be able to get to the polls.

Helene’s devastating impact on swing state North Carolina could have an especially strong influence on the election, political strategist Bradley Trunk told DailyMail.com.

‘North Carolina is one of the seven states that will determine who the next president of the United States is going to be,’ he said. ‘You can’t really have much higher stakes than this.’

Elsewhere in the US, even your average rainstorm could have a significant influence on voter turnout and mood, Trunk said.

Research has shown that rainfall negatively impacts voter turnout. One study estimates that for every centimeter of rain that falls on voting day, turnout falls by 0.95 percentage points.

Elon Musk showed up to Donald Trump’s blockbuster Manhattan rally with his 4-year-old son, who was wearing a customized red MAGA hat that read: ‘Make Voting Great Again.’

His son, whose full name is X Æ A-Xii, was also seen holding up a Trump Vance sign with his father’s name on it during the five-hour event at Madison Square Garden.

The youngster, who was pictured beside former First Lady Melania Trump in one photo, was born on May 4, 2020 and is one of the Tesla CEO’s three children with singer Grimes.

Recently, Musk has become one of Trump’s most prominent surrogates and fundraisers, speaking effusively of the GOP nominee at multiple rallies and donating $75 million to his own pro-Trump super PAC.

On Sunday, he hyped up the crowd of roughly 20,000 by telling them he could cut at least $2 trillion of wasteful spending from the federal budget if Trump were to win the presidency.

Renowned pollster Frank Luntz revealed the exact moment Kamala Harris lost herself the election.

During a CNN interview Wednesday, Luntz, also known as ‘The Nostradamus of pollsters,’ said the Democratic nominee was doing well in the polls until she ‘froze’ after focusing her attention on Donald Trump.

‘She had the best 60 days of any presidential candidate in modern history,’ Luntz said.

‘And then the moment she turned anti-Trump and focused on him and said ‘don’t vote for me, vote against him.’ That’s when everything froze.’

Luntz added that Trump is ‘defined’ as he is ‘not gaining’ and ‘not losing’ in the election, while his opponent is ‘less well defined.’

Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tore into Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden as a ‘mini January 6.’

The congresswoman whose New York City district includes the eastern part of The Bronx and section of north-central Queens is a frequent critic of the former president and wasn’t happy to see him back in The Big Apple.

“This was a hate rally,” AOC declared during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Show the morning after Trump completely filled Madison Square Garden with MAGA fanatics.

This was not just a presidential rally, this was not just a campaign rally. I think it’s important for people to understand these are mini January 6 rallies, these are mini Stop the Steal rallies.

Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

So far more than a quarter of registered voters have cast their ballots in the 2024 presidential election.

According to tracking by NBC News, 43.3 million Americans participated in early or mail-in voting so far.

It breaks down to 42 percent Democrats and 40 percent Republicans. The remaining 18 percent are either not registered with a party, independent voters or no data is available for their party affiliation.

Early voting has started in many states with millions coming out to vote in person or drop off or mail-in their at-home ballots.

There are 161.2 million registered voters in the U.S.

Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin responded to a wild joke about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump’s MSG rally by endorsing Kamala Harris.

The pop stars were just some of the celebrities to throw their support behind Harris after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe compared the Caribbean Island to ‘garbage’ during Trump’s rally on Sunday.

While poking fun at celebrity Democrats, Hinchcliffe’s offbeat remark about Puerto Rico even stunned the MAGA faithful in the world’s most famous arena.

‘There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,’ he said.

The joke received a tepid response from the crowd, and widespread condemnation from Democrats, Republicans and even Trump’s own campaign. A series of Puerto Rican stars responded by endorsing Harris and sharing her plans for the American territory.

Tony Hinchcliffe has accused Democrats of having ‘no sense of humor’ after facing a wave of criticism over his set during Donald Trump’s rally in which he labelled Puerto Rico as a ‘floating island of garbage’.

Hinchcliffe, 40, took to the podium at Madison Square Garden on Sunday to deliver a series of jokes which included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people.

The jokes were typical for Hinchcliffe – a podcaster and writer known for his edgy, often dark humor and sharp roasts – but did not go down well, with even the prominent Republicans branding his remarks as ‘completely classless’, ‘racist’, and ‘rhetoric that does not reflect GOP values’.

The comedian, however, is standing by his set, alleging that Democrats, including Vice Presidential hopeful Tim Walz and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have ‘taken [the joke] out of context to make it seem racist’.

‘These people have no sense of humor,’ he tweeted. ‘I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone…watch the whole set.’ He then took direct aim at Walz, suggesting he was wasting his time by analyzing the set and can’t handle a joke.

The normally pugnacious Trump campaign also took the rare step of distancing itself from Hinchcliffe, with a senior adviser stating ‘this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign’.

Donald Trump graced the stage with wife Melania as 20,000 fans packed Madison Square Garden for a marathon five-hour MAGA rally on Sunday.

The former president made a bold prediction that he would become the first Republican in 40 years to win New York while warning that a ‘gamble’ on Kamala Harris would cost ‘millions of lives’ during the event in the heart of Manhattan.

Trump, 78, was introduced to adoring fans by former first lady Melania, who made her first surprise appearance on the campaign trail. Trump rocked the ‘World’s Most Famous Arena’ with his often-repeated attacks on Harris’ border policies and rising crime.

The line-up of speakers included Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who sparked controversy by joking that Puerto Rico is a ‘floating island of garbage’.

Trump’s childhood buddy David Rem delivered a fiery speech while waving a crucifix and calling the vice president the ‘antichrist.’