Harris hones in on young people at Michigan rally
After talking about her history as a prosecutor, Harris also hones in on young people and first-time voters, proclaiming “I love Gen Z!”
“You are all rightly impatient for change,” she says, repeating remarks she has made recently about the younger generation having grown up only knowing the climate crisis, active shooter drills and with women having fewer rights than their mothers.
Key events
Donald Trump has finally made his way on to the stage in Macon, Georgia, 90 minutes late. He walks slowly, sways a bit to the music and points to the crowd. It’s his third rally of the day after previous stops in the other battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. When he starts speaking his voice sounds hoarse.
And a few pics from the Trump campaign on Sunday:
We’re still waiting for Trump in Georgia, where we’ve just had Stephen Miller, senior Trump advisor, on stage and now House majority leader Steven Scalise. Scalise promises Trump, who is now well over an hour late, will be out in a few minutes.
A few pics from the Harris campaign trail in Michigan on Sunday:
More than 77 million Americans have already voted ahead of Tuesday’s election, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. That’s almost half the total of 160 million votes cast in 2020, the highest turnout the US has seen in more than a century.
Of the votes so far returned, 42,195,018 were returned in person and 35,173,674 by mail.
Carter Sherman
MESA, Arizona — At 20 years old, Melissa Gutierrez has never voted in an election, but she’s not really sure that her vote matters all that much, anyway. She’s still baffled by the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote but won the presidency in 2016 due to, as Gutierrez recalled it, “the school thing”.
“The electoral college?” a reporter asked Gutierrez, who stood on the porch of her parents’ home in Mesa, Arizona.
“Yeah, there you go,” Gutierrez said. “I was like: what the fuck is the point?”
A single vote in Arizona, however, may be far more important to the future of the United States than the millions of votes cast in states like New York and California. Under the electoral college, candidates only win the White House by winning the popular votes within states and then tallying up each state’s electoral college votes – which are assigned based on a state’s population – until they hit the magic number of 270. (However, Maine and Nebraska can split their electoral college votes up to different candidates.)
In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democrat since 1996 to win Arizona and its 11 electoral college votes. He eked out that victory with just over 10,000 votes – making Arizona one of the most prized swing states in the 2024 election.
Informed of Arizona’s importance in the election, Gutierrez said: “I honestly did not even know that.”
Gutierrez is far from the only American to be baffled by the electoral college system: just 40% can name the institution that chooses the president if the electoral college ends in a tie, the Pew Research Center has found. (It’s the House of Representatives, but the Senate plays a role, too.) In general, Americans have relatively low civics literacy. While 65% can name all three branches of government, 15% cannot name any, according to the 2024 version of the annual Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey. One in five Americans also cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Many Americans also have a low view of the electoral college. More than 60% of Americans would like to see it abolished, according to Pew. “This is a very unique and bespoke system that I think nobody would create again today,” Wendy R Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, told the New York Times.
Gutierrez said she plans to vote for Kamala Harris on Tuesday. She wishes that Harris would take a more hardline approach to immigration, but she also finds Trump to be nonsensical.
“Honestly, I just want the abortion access,” Gutierrez said. “That’s it.”
We’re still waiting for Trump in Georgia, where lieutenant governor of Georgia, Burt Jones, earlier took to the stage followed by Herschel Walker, a former Republican Senate candidate in Georgia. Now we’re listening to a selection of pop and rock classics.
Rachel Leingang
At a Harris event in central Phoenix, actor Eva Longoria commented on the comedian who insulted Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” saying it was aligned with how Trump has talked about Latinos since the start.
He started his quest for president by calling Mexicans “rapists,” she said, and he ended it with the rally where Puerto Ricans were insulted.
“We were all Puerto Rican that day, and we were all Mexican on the first day,” she said. “As Latinos, we can decide who is the next President of the United States, because Latinos are Americans.”
Rachel Leingang
I’m out in central Phoenix at a restaurant where a host of Latino actors, influencers and politicians are rallying for Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego, the state’s Democratic senator nominee, in an event called “pachanga to the polls.”
Signs, pins and shirts around the venue show Harris and Gallego on loteria cards in the unexpectedly rainy day in the desert city.
Rosario Dawson, an actor and longtime activist, said she had been involved in political causes since childhood because of her family, and she had now just brought her daughter to the polls to vote for the first time.
“I have been walking in marches since Al Sharpton still wore tracksuits,” Dawson said.
The raucous crowd of ardent Harris supporters, wearing camo hats and holding blue Harris signs, cheered for Gallego and resoundingly answered yes when asked if they had already voted.
Democratic senator Mark Kelly introduced his wife, former representative Gabby Giffords, who was injured in an assassination attempt when she was a member of Congress. He said she was responsible for getting him into the business.
“Sometimes I think to myself, if I was the person who would have been injured, would Gabby have become an astronaut?” he joked.
Giffords spoke about how Joe Biden reached out to her during her recovery and called him a great man, and said Harris would defeat the gun lobby.
Senator Marco Rubio is now on the stage and is accusing the mainstream media of attempting to “undermine and prevent Trump from being elected”.
He’s also making fun of Harris’ laugh.
Observers have suggested the Trump campaign is trying to lay the foundation for claiming the election was stolen if he loses by planting the idea that the only way he could lose is because Democrats cheat.
Next up we’re expecting Donald Trump to take the stage in Macon, Georgia, where Arkansas governor and former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is currently warming up the crowd.
Georgia is another swing state – it went for Biden in 2020 by 11,779 votes, out of 5m ballots cast, the first time since 1992 that the state turned blue.
And that’s it from Harris, who wraps up her speech, waves to supporters and makes her exit to the familiar sound of Beyoncé’s Freedom.
Harris hones in on young people at Michigan rally
After talking about her history as a prosecutor, Harris also hones in on young people and first-time voters, proclaiming “I love Gen Z!”
“You are all rightly impatient for change,” she says, repeating remarks she has made recently about the younger generation having grown up only knowing the climate crisis, active shooter drills and with women having fewer rights than their mothers.
She starts by making remarks on the Middle East, noting in particular the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. “This year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, it is devastating,” she says.
As president I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination.
Michigan is the swing state with the US’s largest Arab American population and many have been dismayed by the Biden administration’s response to the Gaza war. While calling for peace, it has also supplied Israel with billions of dollars worth of weapons.
Kamala Harris has taken the stage in East Lansing, Michigan. We’ll bring you any standout moments as they happen. This is Helen Livingstone taking over from my colleague, Coral Murphy Marcos.
The day so far
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The Trump campaign claimed that recent polling by the New York Times and the Des Moines Register is designed to suppress Trump voter turnout by presenting a bleak picture of Trump’s re-election prospects. The memo claims that the Times’s polls have biased samples and overrepresent Democratic voters compared with actual voter registration and turnout trends.
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Kamala Harris made several stops in Michigan today, delivering remarks at a church service in the morning and later visiting a chicken and waffles joint in Detroit. She’ll be holding a rally later today in East Lansing.
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Donald Trump delivered a speech in Lancaster county, a sector that rarely ever switches parties, usually voting for the Republican nominee in presidential elections. The former president told supporters that he should have stayed in the White House, despite his losing the 2020 election, while at Lititz.
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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. The measure would roll back provisions of Proposition 47, which downgraded low-level thefts and drug possession to misdemeanors.
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After a speech in Pennsylvania, Trump delivered his remarks in Kinston, North Carolina. He accused his opponent Kamala Harris of doing “the worst job ever on hurricane salvage and removal” and attacked Senate GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell.
That’s all from me, Coral Murphy Marcos, for today. My colleague Helen Livingstone will be along shortly to continue bringing you all the latest from the US election.
