US election live updates: Harris and Trump tied in Michigan as they head west in final days of campaigning | US elections 2024

Polls show Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in Michigan, a state home to the US’s largest Arab population, many of whom are mourning the losses of family members killed by Israeli forces abroad in Palestine and Lebanon.

Former president Bill Clinton made a speech in support of Harris in the key swing state last night addressing these voters, and said: “I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died — I get that,” Clinton said before adding: “Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians. They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.”

One recent poll showed Arabs favor Trump slightly more than Harris, a likely reaction to the Biden administration’s middle east policy and “rock solid, unwavering support for Israel.”

Pictures of the ballots that were set on fire in Washington and Oregon earlier this week have been released. Election staff in Washington’s Clark county identified the 488 voters with damaged ballots, 345 of whom have requested new ballots. The remaining 143 replacement ballots will be mailed out today.

Officials fear the suspect, a white man of medium or thin build between 30 and 40 years old, who is balding or has very short hair, may intend to strike again. Bob Day, the police chief of Portland, Oregon, said the said the welding on the incendiary devices found inside the ballot boxes is “very detailed … it’s really quality, so this person obviously has some skills in that area”.

Elon Musk is one of the billionaires who shelled out large sums of money in support of the Republican party.

The tech billionaire known for SpaceX and Tesla gave $133m to America Pac, a Super Pac he created to support Donald Trump. But Musk’s campaign tactics have gotten him into trouble.

The America Pac has been giving a $1m cash prize away each day until election day on 5 November to a person in a swing state if they pledged to support the first and second amendments.

The justice department warned Musk that offering a monetary incentive to voters was illegal and he might be breaking the law. Larry Krasner, the Democratic district attorney of Philadelphia, brought the first legal action against Musk, arguing it is an illegal lottery which violates state consumer protection laws.

Musk on Wednesday night sought to have the case brought to federal court.

A lot of money has been spent on this year’s elections.

Only 150 billionaire families have contributed $1.9bn in support of presidential and congressional candidates, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness.

Of this giant figure 72% went to support Republicans compared with the 22% spent on Democrats.

“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.

“We need to rein in the political power of billionaire families by better taxing them and by effectively limiting their campaign donations. Until we do both, we can only expect the influence of the super-rich over our politics and government to escalate.”

A new Washington Post poll has found that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied in toss-up state Michigan. Harris has 47% support among likely voters while Trump has 46% support.

”Both margins are within the poll’s margin of error of 3.7 percentage points, indicating either candidate could hold a lead,” the newspaper said.

With 50.6% of the vote, Joe Biden won the midwest state in 2020 compared to the 47.8% who voted for Trump. Trump narrowly won Michigan in 2016 by a little less than 11,000 votes.

Lauren Aratani

After the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, America’s business leaders came out strongly in their criticism of Donald Trump. Now – as the Harris campaign brands Trump a “fascist” and Trump threatens retribution against “the enemy within” – there appears to be a conspiracy of silence.

In fact, as the nation heads to the polls in an election that is too close to call, some of America’s most powerful chief executives appear to be cozying up to Trump again.

In public, only a small handful of business leaders are backing Trump. In private it’s a different story. At least, that’s how Trump is telling it.

Most gamblers might want to sit out the US election. It’s too close to call with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck, according to official polls. But the former president’s campaign has latched on to signs he says prove he’s actually “leading”.

In a close race, Trump and his allies claim some “gambling polls”, as he described them last week, put him significantly ahead of Harris. “Like, 65 to 35, or something like that.”

The irony of touting an apparent lead in betting markets at a Believers and Ballots campaign event in Georgia aimed at Christian voters was not lost on Trump. “But nobody here gambles,” he continued. “Does anybody here gamble? No, no, no, no. Great Christians don’t gamble, do they? Oh no.”

Rebecca Solnit

Lots of memes and tweets and posts and videos are popping up, assuring women that they can keep their votes secret from their husbands and boyfriends. The unspoken assumption is that lots of women are bullied, intimidated or controlled by their partners, specifically in straight couples when she wants to vote for Harris and he supports Trump. The messages assure these intimidated voters that they can vote in peace and privacy at a polling place. But a lot of Americans now vote by mail, which generally means they fill out their ballots at home, where that privacy may not be available.

On the one hand, I’m glad there’s outreach to those voters. On the other, the way these messages are framed seem to regard the grim reality that a lot of women live in fear of their spouses as a given hardly worth stating outright, let alone decrying …

Donald Trump says he will “protect women” if he wins power, but previous remarks and behaviour suggest otherwise:

Since the 1970s, about 26 women have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. The allegations include: rape, intruding on naked teenage pageant contestants, kissing and groping without consent, and looking under women’s skirts.

Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E Jean Carroll. Trump’s counterclaim was rejected by a judge in New York, Lewis A Kaplan, who said that the allegation that Trump raped Carroll was “substantially true”.

As well as being an adjudicated rapist, Trump has made a litany of sexist comments throughout his public life. In an interview with Esquire Magazine in 1991, Trump said: “It doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

In a leaked recording from 2005, Trump told Billy Bush that, “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” He adds seconds later: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

On a 2013 episode of Celebrity Apprentice, Trump said: “It must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees” to a female contestant.

His tendency to make misogynistic remarks does not seem to be abating. Only in August did the former president suggest Harris had traded sexual favours to advance her political career.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will travel out west in the US election race on Thursday, as opportunities to edge ahead are running out.

Both candidates are trying to get Latino voters to support them. Harris has secured the star power of Jennifer Lopez for her rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, a critical swing state. Meanwhile, ex-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson will interview Trump in Arizona before the former president heads to his own rally in Nevada.

A stand-up comedy set performed at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden is still reverberating throughout this campaign. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe likened Puerto Rico to a floating island of garbage, which Harris’ campaign has seized upon, claiming that it reveals the racism of Trump supporters.

This was gaining traction, but President Joe Biden still managed to make it backfire on his party when he appeared to describe all Trump supporters as “garbage.” This prompted Trump, who has also branded Harris’ supporters as garbage, to use a garbage truck in a publicity stunt in Wisconsin.

Trump is due to deviate slightly from campaigning in battleground states with a trip to New Mexico on Thursday, a state pollsters forecast will go to Harris.

Zoe Williams

The concept of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs. It’s a byproduct of inequality: a ton of poor people, sure, but also a superfluity of the wealthy, without enough positions to house them in the influence and status to which they think themselves entitled. In a modern context, that would mean senior positions in the government and civil service, along with the top tier of finance and law, but Turchin tested the hypothesis from ancient Rome to 19th-century Britain. The names and nature of the contested jobs and titles changed; the pattern remained. Turchin predicted in 2010 that by the 2020s it would be destabilising US politics …

Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Kamala Harris may never have visited Thulasendrapuram, a sleepy village in south India, but its residents claim to be some of her most devoted fans.

It was here, in among the verdant rice paddies and groundnut farms of rural Tamil Nadu, that Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan was born. Though more than a century has passed since then, residents have proudly claimed Harris as a “daughter of the land”.

The outcome of the US election next week, where Harris is running as the Democrat party’s presidential nominee, has the community on edge. At the local tea shop, gossip has been pushed to one side to make way for chatter over the challenges posed by Harris’s opponent Donald Trump and the trends from crucial swing states.

Good morning. It is less than a week before polls close at the 2024 US election and more than 57.5 million Americans have already checked their ballots, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are still hot on the campaign trail in a fiercely contested race that is too close to call.

Trump made an appearance in a high-vis vest at the wheel of a garbage truck before heading off to a rally in Wisconsin, a key battleground state. Trump promised to protect women “whether they liked it or not”.

Harris was also in Wisconsin offering platitudes on climate change, gun control and abortion. She said those issues were “not political” but one’s “lived experience”. She was speaking shortly after the latest CNN poll showed her six points ahead of Trump in the state.

• Harris and Trump take their nail-biting White House race west later, seeking supremacy on border security and aiming to woo crucial Latino voters days ahead of the US election. Pop singer Jennifer Lopez will bring her star power to the stage for Harris in Las Vegas, as the candidates battle through the seven swing states expected to decide the next president. Meanwhile, Trump has scheduled an interview in Arizona with ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and a rally in Nevada.

• On Wednesday, Harris spoke in Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital, one of few counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Polls show a tied race in Pennsylvania.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he is backing Harris in next week’s election. Schwarzenegger, 77, said that while he doesn’t “really do endorsements”, he felt compelled to formally endorse Harris and her pick for vice-president, Tim Walz.

• Trump refused to apologise for the comments made about Puerto Rico at his Madison Square Garden rally. “He’s a comedian, what can I tell you? I know nothing about him. I don’t know why he’s there.”

• A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday sided with Trump’s campaign and agreed to extend an in-person voting option in suburban Philadelphia, where long lines on the final day led to complaints voters were being disfranchised by an unprepared election office.

• A majority of voters in swing states do not believe Trump will accept defeat if he loses next week’s presidential election and fear that his supporters will turn to violence in an attempt to install him in power, a new poll suggests.