Frantic campaigning by Trump amid Iowa poll shock

Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the 2024 US presidential election as we move into the final hours before polls open on Tuesday.

It’s set to be a busy day for Donald Trump with appearances in three swing states and it comes amid a surprise setback in Iowa with a poll showing him trailing Kamala Harris in what was previously expected to be a safe state for the Republicans.

The Republican nominee will kick off this morning with a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, followed by an afternoon event in Kinston, North Carolina, and rounding the day off in Macon, Georgia.

Harris, meanwhile, will head to Michigan later today where the Democratic hopeful is due to speak at a campaign rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Last night, she broke from the campaign trail to embrace her reputation as a “joyful warrior” with a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live. Harris portrayed herself, appearing in a mirror opposite the actor Maya Rudolph, who first played her on the show in 2019 and has reprised the role this season.

If you missed it, you can read David Smith’s fun report here:

In other developments:

A Georgia judge rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person. The lawsuit only targeted Fulton county, a Democratic stronghold. Trump falsely blamed Fulton county workers for his loss of the 2020 election in Georgia.

Americans took to the streets in cities across the country for a day of women’s marches. Marches were planned in all 50 states for the eighth annual gathering, which began the day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017.

Vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday. Kennedy said in a social media post that he would remove fluoride from all public water.

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

Former president Donald Trump is expected to deliver his remarks soon in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

Trump will appear on stage at the Lancaster Airport on Sunday, with his speech scheduled for 10 a.m. ET. The Republican nominee will also hold events in Reading and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday.

We’ll be following the former president’s comments, so stick around.

Harris to visit Detroit and Pontiac

As well as her evening event in East Lansing, Kamala Harris is due to make two further stops in Michigan today, the Detroit Free Press reports.

A senior Harris campaign official, who declined to be identified, told the outlet that the Democratic nominee will attend church in Detroit on Sunday and visit the city’s Livernois area. Strong turnout in Detroit is generally crucial to Democratic success in Michigan.

Harris will then make a stop in Pontiac, another city with a significant Black population and historic ties to the auto industry, the official said.

Who would win in a fight between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan?

While the Terminator star and former Republican governor of California endorsed Kamala Harris just days ago, the ex-Obama supporting wrestler told the Republican national convention that: “We never had it better than the Trump years.”

So although, as far as I know, the two musclebound stars have never come to blows, if they were to meet soon there could be some heated disagreement over the presidential race!

You can see the full list of celeb endorsements here

We have already covered the presidential nominees’ schedules but what are their running mates up to?

Tim Walz will be in North Carolina this evening. The Queen City News says details are limited but according to a press release, Walz will hold an event in Gastonia to encourage voters to cast their ballots. Earlier in the day, former president Bill Clinton will hold a campaign rally at a church in Charlotte at 10am, it says.

Meanwhile, JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr will hold a rally in Derry, New Hampshire, at 7 pm ET at the New England Sports Center.

From the threat of mass deportation of migrants to the risk of military takeovers of American cities – here’s what’s at stake if Donald Trump wins the election.

Final NYT poll shows tight race in battleground states

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain in a tight race in the country’s seven battleground states, according to the final New York Times/Siena College poll.

It showed Harris with marginal leads in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin and Trump just ahead in Arizona. The two are in close races in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania, according to the poll, which surveyed 7,879 likely voters in the seven states from Oct 24 to Nov 2.

In all seven states, the matchups were within the poll’s 3.5% margin of error.

About 40% of the respondents had already voted and Harris led among those voters by 8 percentage points, while Trump leads with voters who say they are very likely to vote but have not yet done so, the poll found.

The tied race in Pennsylvania shows Trump gaining momentum in a state Harris had led by four percentage points in all prior New York Times polls, the outlet said.

Updated at 08.55 EST

Rachel Leingang

Historians have weighed in with analysis that Donald Trump now heads a movement close to fascism, Trump himself has spoken of “enemies within”, he and his followers held a mass rally of racist rhetoric in a New York city venue known for an infamous Nazi gathering before the second world war and his language has been tinged with violent imagery.

Yet, in Trump’s world, and those of his followers and campaign surrogates, it is the Democrats who are to blame for the degraded discourse in American politics, their rhetoric a sign that they demonize the other side. It is Kamala Harris who is far outside the American mainstream. It is Joe Biden who is a Marxist. It is the Democratic party who plots a complete remaking of the American way of life. They are even, they argue, trying to take away Americans’ hamburgers.

Read the full story on Trump’s ‘mirror world’.

The results on Election Day will come down to seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Associated Press, which the Guardian uses as the benchmark for results, reports that it will be a game of hopscotch to keep up with key times in each of the states, which stretch across four different time zones.

It has a look at the Election Day timeline across the seven, with all listings in Eastern Standard Time:

Arizona Polls open at 8 am and close at 9 pm. AP first reported Arizona results at 10:02 pm ET on Nov 3 2020, Election Day, and declared Joe Biden the state’s winner at 2:51 am ET on Nov 4.

Georgia Polls open at 7 am and close at 7 pm. In 2020, the AP first reported Georgia results at 7:20 pm on Nov 3 and declared Biden the state’s winner at 7:58 pm ET on Nov 19, more than two weeks later.

Michigan Polls open at 7 am, most close at 8 pm, with the rest at 9 pm. In 2020, the AP first reported Michigan results at 8:08 pm on Nov 3 and declared Biden the winner at 5:58 pm on Nov 4.

Nevada Polls open at 10am and close at 10pm. In 2020, the AP first reported Nevada results at 11:41 pm on Nov 3 and declared Biden the winner at 12:13pm on Nov 7.

North Carolina Polls open at 6:30am and close at 7:30 pm. In 2020, the AP first reported results at 7:42 pm on Nov 3 and declared Donald Trump the winner at 3:49 pm ET on Nov 13.

Pennsylvania Polls open at 7 am and close at 8 pm. In 2020, the AP first reported results at 8:09 pm on Nov 3 and declared Biden the winner at 11:25am on Nov 7.

Wisconsin Polls open at 8 am and close at 9 pm. In 2020, the AP first reported Wisconsin results at 9:07 pm on No. 3 and declared Biden the winner at 2:16 pm on Nov 4.

Trump ally says Europe must rethink Ukraine support if he wins

Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Donald Trump is elected, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán said on Sunday, as the continent “will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone”.

Orban opposes military aid to Ukraine and has made clear he thinks Trump shares his views and would negotiate a peace settlement for Ukraine.

The Trump ally said: “We (in Europe) need to realize that if there will be a pro-peace president in America, which I not only believe in but I also read the numbers that way, … if what we expect happens and America becomes pro-peace, then Europe cannot remain pro-war,” Orban said.

“Europe cannot bear the burden of (the war) alone, and if Americans switch to peace, then we also need to adapt,” Orban said.

Europe is jittery about how the outcome of the US election will affect the war in Ukraine and the continent’s security.

Trump campaign calls Iowa poll ‘an outlier’

Donald Trump’s campaign has hit out at a surprise poll which showed Kamala Harris three points ahead in Iowa, a state that was previously expected to be a safe state for the Republicans.

The Trump campaign released a memo from its chief pollster and its chief data consultant calling the Des Moines Register poll “a clear outlier,” and saying that an Emerson College poll – also released Saturday – more closely reflected the state of the Iowa electorate.

The Emerson College Polling/RealClearDefense survey of a similar number of likely voters on November 1-2 had a starkly different result, with Trump leading Harris by 10 points. This poll also has a 3.4 percentage point margin of error.

The Emerson College survey had Trump with strong leads over Harris among men and independents, while Harris was performing well with those under the age of 30.

Hugo Lowell

Donald Trump and his many campaign surrogates have been engaged in a strategy of publicly raising expectations among their followers which may create a well-spring of discontent should Kamala Harris win, especially if her victory is narrow or propelled over the line by a late-breaking wave of Democratic ballots.

“If we could bring God down from heaven and he’d be the vote counter, we’d win this, we’d win California, we’d win a lot of states,” Trump said last week in a typical piece of bombast about his prospects.

But internal sources tell the Guardian they are universally jittery about the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, through which most of Trump’s paths to 270 electoral college votes run. Internal polls show Trump ahead but some of those numbers have been so rosy in recent weeks that aides have grown distrustful about their accuracy.

The Trump campaign has also been nervous about North Carolina – a state they really have to hold this year – evidenced by the multiple trips Trump is making to the state in the final weekend. Trump had two rallies in North Carolina yesterday, and will be there again today and tomorrow.

Read the full piece here

In the campaign’s final days, Kamala Harris has sought to convince voters that she will bring down the cost of living, Reuters reports. It a top concern after several years of inflation.

She has also portrayed Donald Trump as dangerous and erratic and urged Americans to move on from Trump’s divisive approach to politics.

We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We’re done with that,” she said in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday.

Trump has argued that Harris, as the sitting vice president, should be held responsible for the rising prices and high levels of immigration of the past several years, which he has portrayed as an existential threat to the country.

The only free aid they are going to get is a free ride back home,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Saturday.