The polls are still neck-and-neck, the candidates are spread thin over the swing states and the news just gets crazier. Want to stop doom scrolling? Here’s your one-stop shop for today’s election news.
Where is everyone?
The four big names continue their game of musical chairs in key battleground states today.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will join former President Barack Obama and rocker Bruce Springsteen for a rally in Atlanta. Her vice presidential candidate, Gov. Tim Walz, will blitz North Carolina, with stops in Durham, Greenville and Wilmington.
Republican candidate Donald Trump will stay out West with stops in Tempe, Ariz. and Las Vegas for a Turning Point USA rally. Republican vice presidential hopeful Sen. JD Vance will be in Waterford, Mich., and then at an 8 p.m. town hall with NewsNation.
Surprise! Polls are still tight
National polling of the presidential race remains a virtual tie today, though two national polls — from CNBC and the Wall Street Journal — put Trump up by 2% and 3%, respectively. CNBC has the two-candidate split at 48-46, while the Wall Street Journal published 49-46, both in favor of the Republican.
Likely voters surveyed by YouGov/The Economist from Oct. 19-22, however, favored Harris by three points, with a result of 49-46. Monmouth, with a poll in the field from Oct. 17-21, has Harris up three points amongst registered voters, 47-44.
There is also new polling out of Pennsylvania today, and that’s split, too! Emerson’s result puts Trump up one point, 49-48. On the other hand, those polled by Bloomberg/Morning Consult favored Harris by two points, 50-48.
Most polls have margins of error that easily cover those spreads, so this probably isn’t the time to put any monetary bets on this race. It’s going to come down to the wire. Checking in with FiveThirtyEight, they have each candidate’s election chances almost perfectly even.
What’s going on?
Here are some of the trending stories from the past 24 to catch everyone up.
In a story from The Guardian, ex-model Stacey Williams claims that Donald Trump groped her in 1993 in the presence of Jeffrey Epstein, who she was dating at the time. A Trump spokesperson denied the allegations.
At a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania last night, Anderson Cooper asked Vice President Harris if she believes Donald Trump meets the definition of a fascist. She responded, “Yes I do.” Her fiery remarks were made in response to the former president’s chief of staff, John Kelly, expressing a similar sentiment in a New York Times story published Tuesday
Reacting to that same story, Trump posted on social media site Truth Social Wednesday, saying in part, “Thank you for your support against a total degenerate named John Kelly, who made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred!” He also called Kelly a “LOWLIFE” and a “bad General.”
In a CNN panel discussion after Harris’s town hall last night, Democratic strategist and former Obama advisor David Axelrod was mixed on the vice president’s performance, saying that she had a tendency to “go word salad city” at times.
Pop star Beyoncé and country music legend Willie Nelson will appear at Harris’s rally in Houston on Friday.
Pennsylvanians have returned a total of 1,208,000 early and mail-in ballots. So far, the party registration of those returned votes sits at 60.1% Democratic, 29.8% Republican and 10% unaffiliated or with a minor party.
And Pittsburgh native actor and star of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Michael Keaton posted a message to fans of Donald Trump on Instagram, attempting to dissuade them from supporting the Republican nominee.
Opinions, opinions, opinions …
Here’s what the people who get paid to have opinions are saying about politics today.
- Matt Bai at the Washington Post discusses “Our deepening ‘Cold Civil War.’” Amongst razor-thin poll margins, he says, “A kind of secession has been happening for a while now already. This time it’s not a regional or physical thing, with seized armories and all of that. It’s more of a cultural revolt, where rural or urban communities, depending on which political party is in charge, see themselves as living outside the jurisdiction of a hostile government.”
- Over at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Janice Tosto has a (maybe) comforting message for news junkies. “If politics is making you depressed, you aren’t alone.” She has some helpful hints. “For many, that feeling may be exacerbated by family conflict resulting from political differences. It may also surge after the elections. Quick suggestions from Ojeda about how to deal with the latter when your candidate of choice has lost the election include taking time away from news and social media, looking for social support, and affirming the value of democracy by getting involved in a cause that fuels your passion.”
- Adam Seessel penned a guest essay for the New York Times headlined “It’s the Inflation, Stupid: Why the Working Class Wants Trump Back.” He postulates, “If the nation is a body politic, then working people are the nerve endings that feel its economic spasms most acutely. While some of their reaction is the result of chronic, decades-long conditions, the most noticeable pains have presented themselves in the past few years.”
- Finally, Jerushah Duford proclaims in Newsweek, “I’m Billy Graham’s Granddaughter and I’m Voting for Kamala Harris.” She says, “In particular, I pray that Christians will invite God into our hearts as we select our nation’s leaders next month. This will require a courageous realignment for some of my fellow evangelicals who I feel may have been led astray by the MAGA movement.”