Presidential candidates tour swing states in final push – as it happened

That’s all from the live blog today, we’ll be back again on Monday with all the latest updates from the US election campaign. In the meantime, here are the key developments from Sunday, when Kamala Harris and Donald Trump hit the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina:

• Kamala Harris pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population two days out from the election. Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Biden in 2020, helping him to a narrow victory over Donald Trump. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the vice-president’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza

• Harris was making her fourth stop of the day in Michigan, having earlier spoken at a church in Detroit and stopped by a barber shop in Pontiac. Trump is holding his final rally of the campaign in Michigan on Monday night.

• Donald Trump said he should never have left the White House after his defeat in 2020 and joked darkly he would be fine with reporters getting shot. “We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said at a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” he said before abruptly cutting himself off. In other comments, as he denigrated the media, he said: “To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, because, I don’t mind. I don’t mind.”

• Donald Trump again suggested he would give a role on health policy to Robert F Kennedy Jr at a rally in Macon, Georgia. “I told a great guy, RFK Jr., Bobby — I said, ‘Bobby, you work on women’s health, you work on health, you work on what we eat. You work on pesticides. You work on everything,” he said. Kennedy, a well known vaccine sceptic, on Saturday said that the former president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected.

• 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.

• 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.

• Trump also disputed a shock Iowa poll that found Kamala Harris leading the former president in the typically red state 47% to 44%. “No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday morning. “In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT.”

Trump has talked about a huge array of topics, from hurricane Helene (he claims there was no disaster aid for places like Georgia because it was spent on illegal immigrants) and Elon Musk and the economy again.

If he gets back in power, he says, he will “end the war in Ukraine”, “stop the chaos in the Middle East”, and “prevent World War III from happening.” He will also “crush violent crime” and give police more resources, “strengthen and modernise military” and build a missile defence shield made in the US. He also talks a lot about what he calls “transgender insanity”.

He says there should be one-day voting with paper ballots, with polls closing at 9pm and the result announced half an hour later. Then he talks about the “right to try” an act that allows people with life-threatening illnesses to try drugs that aren’t yet approved by the FDA.

He finally ends with some more on the theme of “making America great again” and YMCA blasts out with Trump doing his robot dance and fist pumps as he makes his exit.

Here’s our full report on Harris’ rally in Michigan:

Kamala Harris pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population two days out from the election.

Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Biden in 2020, helping him to a narrow victory over Donald Trump. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the vice-president’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza, and polling suggests that these voters are gravitating towards Jill Stein, the Green party candidate.

With Harris and the former president essentially tied in Michigan, a drop in voting numbers for either could be critical, and Harris made a clear appeal at the beginning of her speech.

“We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan, and I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon,” Harris said.

“It is devastating, and 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.”

Speaking at the Michigan State University campus, Harris repeated her campaign promise to “turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division”. Harris did not mention Trump by name in East Lansing, as she gave an address that struck a hopeful tone for the future.

“America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor,” she said.

Stepping away from Trump’s rally for a moment, a federal judge has ruled that Iowa can continue challenging the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens even though critics said the effort threatens the voting rights of people who’ve recently become US citizens. Associated Press reports:

US district judge Stephen Locher, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sided with the state in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the Iowa capital of Des Moines on behalf of the League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa and four recently naturalized citizens. The four were on the state’s list of questionable registrations to be challenged by local elections officials.

The state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state argued that investigating and potentially removing 2,000 names would prevent illegal voting by noncitizens. GOP officials across the US have made possible voting by noncitizen immigrants a key election-year talking point even though it is rare. Their focus has come with former President Donald Trump falsely suggesting that his opponents already are committing fraud to prevent his return to the White House.

In his ruling Sunday, Locher pointed to a US Supreme Court decision four days prior that allowed Virginia to resume a similar purge of its voter registration rolls even though it was impacting some US citizens. He also cited the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on state electoral laws surrounding provisional ballots. Those Supreme Court decisions advise lower courts to “act with great caution before awarding last-minute injunctive relief,” he wrote.

Locher also said the state’s effort does not remove anyone from the voter rolls, but rather requires some voters to use provisional ballots.

“I’m the only president in 82 years I had no wars,” Trump says. Then he starts talking about the latest jobs report, which he says is fake. This starts a rant on the issue of “fake jobs reports” in which he also castigates the “fake news media”.

“They hate me but ratings predominate over hate,” he says of the media. Then he again lays into illegal migrants, who he says have taken every single new job. Then he meanders into the problem of inflation and the Great Depression, saying: “I would not want to be Herbert Hoover, what a time that was, people jumping off buildings.”

He tells a short story about an “old woman goes into a grocery store and she takes three apples, that’s what she lives on.” But she can only afford to pay for two, he says. “We will make America affordable again,” he says.

Then he talks about his poll numbers.

Trump spends some more time demonising migrants saying “the United States is now an occupied country” and claims November 4 will be “liberation day”. He says Harris has “imported” criminals and that he will expedite deportations of criminal gangs.

He once again says he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the country to deport non-citizens during war time, and calls for the death penalty for any migrant who kills an American or a law enforcement officer. He also says he will immediately ban sanctuary cities.

He then pivots to talking about the economy. “We’ll handle inflation, you know how we’ll handle it, we’ll drill, drill, drill,” he says, repeating his line that Robert F Kennedy shouldn’t interfere with the “liquid gold”. Then he jumps to the terrorist group Isis, claiming he defeated it in four weeks.

Trump next spoke a little about the case of Minelys Zoe Rodriguez-Ramirez, who was found dead last week after allegedly being murdered by an illegal immigrant, and invited her mother up to talk about her daughter.

Trump has repeatedly targeted immigrants in his campaign, blaming them for crime and stealing American jobs, and threatening to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history”, a phrase he repeats in Macon.

Donald Trump starts by promising to “end inflation”, stop the “invasion of criminals” from across the border and bring back the “American Dream” and urges his supporters to vote on Tuesday.

“This will be the Golden Age of America,” he says.

Then he talks about how he has urged Robert F Kennedy Jr, who dropped his own presidential campaign to back Trump, to work on women’s health and pesticides.

“I told a great guy, RFK Jr., Bobby — I said, ‘Bobby, you work on women’s health, you work on health, you work on what we eat. You work on pesticides. You work on everything,” he says. Kennedy said on Saturday that the former president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected.

It has been rumoured Kennedy, a vaccine-sceptic among other things, could take a role in leading health and food policy in a Trump administration.

However Trump adds that he won’t let Kennedy, also known as an environmental lawyer, interfere in drilling for oil. He says: “The one thing you have to let me do, Bobby, I gotta work the liquid gold,” Trump says.

Then he experiments with Kamala Harris’ name a bit, ending with: “When I says Harris nobody knows who the hell I’m talking about.”

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.

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.”