US election live updates: Trump vs Harris divides a marriage, a town and America on US election eve

Former president Donald Trump headlined a rally a week ago featuring a comedian’s remark that Puerto Rico is an “island of garbage.”

On Thursday, Trump insisted he had previously won New Mexico, a state he lost twice by big margins.

On Friday, he suggested a Republican adversary should have “guns trained on her face.” And the following day, he unleashed a profane speech saying women have to be protected “at home in suburbia.”

With Election Day looming, Trump’s near-daily pattern of making provocative or inflammatory remarks threatens to undermine his campaign’s message that a Trump presidency would restore an orderly, controlled leadership to the nation.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has sought to deploy the image of an unpredictable, volatile Trump to remind voters that his previous term was frequently marked by drama and conflict.

With a small but crucial group of voters still trying to make up their minds at the 11th hour, the drumbeat of incendiary moments could turn off those concerned about four more years of potential chaos, Democrats say.

​​Read the full article by Meryl Kornfield & Matt Viser for The Washington Post here​​.

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Whichever way the US election falls, it’s difficult to see an outcome that doesn’t result in an America more deeply divided than ever before.

Should Kamala Harris win, expect immediate chaos.

Donald Trump has given every indication that he will not accept a loss. He has already made allegations of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, the largest of the crucial swing states, laying the groundwork for a potential challenge should the count go against him.

It’s left the world bracing for more January 6-style upheaval, though authorities quietly fear the greater threat will come from lone wolf actors, rather than an organised uprising.

Would a president Harris possess the considerable strength of character and leadership skills required to quell civil unrest and heal resultant fractures should that scenario arise? Her performance to date would indicate she does not.

A second Trump presidency represents a greater unknown. Undoubtedly, he would be more emboldened and more unpredictable a second time around.

That would have immense ramifications for the entire world, including Australia.

Trump has already promised to impose enormous tariffs on goods from China, our largest trading partner. The flow-on effect to our own economy will be significant.

Even if Australia manages to escape direct assault from Trump’s isolationist America First economic agenda, as a country with an open economy, we can expect to suffer heavy consequences should other nations fire back with retaliatory tariffs, putting a harness on global free trade.

And of course, there’s the fact that Trump is an unabashed demagogue with authoritarian tendencies and little respect for rules and laws, who has made no secret of his plan to use the office of the president to punish his enemies.

It would be disingenuous however to present the candidates’ character flaws as comparable. Harris is an uninspiring option, and a poor communicator, occasionally bordering on incoherent. However, she operates within the realm of normality. The same can’t be said of Trump.

​Read The Nightly’s full editorial here​.

Political opinion polls are so ropey at the moment it’s impossible to gauge who will move into the White House.

If Donald Trump does get up, you can be sure that some journalists will say it’s a failure of democracy.

Poppycock.

A Trump presidency will not be a failure of democracy; it will be a product of democracy.

And democracy is a product of mathematics.

It won’t be simple mathematics because of the thoroughly confusing American electoral college (Google it if you dare) but the arithmetic won’t lie.

If the numbers go Trump’s way, the left needs to have a hard look at itself because if you are outwitted by a porn star-shagging bankrupted convicted felon then something is very wrong with your message.

Your tactics clearly need to be tweaked.

Here’s a bit of free advice to the progressives: slow down and stop yelling at us.

They need to put out ideas that make the rest of us feel a little uncomfortable and force us to, if not walk a mile in another person’s shoes, at least think about trying the shoes on.

Social progress takes time. Progressives need to get their head around that.

Read Ben Harvey’s full opinion piece here.

The Nightly correspondent Max Corstorphan is on the ground in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he says large sections of the community won’t be voting and would rather talk about sport.

He reports:

In one of the most important swing states of the 2024 US presidential election, most locals are celebrating a one-point win this weekend — but not in the race to the White House.

The State has a population of almost 11 million people, and nearly 4 million have already voted. However many others simply are “not voting”, instead putting their effort into turning up for sporting games and music in the city.

​​Read the full story here​​.

Uncertainty about the outcome of the hotly-contested US presidential election saw financial markets begin the week on a cautious note.

Shares in Asia subdued while the dollar eased slightly ahead of a busy week headlined by the US presidential race.

The week will also provide investors with global monetary policy catalysts with rate decisions from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England (BoE), the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Riksbank and Norges Bank.

China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) standing committee meets from Monday to Friday and will be closely watched for further details of a raft of stimulus measures that were announced recently.

Trading was thinned in Asia on Monday with Japan out for a holiday, but MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.7 per cent, recovering from its fall to a five-week low on Friday.

US stock futures though lost ground, with Nasdaq futures falling 0.11 per cent, while S&P 500 futures eased 0.14 per cent.

The dollar was on the back foot, with the euro last 0.4 per cent higher at $US1.0877 ($A1.6496). The yen jumped 0.7 per cent to 151.88 per dollar.

Dealers said the dip in the dollar might be linked to a well-respected poll that showed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris taking a surprise three-point lead in Iowa, thanks largely to her popularity with female voters.

Analysts believe Trump’s policies on immigration, tax cuts and tariffs would put upward pressure on inflation, bond yields and the dollar, while Harris was seen as the continuity candidate.

-- By Rae Wee, Reuters

Read more from Reuters here.

One of the most troubling sentiments filtering out from the US in the lead-up to the election is the concern over whether or not the country will recover from the deep political divisions being sown right now. It was only back in May that The Economist asked: Is the US dictator-proof?

Feckless war-making, a financial crisis and institutional rot have loosed a ferocity in America’s politics that has given presidential contests seemingly existential stakes.

Americans have heard their leaders denounce the integrity of their democracy. They have seen fellow citizens try to block the transfer of power from one administration to the next. They have good reason to wonder how much protection their system guarantees them against the authoritarian impulse rising around the world.

Read more from The Economist here.

Staff at US voting machine companies have removed public information about themselves from the internet and made contingency plans with local law enforcement ahead of the 2024 election after suffering harassment in 2020.

Some workers reported being “doxxed” - that is, having personal information like their home address or phone numbers shared online - after Donald Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.

Sara Cutter, the executive director of the American Council for Election Technology, says staff aren’t taking chances this time around.

Ms Cutter said staff had to prepare because the “level of threat has increased exponentially and has not cooled off since 2020”.

Read the full story here.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have offered starkly different closing messages as they each fight for a tiny sliver of undecided voters in seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada — that are expected to decide who will be the next president

The Washington Post reports that Vice President Kamala Harris used her campaign stops in Michigan on Sunday to reiterate her message that she would be a president for all Americans by inviting those who disagree with her to the table, while Republican nominee Donald Trump doubled down on portraying a dystopian future for the country that he claimed only he could fix.

Polls show the two candidates remained deadlocked across all seven states, with one of the most closely contested presidential races in modern history.

Read the full story here.

The New York Times and Sienna College have released new ​​​polling results​​​ placing Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of former President Donald Trump in four of seven swing states.

In Nevada, polled voters supported Ms Harris 49 per cent to Mr Trump 46 percent.

North Carolina swung to Ms Harris 48 percent to the republican’s 46 per cent.

In Wisconsin, where Ms Harris appeared alongside rapper Cardi B on Friday, Ms Harris leads 49 per cent to Mr Trump 47 per cent.

Mr Trump had a clear lead amongst likely voters in Arizona with 49 per cent of support, Ms Harris trailing behind at 45 per cent.

The poll, one of the most respected, showed Ms Harris and Mr Trump neck and neck in Pennsylvania at 48 per cent and Michigan 47 per cent.

However, despite Harris’ much needed swing to secure a blue wall, the publication claimed it was going to be a “photo finish”.

Political commentators are continuing to flag that when a candidate secures a swing, it can engage a portion of the other party to get out and vote.

Voting is the US in not compulsory so voter turnout could play the deciding factor.

False claims about voter fraud in Pennsylvania have raised concerns that former Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump might once again seek to overturn the vote there or in other battleground states likely to determine the winner.

Opinion polls, both nationally and in the seven closely divided states, show Trump locked in a tight race with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the countdown to election day on Tuesday.

Trump continues to falsely claim his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud in multiple states that Trump lost, while he and his supporters have spread baseless claims about this election in Pennsylvania.

Similar rhetoric about voter fraud after the 2020 vote led to a violent mob of Trump supporters attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, seeking to halt or sway the congressional count of the electoral votes that determine who becomes president.

“This is sowing the seeds for attempts to overturn an election result that cuts against Donald Trump,” said Kyle Miller, a Pennsylvania policy strategist for the advocacy group Protect Democracy.

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