1 week to go: What are presidential candidates up to today?
Share this post:
Time flies! We’re one week out from Election Day and the presidential race still looks tight. The whole country will be looking to battleground state Pennsylvania on Nov. 5. Here’s a look at where the race stands today.
Where is everyone?
Republican candidate former President Donald Trump kicked off his day with a 10 a.m. press conference from Mar-a-Lago in Fla., then he will come to Pennsylvania to hold a campaign event in Drexel Hill and a rally in Allentown later tonight. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance, will be in Michigan, with rallies in Saginaw and Holland.
On the other side, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Washington, D.C. today, preparing to deliver her “closing argument” at a rally at the Elipse this evening. Democratic vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz will go to Georgia today, stopping in Savannah and Columbus. First, he will appear on “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz.”
Parsing the data
Looking at the polling averages on aggregate sites like FiveThirtyEight, RealClearPolitics and 270ToWin, Trump currently holds between a 0.1 and 0.4-point lead here in Pennsylvania. A North Star Opinion poll conducted here between Oct. 22-26 with likely voters has the two candidates tied, 47-47.
Two new national polls have Harris ahead. A Morning Consult poll conducted amongst likely voters has her leading 50-47 over Trump, and a Clarity Campaign Labs survey — also of likely voters — puts the race at 50-46 in Harris’s favor.
Other swing states are looking just as close as Pennsylvania, with a new Survey USA likely voters poll putting North Carolina in a dead heat, 47-47 between the two candidates. An Emerson poll out of Michigan has Trump leading by one point in that state, 49-48, amongst likely voters.
We’ll see who was right in a week.
What’s going on?
Here are just a few of the top political stories from the news.
After announcing their non-endorsement on Friday, the Washington Post hemorrhaged 200,000 digital subscribers by Monday afternoon. The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, defended the paper’s decision in an op-ed on Monday, in which he reasons that Americans do not find the media credible and that partisan endorsements .
After Trump’s three-hour-long interview with Joe Rogan last Friday, the mega-popular podcast host said that he is “still in talks” with the Harris campaign for the vice president to appear. Negotiations stalled after Harris’s campaign gave a Tuesday time in Washington, D.C., but Rogan turned it down because of the location change and the time restraints the campaign wanted to put on the interview. “I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin,” he said in part in a post on X.
CNN reports that the permit requested for tonight’s Harris campaign rally in Washington, D.C. has increased to 40,000 people from yesterday’s 20,000.
Former Trump advisor and longtime ally Steve Bannon was released from federal prison today after serving four months for contempt of Congress.
The daughter of former Republican President George W. Bush, Barbara Bush, campaigned for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania.
As of today, about 1,474,000 Pennsylvanians have voted in the 2024 presidential election. Mail-in ballot applications must be submitted by 5 p.m. today.
Who’s thinking what?
The op-ed pages have a lot to say today. Here are a few examples.
“The Black vote will signal a change, but what kind?” asks Theodore R. Johnson in the Washington Post. “Whatever the choice, expect the coalitions to change. The number of Black voters supporting Republicans has rebounded to historical averages, though still just barely 1 in 8. But it’s more notable that the recovery happened under MAGA’s reshaping of the party. Congress has more Black Republicans today (five) than at any time since the first Reconstruction. Trump threatens to be the first Republican nominee since 1980 to win 14 percent of the Black vote. Support for Trump has also increased among voters younger than 30 and Hispanic voters, especially the men. If nativism in the United States becomes multiracial, it will change the country forever.”
USA Today’s Nicole Russell is sharing her column’s spotlight with a big name. “I asked Mark Cuban why he has gone all in for Harris. Here’s what he told me.” “Many conservatives believed that he seemed like one of them. And it turns out, even though he’s campaigning for Harris, he still aligns with conservatives on some ideas. ‘I would prefer smaller and more effective government, “Cuban said. “But I prefer being pragmatic over dogmatic.’ He said that government programs can help people in need, and that philanthropic enterprise is something he values. His Cost Plus Drug Co. is a real-life example. The online pharmacy boasts pharmaceutical drug prices at a fraction of the normal cost.”
Paul du Quenoy asks in Newsweek, “Is the Media Turning on Kamala Harris?” He answers, “Perhaps it should. Over the past several weeks, momentum in the presidential race has shifted toward Republican nominee and former president Donald J. Trump, who according to most polls has reversed the slight leads Harris took after assuming the Democratic nomination. Figures published by RealClearPolitics, which compiles daily averages of polling data, now show Trump leading in the seven biggest swing states and matching or even surpassing Harris in the national popular vote. If he should be reelected, the media establishment will demand answers. Its corporate owners are already starting to show a reluctance to antagonize a possible new Trump administration.”
In the New York Times, former judge J. Michael Luttig writes “My Fellow Republicans, It’s Time to Say Enough With Trump.” “We Americans live in faith with our Constitution and with the past generations of Americans who swore to protect it and fought to defend it. One week from today, we will decide whether Donald Trump is fit to be president of the United States again. He is not. When we entrusted our Constitution and our democracy with him before, he betrayed us. Campaigning for the presidency again, he now promises to exact vengeance against his fellow Americans whom he deems ‘the enemy from within,’ those who have dared to challenge his betrayal, an enemies list that includes Republicans and Democrats alike.”