Trump and Harris tied in vital swing state Pennsylvania, poll suggests
A Washington Post poll published this morning shows that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are essentially tied in Pennsylvania, the swing state viewed as perhaps the most likely to determine the outcome of the presidential election.
The survey conducted after last week’s presidential debate found that 48% of likely and registered voters support Harris, and 47% back Trump, with the rest planning to vote for third-party candidates. Excluding other candidates, Harris and Trump are tied at 48% support among likely voters, while among registered voters, Harris has a slight advantage at 48% support to Trump’s 47%.
However, the vice-president did impress debate watchers in the state: 54% of those surveyed said she won last week’s face-off, with only 27% saying the same about Trump.
Key events
White Dudes For Harris to make $10m TV ad buy in swing states – report
White Dudes For Harris will spend somewhere around $10m on television ads promoting the vice-president’s candidacy in three battleground states, Politico reports.
Backed by a Pac called Beige Rainbow, the group argues in the ad airing in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that Donald Trump has made white men look bad, and that Kamala Harris’s policies would offer the country a better future:
A previous fundraiser by “white dudes” brought in millions for Harris’s campaign shortly after Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term:
Last week, Nebraska’s Republican governor, Jim Pillen, reiterated that he is in favor of switching to a winner-take-all system of allocating its electoral votes, but would only call a special session if he believed the legislature would approve the bill.
“As I have consistently made clear, I strongly support statewide unity and joining 48 other states by awarding all five of our electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the majority of Nebraskans’ votes. As I have also made clear, I am willing to convene the legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election. However, I must receive clear and public indication that 33 senators are willing to vote in such a session to restore winner-take-all,” Pillen said.
“At this time, I have not yet received the concrete and public indication that 33 senators would vote for WTA. If that changes, I will enthusiastically call a special session.”
One thing Donald Trump’s campaign may want to bear in mind: Democratic lawmakers in Maine, the other state that allocates its electoral votes by congressional district, have raised changing to a winner-take-all system if Nebraska does so, Maine Public reports. Maine is generally a blue state but one of its congressional districts leans Republican, meaning the change would effectively negate Nebraska’s shift, by giving all of Maine’s electoral votes to the Democrats.
The Trump campaign dispatched Lindsey Graham, the US senator representing South Carolina who is a close ally of the former president, to Nebraska earlier this week to encourage Governor Jim Pillen and state lawmakers to change to a winner-take-all system for allocating its electoral votes, NBC News reports.
It’s unclear if Graham’s visit managed to shift the opposition to the switch by some Republican state lawmakers. Pillen has said he will only call the legislature into a special session to make the change if it has the votes to pass.
Here’s more on Graham’s visit, from NBC:
Graham, acting on behalf of the Trump campaign, was working to encourage Pillen to call a special legislative session at which lawmakers could consider changing the state’s apportionment of electoral votes, the source said.
Nebraska allocates its electoral votes by congressional district. The swing district around Omaha often goes to Democrats in an otherwise ruby red state.
Wednesday’s meeting, previously reported by KOLN-TV, took place in Lincoln. Graham’s office confirmed the local report but declined to comment further.
If Nebraska were to switch to a winner-take-all system, it would almost certainly give former President Donald Trump an extra electoral vote in what is expected to be a tight presidential race.
That one electoral vote could prove decisive.
If Vice President Kamala Harris wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but loses every other swing state, she and Trump would be tied at 269 Electoral College votes under a winner-take-all setup in Nebraska with Trump winning the state. In that scenario, the race would be thrown to the US House, where each state delegation would get one vote for president. Republicans hold a majority of delegations and are favored to retain it, even though the House majority could change hands after the November election.
The GOP might dominate Nebraska politics, but there has not been enough support among the state’s Republican lawmakers for changing its system of allocating electoral votes in a way that would almost certainly benefit Donald Trump. The guy who is also writing this live blog traveled to Omaha earlier this year (when Joe Biden was still running for re-election) to find out why:
For Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the road to the White House runs through battleground states clustered along the Great Lakes, and in the fast-growing “sun belt” of the south. But if the election turns out to be extremely close, the two candidates’ fortunes may hinge on a few hundred thousand voters clustered in a single congressional district in the middle of the country.
This lesser-known front can be found in Nebraska, one of only two states in the country, along with Maine, that allocate a portion of their electoral votes by congressional district, rather than giving all of them to the winner of the state.
In 2020, Biden became the first Democrat in 12 years to win Nebraska’s second congressional district, which encompasses the largest city, Omaha, and its suburbs. The pressure to win a majority of its voters is expected to be even higher this year, as Biden looks to fend off a resurgent Trump while reassuring Democrats that he can still do the job after his troubling performance in their first debate.
While much of the candidates’ attention is focused on the seven swing states expected to decide the election (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia) the Biden campaign also counts winning the Nebraska district as among its priorities – so much so that some Trump allies are encouraging the state’s Republican lawmakers to change their rules to ensure the former president wins the entirety of its electoral votes.
“I think the district is probably going to get more attention this time than it did even in 2020,” said Ryan Horn, a Republican media strategist who splits his time between Omaha and Washington DC.
Republicans make new push for Nebraska to change its voting rules in Trump’s favor
Nebraska’s all-Republican congressional delegation has sent a letter to the state’s governor asking him to call the legislature into a special session to change its system for apportioning electoral votes in a way that would almost certainly benefit Donald Trump.
The midwestern state is one of two in the nation, along with Maine, that allocates votes by congressional district. Nebraska is heavily Republican, but the district around its largest city, Omaha, leans Democratic and voted for Joe Biden in 2020. In certain scenarios, the state’s electoral vote could decide the election, and in a letter to the governor, Jim Pillen, and the speaker of the Nebraska legislature, John Arch, both Republicans, the state’s three representatives and two senators call on them to switch to a winner-take-all system for allocating the state’s votes:
Kamala Harris is heading to the battleground state of Michigan today, for an 8pm rally in Farmington Hills, near Detroit.
She’ll then head back to Washington DC, but has campaign events planned for tomorrow in Wisconsin and Georgia.
In addition to his speech marking a turning point in the US economy’s battle with inflation, Joe Biden is speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual gala at 8.45pm this evening, in Washington DC.
Biden to hail ‘new milestone’ for US economy in speech, as interest rates decline
Callum Jones
Joe Biden will address the Economic Club of Washington DC today, one day after the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time in four years, marking a significant turning point for the economy.
While the president is expected to hail a “new milestone” in America’s post-pandemic economic recovery, his top officials said he would acknowledge there remains more work to do.
“This is not meant to be a declaration of victory,” Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, told reporters. “This is meant to be a declaration of progress.”
Biden “knows this is no time for a victory lap”, according to Zients, and will use his speech to “lay out how we build on the progress we have made”.
Lael Brainard, the president’s top economic adviser, pointed to housing, healthcare and childcare as examples of areas where his administration wanted to improve affordability.
Here’s more on the Fed’s decision yesterday to drop interest rates by half a percentage point, and signal more cuts will follow in the months to come:
The New York Times poll is something of an outlier, in that it shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck nationally.
Most national surveys taken recently have given the vice-president the advantage, some with margins bigger than others. Poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight has a good rundown of what other data has found, and you can find it here.
Presidential race deadlocked nationally, but Harris leads in Pennsylvania – poll
The New York Times also released polling data this morning, which contained some better news for Kamala Harris’s standing in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania: she leads Donald Trump, with 50% support to his 46%.
But nationally, the two candidates are in a dead heat, polling at 47% each. The Washington Post poll released earlier today did not include nationwide perceptions of the candidates.
Much like the Post’s, the Times poll, conducted with Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer, finds voters believe Harris was the winner of last week’s presidential debate, with 67% saying she did “well”, compared to 40% who said the same for Trump.
The Washington Post poll of Pennsylvania also finds a similarly tight race for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Bob Casey.
Democrats currently control Congress’s upper chamber, but face an exceptionally difficult task in holding on to it beyond the end of the year. The party can only afford to lose one seat, and will need to win the re-election of senators representing two red states: Ohio and Montana.
Thus, the Post poll’s finding that Casey is practically neck and neck with his challenger, Dave McCormick, is likely to rattle Democrats. Among likely voters, Casey is at 47% support, against McCormick’s 46%. If third-party candidates are excluded, they are tied, at 48% support each.
Trump and Harris tied in vital swing state Pennsylvania, poll suggests
A Washington Post poll published this morning shows that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are essentially tied in Pennsylvania, the swing state viewed as perhaps the most likely to determine the outcome of the presidential election.
The survey conducted after last week’s presidential debate found that 48% of likely and registered voters support Harris, and 47% back Trump, with the rest planning to vote for third-party candidates. Excluding other candidates, Harris and Trump are tied at 48% support among likely voters, while among registered voters, Harris has a slight advantage at 48% support to Trump’s 47%.
However, the vice-president did impress debate watchers in the state: 54% of those surveyed said she won last week’s face-off, with only 27% saying the same about Trump.
Kamala Harris is set to participate in a livestream with Oprah Winfrey today, the Associated Press reported.
Donald Trump will be in Washington to address a Fighting Anti-Semitism in America evening event, and will also speak before the Israeli-American Council.
US House fails to pass federal funding bill as shutdown deadline nears
Joan E Greve
A government funding package championed by Republican House speaker Mike Johnson failed to pass on Wednesday, with less than two weeks left to prevent a shutdown starting 1 October.
The final vote was 202 to 220, with 14 House Republicans and all but three House Democrats opposing the bill. Two Republican members voted “present”.
The bill was not expected to pass, as a number of House Republicans had voiced criticism of the proposal before the vote. Given Republicans’ narrow House majority and Democrats’ widespread opposition to the bill, Johnson could only afford a handful of defections within his conference. Johnson delayed a vote on the funding package last week in the hopes of consolidating Republicans’ support, but those efforts could not get the bill across the finish line.
Johnson’s proposed bill combined a six-month stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote.
Donald Trump, who has championed baseless claims of widespread non-citizen voting, has pressured Johnson to reject any funding measure unless it includes “election security” provisions, a stance that the former president doubled down on hours before the vote.
Read the full story.
US health system ranks last compared with peer nations, report finds
Jessica Glenza
The United States health system ranked dead last in an international comparison of 10 peer nations, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund.
In spite of Americans paying nearly double that of other countries, the system performed poorly on health equity, access to care and outcomes.
“I see the human toll of these shortcomings on a daily basis,” said Dr Joseph Betancourt, the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation with a focus on healthcare research and policy.
“I see patients who cannot afford their medications … I see older patients arrive sicker than they should because they spent the majority of their lives uninsured,” said Betancourt. “It’s time we finally build a health system that delivers quality affordable healthcare for all Americans.”
Read the full story here.
Iran sent hacked Trump documents to Biden campaign, FBI says
Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other US agencies have said.
The FBI confirmed on 12 August that it was investigating a complaint from Trump’s presidential campaign that Iran had hacked and distributed a trove of sensitive campaign documents. On 19 August intelligence officials confirmed that Iran was behind the hack.
There’s no indication that any of the recipients in Biden’s campaign team responded, officials said on Wednesday, and several media organisations approached over the summer with leaked stolen information have also said they did not respond.
Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who regarded them as spam or phishing attempts.
Read more here.
Associated Press
Trump stages first rally since apparent assassination attempt
Ed Pilkington
Donald Trump on Wednesday night staged his first rally since he became the target of a second attempted assassination in as many months, telling his supporters in a sports venue outside New York City that what he called “these encounters with death” had only hardened him.
“God has now spared my life. It must have been God, not once, but twice,” Trump said to loud cheers from the ecstatic crowd.
The former president took his usual ragbag of lies, hyperbole, and dark and racist invective to the Nassau Coliseum in the suburbs of Long Island, just seven miles from the borders of New York City. It was an audacious choice of location, given that there are just 48 days til the election and New York is on neither main party’s list of priorities.
The state is reliably Democratic, having last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1984 with Ronald Reagan’s re-election. Even Nassau county, where the arena is situated, voted for Joe Biden in 2020 by 54% to Trump’s 45%, while the latest New York state polls show Kamala Harris comfortably ahead of him by double digits.
Yet Trump clearly saw method in his madness. Long Island, the leafy suburbs that stretch east from the city, has shifted towards the right in recent years, becoming something of an incubator for the Make America Great Again (Maga) upheaval.
Read the full story here.