Harris makes surprise SNL showing as shock poll result buoys campaign
Charlotte, North Carolina: Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on the late-night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live as polls suggested the Democratic nominee may be gaining momentum as election day nears.
Harris flew to New York amid a frenzied final weekend of campaigning in battleground states to appear in the NBC program’s traditional cold opening sketch alongside actor Maya Rudolph, who portrays Harris on the show.
Kamala Harris (right) appears on Saturday Night Live with Maya Rudolph.Credit: AP
“You got this, because you can do something your opponent cannot do: you can open doors,” Harris told her impersonator in the scripted segment, a reference to Donald Trump’s difficulties entering a garbage truck during a stunt earlier in the week.
She went on to poke fun at her trademark cackle, saying: “I don’t really laugh like that, do I?” The sketch ended with the two women jointly saying the tagline: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night.”
Harris’ appearance on the long-running show – which despite its late timeslot is watched by up to 8 million people across TV and streaming – came as her campaign was buoyed by positive signs at the end of what has been a mostly deadlocked battle.
US election analysts were thrown by a final pre-election poll in Iowa by respected local pollster J. Ann Selzer which showed Harris leading Trump 47-44 – a dramatic turnaround from Trump’s four-point lead in September (and his 18-point lead over Joe Biden in June).
Donald Trump watches a video screen at a campaign rally at the Salem Civic Centre, Virginia on Saturday.Credit: AP
The state – not considered a battleground at this election – voted for Trump in 2020 when Biden won, but before that had sided with the ultimate winner in every election since 2000. The Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of likely voters has accurately predicted the Iowa result at the past two elections, contrary to other polls.
“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” the newspaper quoted Selzer saying of the improvement in Harris’ vote. “She has clearly leapt into a leading position.”
The Trump campaign quickly branded the Selzer poll an outlier and pointed to another survey by Emerson College, released at the same time, showing Trump leading Harris 53 to 43 points in Iowa, a starkly different result. Both polls have a margin of error of 3.4 points.
In a memo released by the campaign, Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Tim Saler said the Emerson poll more accurately reflected Iowa exit poll results from 2020, and did so “with far more transparency in [its] methodology”.
But the shock result will contribute to a sense of momentum behind Harris as a Marist poll gave her a slim advantage in three critical “blue wall” states – three points in Michigan, and two points in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. All three were within the margin of error.
Early voting data is also cautiously encouraging for Harris. Just over 74 million Americans had voted as of Saturday night, with a slim majority of them women. Women always constitute a majority of voters in presidential elections.
Among new voters registering in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, female Democrats were the dominant group, and there were also more male Democrats than male Republicans (voters register as Democrats, Republicans or independent).
A racist joke by a guest speaker at Trump’s “celebration” rally last weekend allowed Harris to focus her message on Latino voters in the final full week of the campaign, while Trump’s remark that he would protect women from crime “whether the women like it or not” enabled a fresh emphasis on abortion – a strong point for the vice president.
A Donald Trump supporter wears a garbage bag at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina.Credit: AP
Harris had to deal with blowback after President Joe Biden appeared to describe Trump’s supporters as “garbage” in an eerie repeat of Hillary Clinton calling his voter base a “basket of deplorables” in 2016. Biden said he misspoke, but Trump seized on it, and has been telling rally crowds Biden’s comment was much worse than Clinton’s.
Biden made a rare campaign appearance on Saturday in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he joked about Trump’s backing from “macho guys” and suggested they were actually “the kind of guys you’d like to smack in the ass”.
Earlier, at a rally in Milwaukee, Trump engaged in a bizarre act with his microphone stand which some likened to simulating fellatio. After an assistant replaced a troublesome mic, the Republican nominee complained the stand had been too low, jerked it around with his hand, and then bobbed his head up and down with his mouth open.
CNN commentator Ana Navarro, who is campaigning for Harris, said on X that the act was “not normal” and showed Trump was “disgusting, unhinged and unfit to represent the United States”.
Amid the technical difficulties, an angry Trump also vented about the crew, and asked his audience if they wanted to see him “knock the hell out of people backstage”.
“I get so angry. I’m up here seething. I’m working my ass off with this stupid mic,” he said. “I’m blowing out my left arm, now I’m gonna blow out my right arm, and I’m blowing out my damn throat too because of these stupid people.”
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