US election 2020: Donald Trump continues last-ditch campaign blitz
The President has continued his last-minute sweep of swing states, campaigning into the early hours at packed rallies.
- Unprecedented warning of violence
- Trump ‘to declare premature win’
- Trump has ‘multiple pathways’ to win
- Biden leads by 10 points
- Trump energy amps up the race
- Washington boards up against unrest
Welcome to The Australian’s rolling coverage of the US election, which takes place on November 3 local time, Wednesday November 4 AEDT. In the latest national WSJ/NBC poll, Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump by 10 points. Donald Trump will reportedly declare victory if exit polls show he’s ahead.
Staff Reporters 4.15pm: Trump continues last-ditch marathon
The President has continued his last-minute sweep of swing states, arriving in Florida not long before midnight local time and stirring up his supporters with a rousing monologue.
Mr Trump started his day in Michigan, then headed to Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia before his final destination: Opa-Locka.
Getting ready to land in the Great State of Florida. See you soon!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2020
Among his targets were Joe Biden’s performance in the leaders’ debate and his stance fracking; CNN; Barack Obama and the Democratic Party’s election policies.
Mr Trump also defended the conduct of his supporters after a Biden bus appeared to be the target of harassment in Texas late last week.
He claimed anti-fascist movement Antifa had been responsible for violence and destruction across the US.
Mr Trump finally wrapped up his long day at 12.50am local time, heading off to Air Force One as the big crowd cheered him wildly.
It remains to be seen if the late flurry will translate into votes, or a momentum shift in the campaign.
Agencies 2.20pm: FBI probe alleged harassment of Biden campaign bus
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Sunday denounced the alleged harassment of one of his campaign buses by Donald Trump supporters on a Texas highway, in an incident the FBI confirmed it is investigating.
Video posted on Twitter appears to show multiple trucks waving Trump flags surrounding and slowing the Biden/Harris bus.
The president himself tweeted a video of the incident late Saturday, saying, “I LOVE TEXAS.”
I LOVE TEXAS! pic.twitter.com/EP7P3AvE8L
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020
Democratic officials said the bus, carrying state congressional candidate Wendy Davis, stopped its journey and cancelled two planned events and a news conference, citing “safety concerns.” “We’ve never had anything like this — at least we’ve never had a president who thinks it’s a good thing,” Biden told supporters in Philadelphia Sunday.
He added that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, made a video urging backers to “keep it up,” and find where Biden running mate Kamala Harris is and greet her the same way.
“Folks, that’s not who we are. We are so much better than this,” Biden said. The FBI’s San Antonio office told AFP Sunday they were investigating the Texas incident but declined to give further comment.
An SUV belonging to the Democratic caravan was reportedly sideswiped. No injuries were reported, and it was unclear whether anyone involved was armed.
Today, @realDonaldTrump supporters followed the Biden bus throughout central Texas to intimidate Biden supporters. They ran into a person's car, yelling curse words and threats. Don't let bullies win, vote. pic.twitter.com/CIyEWwbvqU
— Katie Naranjo (@KatieNaranjo) October 30, 2020
During a rally in Michigan, Trump explicitly embraced the action, saying that the Texas protesters were trying to “protect” the Biden bus.
And he later slammed the investigation on Twitter, insisting “these patriots did nothing wrong.
“Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!” he said.
In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people! https://t.co/of6Lna3HMU
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2020
Additional videos shared on Twitter showed scenes of long traffic backups on New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway and New York’s Governor Mario M Cuomo Bridge and Whitestone Bridge, reportedly caused by pro-Trump drivers.
In the videos, the bridges are packed with cars covered in Trump flags. The reported incidents came amid high concern about voter suppression or intimidation, and post-election violence.
The bus was separate from a visit to Texas on Friday by Harris, whose presence was seen to show that Democrats see a chance of flipping the traditionally conservative state.
“Rather than engage in productive conversation … Trump supporters in Texas (Friday) instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” Tariq Thowfeek, a Texas spokesman for the Biden campaign, told The Texas Tribune.
Local media said the incident occurred on the I-35 highway, southwest of Austin, the state capital.
The Texas Tribune quoted the state’s Republican chairman, Allen West, as dismissing the incident as “fake news and propaganda,” adding, “Stop bothering me.
AFP
READ MORE: He may stutter, but Joe’s not stumbling
Agencies 1.40pm: Portrait of swing states
The US election on Tuesday is boiling down to a handful of battleground states that Joe Biden must flip in order to snatch the White House from President Donald Trump.
All of this year’s top swing states — Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Arizona — went to Trump in 2016, including four that had voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2012.
In a sign of how critical they are, Mr Trump travelled to three of them — Michigan, North Carolina and Florida — on Sunday alone, while Biden held two events in Philadelphia.
The Democratic challenger leads by an average of 3.2 percentage points in the battlegrounds, according to the RealClearPolitics (RCP) poll aggregate.
Should the remaining 44 states vote as they did four years ago, Mr Biden could flip just the two biggest battlegrounds, Florida and Pennsylvania, and win.
Here is a look at the top swing states:
Pennsylvania
Joe Biden’s birth state is the largest at play in the Rust Belt, a north-central region marked by industrial decline over the past decade.
Trump volunteers are swarming the state, including city suburbs where they are canvassing door-to-door.
Pennsylvania has multiple socio-economic regions and Biden, whose campaign is largely sticking to public health guidelines by organising primarily online, has poured ad resources into the state.
The state’s big cities will vote heavily for Mr Biden, while the rural west and conservative central Pennsylvania are committed to Mr Trump. The suburbs and the state’s northeast will be critical.
RCP average: Biden leads by 4.3 percentage points
Michigan
Michigan very narrowly tipped for Trump in 2016 and it is being fiercely contested this year.
Trump has visited the Great Lakes state touting an American comeback, but its voters are concerned about the pandemic’s impact on the economy, and the president’s response.
Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer has clashed with the president, and her enforced lockdowns have angered conservatives.
Gun-toting protesters staged demonstrations outside the state capitol this summer and members of a right-wing group were arrested recently for plotting to kidnap the governor.
RCP: Biden by 6.1
Wisconsin
Hillary Clinton opted against campaigning in America’s dairyland in 2016, and voters punished her for it.
This year, Democrats made a point of highlighting Wisconsin, locating their national convention there last month, although the gathering moved online over coronavirus concerns.
Trump and Biden have campaigned in the state, the president as recently as Friday. Vice President Mike Pence and Biden running mate Kamala Harris have also visited, and First Lady Melania Trump hosted an event Saturday.
RCP: Biden by 6.6
Florida
The largest of the swing states anchors the Sun Belt, the band of states across the US South and Southwest that is rapidly growing in population, and features agriculture and military industry and large numbers of retirees.
Republicans are mounting a fierce defence here, with Democrats accusing them of actively suppressing the vote, particularly in minority communities.
The state’s huge Latino population will be key, and polls show them aligned with the Democratic ticket less than in 2016.
Most experts say Florida is a Trump firewall; if it’s breached, Trump likely loses the White House.
RCP: Biden by 0.8
North Carolina
This traditionally conservative state went to Trump by three percentage points four years ago, but both parties acknowledge it is now too close to call.
North Carolina’s governor is a popular Democrat who has won praise for his balanced response to the pandemic.
Republicans based their national convention here last month, although it was largely online, and Trump visited Sunday.
RCP: Biden by 0.3
Arizona
Arizona has been a Republican stronghold for decades, but its electorate is changing, with a growing Latino community and an influx of more liberal Californians.
Conservative voters appreciate Trump’s efforts to restrict immigration and build a wall on the border with Mexico.
But Trump has hurt his prospects by repeatedly denigrating the late senator John McCain, who represented Arizona for decades in Washington and still looms large over the state’s politics.
Caroline Overington 1.30pm: Who dares write Trump off?
Donald Trump, who for a man so recently sick looks on the eve of the 2020 election so incredibly energetic.
He did five stops yesterday. He’ll do more today.
He is not going down without a fight and when he’s in a mood like that, who dares write him off?
He has grown to love the job he didn’t ever think he’d get a chance to do.
He believes that he’s done good things: he’s pulled troops out of trouble spots; he has released nonviolent prisoners from jail; he has negotiated with Israel and her neighbours, more effectively than anyone would have believed possible.
The economy was booming before COVID-19. It’s still doing okay.
He’s mishandled the pandemic, but so have many countries in the northern hemisphere, and it’s just not clear that voters hold him responsible.
READ the full article here
Anne Barrowclough 12.35pm: Pennsylvania A-G hits back at Trump
Pennsylvania’s attorney general has hit back at Donald Trump for saying he would “go in with out lawyers” if the result of the election was not declared on Wednesday.
FACT CHECK: Our elections are over when all the votes are counted.
— Josh Shapiro (@JoshShapiroPA) November 2, 2020
But if your lawyers want to try us, we’d be happy to defeat you in court one more time. https://t.co/mj6d8WLwvK
Josh Shapiro retaliated via Twitter, daring Mr Trump to send his lawyers in and stressing the election would not be over until all votes were counted.
“FACT CHECK: Our elections are over when all the votes are counted,” he tweeted. “But if your lawyers want to try us, we’d be happy to defeat you in court one more time.”
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller told ABC News’s This Week that Mr. Trump would get 280 electoral votes on election night before Democrats try to “steal it back.”
Anne Barrowclough 12.10pm: Unprecedented warning of violence
The International Crisis Group, which reports on instability around the world, has issued an unprecedented warning of potential violence in the US ahead of the election.
The 30 page report warns of “unfamiliar danger” in a polarised America in the days after the election.
“While Americans have grown used to a certain level of rancour in these quadrennial campaigns, they have not in living memory faced the realistic prospect that the incumbent may reject the outcome or that armed violence may result,” the group writes.
The ICG lists several factors that could result in violence on and around election day, including the proliferation of online disinformation and hate speech, recent controversies surrounding racial justice in America, the rise of armed groups, and the possibility of a close or contested presidential election.
“The country is awash in firearms, has gun homicide levels unmatched by any other high-income country, and is home to a white supremacy movement that is growing in virulence,” the report states. “Even so, it is rare that U.S. elections threaten to go off the rails in a way that calls into question the capacity and resilience of the country’s democratic institutions, or that suggests the use, or threat, of force might influence the outcome.”
The group also places the blame for potential violence at the feet of Donald Trump, writing that his “toxic rhetoric and willingness to court conflict to advance his personal interests have no precedent in modern U.S. history.”
READ MORE: Tick of distant approval for Biden
Chris Kenny 11.45am: Has Trump swing come too late?
The streets of Washington DC are like I have never known them before; cold, as ever at this time of year, but dystopian and unwelcoming. Most people are wearing masks, even outdoors and despite the sidewalks, squares and parks being sparsely populated.
For many blocks back from The White House, office buildings, shops, hotels and restaurants have boarded up their windows. Workmen are toiling frenetically still, bolting timbers to facades, sawing planks and screwing timbers.
An African-American woman asked me why they were doing this, and after apologising for my presumption as a visitor, I told her I believed it was because they feared riots after the election. “Oh yes,” she said, “oh yes, that would be right.”
To the south of The White House, a white wall blocks the view of tourists and cars are kept well away.
At the traffic lights a temporary sign is posted by the Metropolitan Police Department: “All firearms are prohibited within 1000 feet of this sign. Effective Saturday October 31 through Sunday November 8, 2020.”
This is sad and troubling. But much of it is exactly what we would expect given the violence, vandalism and looting that has been mixed into political and race protests this year.
Flick on your television, however, and there is the President, cheered by huge and wildly enthusiastic crowds in cities and towns that seem to be on a different planet and populated by different people. On a road trip across five states last week I met many Trump supporters, and their energy and optimism is matched only by Trump’s.
READ the full article here.
Henry Zefferman 11.25am: Melania: Biden ‘wants us to hide in fear’
Melania Trump returned to the campaign trail after recovering from coronavirus with rhetoric straight out of her husband’s playbook, accusing Joe Biden of wanting Americans to “hide in fear in our basements”.
Mrs Trump, 50, has generally had a low profile in the campaign but has embraced an active schedule in the election’s final run-in. Speaking in West Bend, a small city in the swing state of Wisconsin, she made clear that she shared many of her husband’s views and preoccupations.
“Covid-19 is not a partisan issue,” she said, before launching into a bitter attack on the Democrats, who “want to project feelings of fear and doubt purely for political reasons”.
Her husband’s opponents made “selfish, politically corrupt decisions”. Referring to Mr Biden’s warning of a “dark winter” ahead, she said: “That is not the statement of a leader. He wants to make us hide in fear in our basements rather than work bravely within our communities to find lasting solutions.”
The Times
Anne Barrowclough 11.00am: ‘We’re going in with our lawyers’
Donald Trump has denied that he will claim victory prematurely, but slammed the decision by the Supreme Court to allow counting after election day and warned: “As soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.”
The quiet part, screamed: Trump tells reporters that "we're going to go in the night of, as soon as that election is over [in PA], we're going in with our lawyers ... if people wanted to get their ballots in, they should have gotten their ballots in long before that." pic.twitter.com/sAMA0Pw6Tg
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2020
Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening local time, Mr Trump said: ““I think it’s a terrible thing, and I happen to think it was terrible decision for our country made by the Supreme Court, and I think it’s a very dangerous decision, because you’re going to have one or two or three states depending on how it ends up where they’re tabulating ballots and the rest of the world is waiting to find out. I think there’s great danger to it, and I think a lot of fraud and misuse can take place.
“I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election. ...
“We don’t want to have Pennsylvania, where you have a political governor, a very partisan guy. ... We don’t want to be in a position where he’s allowed, every day, to watch ballots come in. See if we can only find 10,000 more ballots.”
READ MORE: Networks train guns on election coverage
Staff writers 10.30am: Pennsylvania result 'not known until Friday’
Pennsylvania’s chief election official has warned the result in that state probably won’t be known on Wednesday, and said her office was in touch with the National Guard to prepare for any potential security concerns.
Kathy Boockvar, secretary of the commonwealth, told the Wall St Journal she had been co-ordinating efforts to ensure ballots were tabulated accurately and as rapidly as possible in the key battleground state.
Ms. Boockvar, a 52-year-old Democrat who began her tenure in January 2019, said election officials were “managing a volume of vote-by-mail that we never would have imagined in a million years.”
Pennsylvania state laws prohibit election officials from processing ballots until election day, while seven of the state’s counties have indicated they won’t start counting votes until after election day. However Ms Boockvar said she expected the majority of ballots owuld be counted by Friday., with some counties working around the clock to count ballots.
More than nine million Pennsylvania residents registered to vote this year, with three millions ballots expected to be by mail.
READ MORE: He may stutter, but Joe’s not stumbling
Agencies 10.15am: Political groups elude Faccebook’s election controls
Political groups are getting around Facebook’s system for blocking false political advertising by reposting ads found to violate its policies, exposing a loophole in the company’s efforts to contend with misinformation.
Three political groups backing President Trump’s re-election have adopted the tactic, repeatedly uploading with little or no alteration ads that Facebook had pulled down after its fact checkers judged them to be inaccurate, according to researchers on misinformation and a public archive Facebook maintains of ads run on its platform. Some of those reposted ads have been shown millions of times in swing states during the waning days of the US presidential campaign, a period when Facebook has said it is taking extra care to stamp out misleading political ads.
The issue shows Facebook’s continued challenges with enforcing its own policies across its platforms, especially on content that is politically divisive. Many on the left have said Facebook isn’t aggressive enough on policing misinformation, while conservatives have accused Facebook and its fact checkers of bias and censorship.
American Principles Project, a conservative group based in Arlington, Virginia., ran ads on Facebook last month saying that former Vice President Joe Biden supports the loose collection of far-left activists known as Antifa, backs sex-change operations for children and supports legislation that would “destroy girls’ sports” by allowing transgender athletes to compete in them.
Facebook removed the ads after its fact-checking partners including PolitiFact, an arm of the non-profit Poynter Institute for Media Studies, deemed them to be either false or missing context. American Principles Project reposted versions of the ads with the same claims, but slight differences to the wording. The ads were targeted heavily at swing states, including Wisconsin and Michigan, according to Facebook’s ad archive. In total, the reposted ads have been shown to Facebook users more than three million times, according to data gathered by Laura Edelson, a New York University researcher who studies political advertising online.
Dow Jones
READ MORE: Wild ride covering Trump era
Troy Bramston 10.00am: Trump path to victory narrow but possible
In the final days of the US election campaign, Joe Biden has a clear advantage in national and state polling and therefore many paths to achieving the necessary 270 votes in the electoral college. Donald Trump is well behind in the polling and has only a narrow, though not impossible, path to victory.
In assessing the various ways both candidates can win the presidency, it is important to note that Trump won a very narrow election victory in 2016. He lost the popular vote by 2.8 million to Hillary Clinton. It is very unlikely Trump will win the popular vote this year.
So, Trump’s task is to thread the needle of the Electoral College. Trump won the electoral college by demolishing the Democrats’ so-called “blue wall”: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But he won these three states by a small margin – a combined 77,744 votes.
Trump’s campaigning and advertising spend is almost exclusively focused on states he won last time. He is not looking to expand the electoral map. Many presidents have made gains when seeking re-election: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1956), Richard Nixon (1972), Ronald Reagan (1984), Bill Clinton (1996) and George W. Bush (2004).
There is one state that Trump hopes to pick up: Minnesota. Clinton won the state in 2016. The last Republican to win the mid-western state of Minnesota was Nixon in 1972. It is unlikely Trump can pick up this state.
READ Troy’s full article here.
Anne Barrowclough 9.10am: Trump ‘plans to declare premature victory’
Donald Trump will declare victory on Wednesday (AEDT) if exit polls show he’s ahead, the respected Axios website is reporting.
Three members of Mr Trump’s campaign team told Axios Mr Trump would declare victory even if the Electoral College outcome still hinged on large numbers of uncounted votes in such key states as Pennsylvania - where the law stipulates that votes can only start being counted on election day.
According to those sources, Mr Trump plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare he has won.
For this to happen, Axios reports, his allies expect he would need to either win or have commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona and Georgia.
Mr Trump campaign’s communications director Tim Murtaugh told Axios: “This is nothing but people trying to create doubt about a Trump victory. When he wins, he’s going to say so.”
READ MORE: Trump and Biden reject the middle way
Anne Barrowclough 8.45am: Trump holds steady on Hispanic vote
The WSJ/NBC poll also shows Donald Trump will receive the same amount of votes from the Latino community as he did in 2016
According to the poll, Joe Biden leads Mr Trump among Hispanic voters, 62% to 29%. That’s a within-the-margin-of-error uptick for Mr. Trump from when the survey was last conducted, in September, when Mr. Biden led the president 62% to 26%.
In 2016, Mr Trump received 28 per cent of the Latino vote compared with Hillary Clinton’s 66 per cent. Currently, around nine per cent of Latino voters remain undecided.
Cameron Stewart 8.00am: Trump has ‘multiple pathways to win’
Donald Trump still has “multiple pathways” to win the election on Wednesday (AEDT) his campaign insisted as the President prepared to hold seven rallies in a final-day blitz across the country on Tuesday.
It came as his opponent Joe Biden targeted the crucial Midwest states in his final campaign push, with plans to campaign in Pennsylvania and Ohio on Tuesday (AEDT) and two events in Pennsylvania on Monday.
This one poll is giving Trump backers hope and Democrats anxiety | Analysis https://t.co/MVG1Vn37EO pic.twitter.com/1U4KL5jnlP
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 1, 2020
Mr Trump has improved slightly in the polls, cutting Mr Biden’s lead from 7.8 to 7.2 points nationally. But the Trump campaign team is focusing on the much closer races in the key battleground states which will decide the election. The president trails the former vice president by just 0.7 points in Florida, 0.2 points in Iowa, 0.8 points in Georgia, 4 points in Pennsylvania, 1.2 points in North Carolina and 1.2 points in Arizona.
However Mr Biden retains a solid lead of 6.2 points in Michigan and 6 points in Wisconsin, two states that flipped to Trump in 2016.
READ the full story here
Agencies 6.50am: Trump vows to defy polls
Donald Trump vowed to again defy the polls as he sprinted through five swing states Sunday in a blitz of campaigning against Joe Biden with just two days left before a US presidential election that has already mobilised a record number of early voters.
The last-minute scramble came as polls showed Mr Biden maintaining his overall lead but with some slight tightening in key states including Pennsylvania, where he leads by four points, and Florida, now a toss-up, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls.
“We’re now leading,” Mr Trump insisted before a raucous rally of supporters in Washington Township, Michigan. “Look, we’re leading in Florida. We’re leading in Georgia … They say it’s a very close race in Texas. I don’t think so. They did that four years ago and I won in a landslide.”
Mr Trump warned, in a state long dependent on manufacturing, that Biden had “spent 47 years outsourcing your jobs, opening your borders and sacrificing American blood and treasure in endless foreign wars.”
READ MORE: Trump warns of ‘bedlam’ on election night
Staff writers 6.30am: Early voters may skew early results in Trump’s favour
The huge number of people who have already voted are likely to skew early election results in Donald Trump’s favour.
Over 90 million have already voted - more than half of total votes in 2016 - but while Joe Biden holds large leads among people who have voted early or plan to, Donald Trump holds a big lead among those who say they will vote on Election Day, according to the latest WSJ/NBC News poll.
Some states have warned it could take longer to count ballots this year. Combined with late-arriving mailed ballots and some states returning results later than others, determining a clear winner quickly on election night could be difficult. Officials have also warned against reading too much into early results, given the large shift to mail voting this year.
Pennsylvania’s chief election official warned voters that the outcome of the presidential race in the state likely wouldn’t be known on Election Night and said her office is in touch with the National Guard to prepare for any potential security concerns.
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said he sees Mr. Trump jumping out to a lead, and signalled the campaign would paint later shifts in the count as unfair.
“If you speak with many smart Democrats, they believe President Trump will be ahead on election night, probably getting 280 electorals, somewhere in that range,” Mr. Miller told ABC News.
“No matter what they try to do, what kind of hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense they try to pull off, we’re still going to have enough electoral votes to get President Trump re-elected,” Mr. Miller said.
READ MORE: Election to change face of US forever
Anne Barrowclough 6.00am: Biden leads by 10 points: WSJ poll
Joe Biden has gained a 10 point lead over Donald Trump in the final days of the presidential election campaign, according to the latest national Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The Wall St Journal reports that Mr Biden leads Mr. Trump, 52% to 42%, essentially unchanged from Mr. Biden’s 11-point advantage in mid-October. The poll finds women and older voters have turned against the president, with the poll showing both groups favouring Mr Biden by double-digit margins.
However in 12 battleground states the picture is different, showing the race tightening to a six-point lead for Mr Biden – 51 per cent to 45 per cent – compared with a 10 point lead last month.
The paper also reports that Mr Biden’s lead in the swing states is within the poll’s margin of error and corresponds with other swing-state surveys that show Mr Trump could win an Electoral College majority while losing the popular vote, as he did in 2016.
“This election is probably the most competitive 10-point race I’ve seen,” Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democrat Jeff Horwitt, told the WSJ.
READ MORE: He may stutter, but Joe’s not stumbling
Joe Hockey 5.45am: Trump energy amping up the race
Anyone calling the outcome of the US presidential election is either guessing or gambling.
Opinion polls, advertising spends, rallies and media advocacy can’t make up for the fact that a phenomenal early voting turnout combined with a rampant pandemic have made this election unreadable.
To make it even more confusing, the American electoral system is a mess. Already over 240 lawsuits challenging the voting process have already been filed in the courts.
Behind the scenes there is optimism and pessimism in both teams.
Insiders in the Republican National Committee tell me that the party is on track to lose the Senate to the Democrats. Normally a senate race is closely aligned with the presidential race. Or so you would think!
This is not a normal election. Donald Trump is on track to win some States by large margins and then lose local representatives. Steve Bullock may win Montana for the Democrats and Senator Lindsay Graham may lose South Carolina for the Republicans, both states Donald Trump will win by 15 points.
READ Joe Hockey’s full article here
Agencies 5.30am: Washington boards up against post-poll unrest
Hammers are pounding and saws are buzzing in Washington as crews board up stores amid fears that the pivotal US presidential election next week could degenerate into unrest.
All around downtown Washington, near the stately White House and elsewhere, many merchants and office building managers are working feverishly to protect their property in the tense final days before the showdown between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Shell-shocked by the pandemic, economic turmoil and racial tension, the nation is on edge to a degree perhaps not seen in living memory at election time.
Americans have fresh memories of nationwide protests this year, some of them violent, after the police killing of African-American George Floyd.
Gun sales are up, Mr Trump has refused to state he will go peacefully if he loses and has even flirted with armed right-wing groups that back him, such as the Proud Boys, whom he told to “stand back and stand by”.
READ the full story here
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