Former Vice President Kamala Harris, before a theater full of supporters in Los Angeles, struck a tone of hope, saying that although the present time may seem dark for those gathered, it’s important to continue fighting for a better America.
“Our spirit cannot be defeated with an election or by an individual or a circumstance. ‘Cause then they’re winning. And the fight does take a while, and we’re in it and we can’t walk away from it,” Harris said during an appearance at The Wiltern theater on Monday night, Sept. 29.
“Know times like this require us to fight fire with fire,” the former vice president added.
The Los Angeles event was the third stop in her multi-city tour to promote her book, “107 Days,” which was released last week. The title references the length of her unsuccessful presidential campaign last year after then-President Joe Biden ended his bid for reelection.
Monday’s sold-out event, dubbed “A Conversation with Kamala Harris,” was moderated by Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, hosts of the podcast “I’ve Had It.”
During the roughly hour-long conversation, Harris said she predicted most of what has occurred since President Donald Trump resumed office in January. However, she said, she did not anticipate the “capitulation” by some universities, law firms and media companies, which she felt had given in to the president’s demands.
“I always believed that if push came to shove, the titans of industry would be among the guardians of our democracy. And I have been deeply disappointed,” she said.
Instead, the few times that members of the audience yelled out, they shouted lines like, “Madame President,” and, at the end of the evening, chanted “MVP! MVP!”
If any attendees of Monday’s event had hoped to hear Harris share her plans for the future — including whether she intends to run for president again — they left without any firm answers.
For now, Harris, who will turn 61 on Oct. 20, has 15 more speaking engagements lined up to promote her book, including stops in Houston and San Francisco this weekend. She’s scheduled to speak again at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Oct. 28.
As of Monday, nearly all of the events, including the L.A. stop in October, were listed on the book’s website as sold out.
For Americans celebrating the results of the presidential election, or those who were left discouraged, it’s too soon for big thoughts like how to bridge the political divide in the U.S. But that is not the case for one man in particular. Jim Axelrod has more.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. — More than one million Minnesotans have already cast their ballot for the 2024 General Election.
“Feels good. Feels good to have my voice heard,” Sarah Watson said after voting early in Hennepin County on Monday morning.
The Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State says 1,174,224 ballots have already been accepted in the Nov. 5 election and millions more are expected to vote in person Tuesday.
“Please go out and vote. Your vote matters. It counts. Please, please, please get out and vote,” Abby Bonham said.
That’s a message state election leaders are pushing Monday morning, too.
“In Minnesota, we have a proud tradition of leading the nation in voter turnout,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said.
There are nearly 151,000 ballots not yet returned. Minnesotans still sitting on absentee ballots can physically turn in their ballot by 8 p.m. Tuesday, or opt to vote in person instead.
“I can tell you this is a very durable, very resilient system and a very decentralized system,” Simon said.
This year, there are 55,000 new eligible voters, which might make the push back to the number one spot for voter turnout in the nation difficult.
“Please help us get the word out that in Minnesota anyone on probation, parole, supervised release, work release, etc; has the right to vote,” Voter Outreach Director Melanie Hazelip said.
Election officials say there are 30,000 election judges trained and ready for everything all across the state.
Polls open at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Find your polling location here.
If you submitted an absentee ballot, you can track it here. If you need to submit your absentee ballot on Election Day, submit it to the election office that sent you your ballot. Some voters may also return it to one of the designated ballot drop box locations, but you may not drop off your ballot at your polling place on Election Day. For more information, click here.
Beret Leone is a native Minnesotan who joined the WCCO team as a reporter in September 2022 – and she’s thrilled be back home in the Twin Cities! Beret grew up in Chaska and graduated from Bethel University.
MINNEAPOLIS — While most of the Election Day attention this year will be on the presidential election, there are plenty of downballot items deserving of attention.
In Minnesota, there are a few interesting local ballot measures of which voters should be aware, including how lottery money is allocated, subsidizing money for child care and more. Below is a breakdown.
Want a look at everything on the ballot in Minnesota this year? WCCO has you covered.
Should lottery money keep going to state’s environmental fund?
Every voter in Minnesota will see this Constitutional amendment on their ballot.
Forty percent of lottery proceeds go to the state Environment and National Resources Trust Fund, which funds projects like Dakota County’s Thompson Park. Every 25 years, voters must reaffirm the amendment.
Here’s how the question will look on your ballot:
“Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to protect drinking water sources and the water quality of lakes, rivers, and streams; conserve wildlife habitat and natural areas; improve air quality; and expand access to parks and trails by extending the transfer of proceeds from the state-operated lottery to the environment and natural resources trust fund, and to dedicate the proceeds for these purposes?”
If you skip this question, your vote will count as a no.
St. Paul: Child care subsidy
A ballot measure in St. Paul would create a special tax levy (meaning a rise in property taxes) to subsidize child care costs for low-income families. It would be the first city in Minnesota to attempt such an approach.
The levy would bring in $2 million in the first year and scale up to $20 million by the tenth year of implementation for a total investment of $110 million over a decade.
Supporters believe it’s a step in the right direction to find solutions to a persistent problem facing young families. Detractors, including St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, believe the plan over promises but will under-deliver. Carter told the City Council last month that city staff would not be able to implement the subsidy program should it pass.
Here’s the full language:
SHOULD THE CITY LEVY TAXES TO PROVIDE EARLY LEARNING SUBSIDIES?
In order to create a dedicated fund for children’s early care and education to be administered by a City department or office that provides subsidies to families and providers so that early care and education is no cost to low-income families and available on a sliding scale to other families, and so as to increase the number of child care slots and support the child care workforce, shall the City of Saint Paul be authorized to levy property taxes in the amount of $2,000,000 in the first year, to increase by the same amount each year following for the next nine years ($4,000,000 of property taxes levied in year two, $6,000,000 in year three, $8,000,000 in year four and so on until $20,000,000 of property taxes are levied in year ten).
St. Paul: Should city races switch to presidential election years?
The measure would switch city races, such as the mayor and City Council, from odd-numbered years to presidential election years.
Supporters say it’s designed to boost voter engagement, since odd-numbered elections traditionally see very low turnout. Meanwhile, opponents like Carter say the city deserves to have its own election conversation separate from big-ticket races that capture the headlines.
If approved, the change would phase in by 2028.
Bloomington: Should ranked choice voting be repealed?
In Bloomington, voters will be asked if they want to repeal ranked choice voting for their local elections, four years after voters chose to implement it in the first place.
Four other cities in Minnesota — Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnetonka, and St. Louis Park — use ranked choice voting in their local elections.
The tightly contested 2024 presidential election could be defined by the gender gap with Vice President Kamala Harris polling better among women, according to a CBS News poll from late October.
Recent CBS News polling shows the race between Harris and former President Donald Trump is a toss-up in seven battleground states as more than 78 million Americans have already voted ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
Harris is counting on suburban women to help her win the presidential election. She received unexpected help from some longtime Republicans with the Women4U.S. group, an organization aimed at outreach to conservative women.
Stephanie Sharp, a co-founder of the organization, is a self-proclaimed lifelong conservative. This year though, Sharp is urging fellow Republican women to vote for Harris.
“We’ll send Donald Trump packing, and then we can begin to have conversations again that are productive and have compromise on issues that are important to all of us,” Sharp said.
Her message is for women turned off by the former president’s rhetoric toward women and his role in reversing the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.
Trump recently said at a campaign stop in Wisconsin, “I want to protect the women of our country… Whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.”
In Pennsylvania, the organization is targeting voters in the Philadelphia suburbs who helped President Biden win the state four years ago.
“There are, again, hundreds of thousands of Republican women out there who are ready to vote outside their party, but they don’t want to talk about it,” Jennifer Horn, chief strategist for Women4U.S., said.
Across battleground states, Post-it notes are popping up in women’s bathroom stalls, aimed at the so-called silent Harris supporters.
Campaign ads, including one narrated by actress Julia Roberts, remind voters that their vote is private.
Some Trump supporters are skeptical of polling that shows Harris with a big lead among women. They say it’s about policy, not personality.
“We’re not going home with him. We are not sitting and eating at the dining room table with him every night, but his actions speak louder than words and his actions are more aligned with my faith, with my family and the values that we hold dear,” Beth Scolis, a Trump supporter, said.
A senior Trump campaign official told CBS News that even if Harris performs better with women, they think Trump’s popularity among men is more impactful.
On the final day of the campaign, Trump will campaign in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, before holding his last rally in Michigan. Harris will crisscross Pennsylvania, a key battleground with 19 electoral votes. She has planned events in Allentown, Reading and Pittsburgh, before her final rally in Philadelphia.
Weijia Jiang is the senior White House correspondent for CBS News based in Washington, D.C. Jiang has covered the White House beat since 2018, including the transition between the Trump and Biden administrations. In 2023, Jiang won an Emmy Award for her contributions to “CBS Mornings.”
MINNEAPOLIS — More than 1 million Minnesotans have already voted early in the 2024 presidential election. Many others are hitting the polls Tuesday, and still others likely will still be queuing in Tuesday night.
Click here to see the full WCCO Election Guide, featuring answers from candidates in the state’s major races.
What time to Minnesota polls open on Election Day?
Polls open in most Minnesota cities and towns at 7 a.m., but towns with fewer than 500 residents are allowed to delay opening until 10 a.m. More than 300 Minnesota towns fall under this category. Click here to check if your town is included.
Information on in-person voting locations can be found here, and information on what’s on your ballot can be found here. Click here to see the full WCCO Election Guide, featuring answers from candidates in the state’s major races.
What time do Minnesota polls close on Election Day?
Polls close in Minnesota at 8 p.m. By state law, you can vote past that time if you’re in line at your polling place by 8 p.m.
What time will Minnesota election results come in?
There is no set time in Minnesota for general election results to come in. Each county’s election officials provide an unofficial results count to the Secretary of State’s office on Election Night.
County officials later audit and proof the results before their respective canvassing boards conduct post-election reviews, per Minnesota Statue 206.89. The review must be completed no later than 18 days after a general election.
Stephen Swanson is a web producer at CBS Minnesota. A 21-year WCCO-TV veteran, Stephen was a floor director for a decade before moving to the newsroom, where he focuses on general assignment reporting.
As Americans get closer to Election Day 2024 and will choose between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, anyone who is registered to vote does not need reregister every year, unless there is a change of name, address or political affiliation.
Each state’s voter re-registration or voter registration update deadline can be found on their respective Board of Elections website.
As of the eve of Election Day, more than 78 million votes have been cast early, either in-person or by mail, according to data from the University of Florida Election Lab.
More people have cast their ballots in-person than by mail, with more than 42.6 million votes submitted at polling places in-person and over 35.3 million mail ballots returned. Upwards of 67.4 million mail ballots have been requested, according to the University of Florida’s figures.
Slightly more registered Democrats — 14.8 million — have voted ahead of Election Day, compared to 14.1 million registered Republicans, according to data from just over half the states that report party affiliation.
Tim and Gwen Walz to campaign in Midwest
Tim and Gwen Walz are spending the last day of the campaign in the Midwest, the first time the pair will be campaigning together after voting together. They have been crisscrossing battleground states separately.
They will first participate in a farewell rally in Minneapolis at 11:45 a.m. ET, and then heading to a get out the vote rally in Detroit.
What voters should and shouldn’t expect on Election Day
There will be some breakdowns, mistakes and disinformation this year, but none of that should be confused with election-altering fraud, CBS News election law contributor David Becker told “60 Minutes.”
“Definitely don’t expect to know who controls the United States House of Representatives. There are a lot of very close races, even in places like California, that will take days or maybe even weeks to resolve. The Senate we might know a little bit sooner, but unclear,” Becker said. “We probably will have a pretty good idea who won the presidency maybe around Thursday or Friday.”
Read more here about how election officials are protecting the vote.
Harris SNL spot draws rebuke from an FCC commissioner
After Harris appeared in a skit on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” Republican FCC Commissioner Brandon Carr said in a social media post on X it was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.”
In another tweet, Carr, who is a Trump appointee, noted that NBC filed a notice to the FCC acknowledging it had given 1.5 minutes of free airtime to Harris.
In the sketch with Maya Rudolph, Harris played herself as Rudolph was also portraying Harris.
“It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph. “And I’m just here to remind you, you got this.”
Stars to join Harris at rally and concert in Philadelphia
Oprah Winfrey and a lineup of music stars will join Vice President Kamala Harris as she seeks to energize supporters and mobilize voters at a concert and rally in Philadelphia Monday night.
According to the Harris campaign, the vice president will also be joined by Lady Gaga, DJ Cassidy, Fat Joe, Freeway and Just Blaze, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Ricky Martin, The Roots, Jazmine Sullivan and Adam Blackstone.
The event will be at the bottom of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s steps. along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Art Museum will be closed on Monday.
The rally and concert mark the campaign’s final Get Out The Vote effort to get voters to the polls ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
More than 78 million Americans have voted early, according to data compiled by the University of Florida Election Lab. That includes more than 42.6 million early in-person votes, and over 35.3 million mail ballots returned so far.
Trump: “I don’t mind” if someone had to shoot through media
Former President Donald Trump said during a rally on Sunday that he wouldn’t mind if someone tried to shoot through the group of reporters covering the event, as he complained that the bulletproof glass positioned around him was “ridiculous.”
“I have a piece of glass over here, and I don’t have a piece of glass there. And I have this piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news,” Trump said, pointing to the glass positioned between him and the head-on riser where the press was located. “And to get me somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind that.”
He repeatedly mocked news reporters throughout the rally, calling the media “bloodsuckers.”
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement afterward that Trump was trying to protect the media.
Harris addresses war in Gaza during East Lansing rally
At a Sunday campaign rally in East Lansing, Michigan, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the war in Gaza at the top of her speech.
“We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan. And I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, it is devastating,” Harris said.
“As president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination,” she added.
Harris said she would also work to find a “diplomatic resolution across the Israel-Lebanon border to protect civilians and provide lasting stability.”
After her comments about the war, Harris stuck to her usual stump speech. Her lines on reproductive rights garnered the most applause and cheers from the crowd, which was filled with younger voters.
A record number of Americans have voted early in the 2024 presidential election, and many millions more are expected to cast their ballots before the polls close in each state on Election Day. But as we’re reminded every four years, it’s not the popular vote that decides who wins the presidency — it’s the outcome of the Electoral College.
There are 538 votes in the Electoral College and it takes a majority — 270 — to win. In most states, it’s a winner-take-all system — whichever candidate comes out ahead, no matter how slim the margin, gets all of the state’s Electoral College votes. Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, allow their electoral votes to be split.
The race between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will likely come down to a handful of battleground states where voters are closely divided. Of those, Pennsylvania has the most electoral votes at stake, with 19, followed by North Carolina and Georgia with 16 each, Michigan with 15, Arizona with 11, Wisconsin with 10, and Nevada with 6.
How many Electoral College votes does each state have?
The number of Electoral College votes each state gets is equal to its total number of U.S. senators and representatives in Congress. This means each state gets at least three, while states with larger populations get more. The District of Columbia also gets three, although it has no voting members in Congress.
States may gain or lose electoral votes as the population shifts. In the congressional redistricting that followed the 2020 U.S. Census, six states picked up at least one additional House seat — and thus an extra electoral vote — while seven states lost one.
Which state has the most electoral votes?
California, the most populous state in the nation, has 54 electoral votes. With a population of over 39.5 million people, according to the 2020 Census, that means California has one elector for every 732,189 residents.
Texas is next, with 40 electoral votes, followed by Florida with 30 and New York with 28.
Which state has the least electoral votes?
Six states with the smallest populations have three electoral votes each: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. Washington, D.C., also gets three. In Wyoming, whose population of about 576,850 is the nation’s smallest, that works out to one elector for every 182,283 residents.
Which state has gained the most electoral votes?
Texas gained two electoral votes in 2024, giving it a total of 40 in this year’s presidential race, up from 38 in the 2020 election.
Five other states — Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon — gained one electoral vote each.
Which state has lost the most electoral votes?
Seven states lost an electoral vote in 2024: California, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
The map below shows all the states that gained or lost Electoral College votes for the 2024 election.
Paula Cohen is the senior managing editor of CBSNews.com, where she oversees coverage of breaking news and stories on a wide range of topics from across the U.S. and around the world.
In a presidential battle that despite all their polling, most political experts says is too close to call, voters will have a last chance on Tuesday, November 5, to cast their ballots. How long it will take for voters to know the results is anyone’s guess.
At issue, besides the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, is the Ted Crux vs Colin Allred contest for the U.S. Senate seat that Cruz holds right now.
Another primary concern in Houston is whether voters will approve the $4.4 billion bond issue that Houston ISD is asking for. The sticking point there is not so much whether the campus facilities improvements are needed,) but whether voters can trust Superintendent Miles Miles, his administration and the state-appointed Board of Managers to do right by all that money.
In Harris County, election polling sites will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Go to harrisvotes.com to determine where’s the nearest handy voting place for you to cast your ballot.
Harris Votes even offers
a quick instructional video on how to vote with the county’s machines.
COMING UP IN THE NEXT 15 MINUTES. WELL, THERE IS LESS THAN 48 HOURS TO GO. AND WHAT IS EXPECTED TO BE A VERY TIGHT RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE. AND AS THE LAST EARLY VOTERS MAKE THEIR WAY TO THE POLLS, CANDIDATES UP AND DOWN THE BALLOT HAVE JUST ONE DAY TO GET THEIR MESSAGE OUT. AND AS EARLY VOTING COMES TO A CLOSE IN OSCEOLA, ORANGE AND SEMINOLE COUNTIES, CENTRAL FLORIDA IS SEEING RECORD TURNOUT. WESH TWO SPENCER TRACY CHECKS OUT THE POLLS IN SEMINOLE COUNTY TONIGHT, WHERE PEOPLE FACED LONG LINES. IT’S THE FINAL PUSH TO GET TO THE POLLS BEFORE ELECTION DAY. GETTING OUT IN EARLY VOTING THIS YEAR. I’VE BEEN TRYING TO GET OUT. I JUST HAVEN’T HAD THE TIME. BUT IT SEEMS LIKE THIS MORNING IS THE BEST TIME TO GET OUT. IT’S THE LAST DAY IN ORANGE SEMINOLE AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES TO EARLY VOTE. I THINK IT’S GREAT. I JUST THINK EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET OUT AND VOTE, PERIOD. WHETHER IT’S EARLY VOTING DAY OF YOUR VOTE COUNTS, AND ESPECIALLY IN THIS ELECTION, YOUR VOTE COUNTS. THOUSANDS OF VOTERS AND RECORD TURNOUT IS WHAT CENTRAL FLORIDA HAS BEEN SEEING SINCE EARLY VOTING STARTED. TWO WEEKS AGO. FOR OLIVIA BOWEN, IT WAS HER FIRST TIME VOTING EXPERIENCE PROCESS, SO I WAS HAPPY ABOUT THAT, BUT I LIKED IT. BOWEN DIDN’T HAVE TO WAIT IN LONG LINES SUNDAY MORNING. HOWEVER, THROUGHOUT EARLY VOTING, PEOPLE IN ORANGE AND SEMINOLE COUNTIES HAVE WAITED IN LINES OVER AN HOUR LONG. POLL WORKERS HERE AT THE CASSELBERRY LIBRARY SAYS THIS LOCATION HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST FOR EARLY VOTING. HERE IN SEMINOLE COUNTY. THEY’VE HAD RECORD TURNOUT AND THE WHOLE COUNTY HAS SEEN OVER 123,000 VOTERS COME OUT. SO FAR. THE STATE DIVISION OF ELECTIONS REPORTED NEARLY 8 MILLION PEOPLE IN FLORIDA HAVE VOTED SO FAR. THAT IS, 57% OF REGISTERED VOTERS IN THE STATE, AND OFFICIALS SAY THAT NUMBER WILL ONLY GO UP. IT’S GREAT. THAT’S THAT’S THAT GIVES ME HOPE IN SEMINOL
Central Florida counties wrap up early voting with record-high turnout
Updated: 8:47 PM EST Nov 3, 2024
As the clock wound down on early voting, Central Florida residents made their final trips to the polls. Sunday marked the last opportunity for voters in Orange, Seminole, and Osceola counties to cast their ballots before Election Day. Related: Voting Guide: Do’s and Don’ts while at polls in Central Florida”I have been trying to get out. I just haven’t had the time, but it seemed like this morning was the best time to get out,” said local voter Brittany Randle.Thousands of voters have turned out, with Central Florida seeing record numbers since early voting started two weeks ago.”I think it’s great. I just think everyone needs to get out and vote, period. Whether it’s early voting, day of, your vote counts and especially in this election, your vote counts,” said Tony Boni, another voter.Related: Central Florida county leading the state in voter turnoutFirst-time voter Olivia Boni shared she had a positive experience at the polls. “It was a pretty easy experience, process, so I was happy about that, but I liked it,” Olivia Boni said. Olivia Boni did not have to wait in long lines Sunday morning. However, during early voting, people in Orange and Seminole counties waited in lines for over an hour.Poll workers at the Seminole County Public Library said it is the county’s biggest location for early voting. Seminole County has seen over 123,000 voters, and even more will head to the polls on Election Day.More: Seminole County: Will it swing red or blue this upcoming election?The state Division of Elections reported that nearly 8 million people in Florida have voted so far, which is 57% of the state’s registered voters.Officials expect this number to increase.”That’s great. It gives me hope, it gives me hope, so yeah, feels good,” said Randle.Related: What amendments will be on Florida’s ballot?
, Fla. —
As the clock wound down on early voting, Central Florida residents made their final trips to the polls.
Sunday marked the last opportunity for voters in Orange, Seminole, and Osceola counties to cast their ballots before Election Day.
“I have been trying to get out. I just haven’t had the time, but it seemed like this morning was the best time to get out,” said local voter Brittany Randle.
Thousands of voters have turned out, with Central Florida seeing record numbers since early voting started two weeks ago.
“I think it’s great. I just think everyone needs to get out and vote, period. Whether it’s early voting, day of, your vote counts and especially in this election, your vote counts,” said Tony Boni, another voter.
First-time voter Olivia Boni shared she had a positive experience at the polls.
“It was a pretty easy experience, process, so I was happy about that, but I liked it,” Olivia Boni said.
Olivia Boni did not have to wait in long lines Sunday morning. However, during early voting, people in Orange and Seminole counties waited in lines for over an hour.
Poll workers at the Seminole County Public Library said it is the county’s biggest location for early voting.
Seminole County has seen over 123,000 voters, and even more will head to the polls on Election Day.
HUDSON, Wis. — It’s the final weekend before election day and both campaigns make stops in key battleground states.
Saturday, it was Gwen Walz in Hudson, Wisconsin at Hop and Barrel Brewing to persuade and turn out voters in the final stretch of the campaign.
“I trust you Wisconsin to do everything we can, and all Minnesotans are willing to support you, Walz said. “We are good neighbors, and we are in this together.”
In St. Paul, members of the Somali and Muslim community gathered at the state capitol to throw their support behind Former President Donald Trump.
Many who took to the podium today say they feel left behind.
While expressing their frustration with the Democratic party, speakers say they see the GOP as a way forward for their communities.
“We want drugs off our streets, we want our children and our women and our girls to be protected. Those are just common core American Values that we are all fighting for and what I have seen is the Democrats have abandoned us.
Both Governor Walz and Senator Vance are scheduled to make appearances in Wisconsin on Monday.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are making last-minute stops in North Carolina. Though the state has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008, the Harris team believes it is still in play while the Trump campaign also ramps up its voter outreach in the state. Skyler Henry and Caitlin Huey-Burns have the latest.
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Between assassination attempts, a last-minute candidate switch and ongoing personal attacks, the nail-biter 2024 election has some Americans stressed out. In fact, the American Psychological Association found 69% of Americans are “very stressed” about the presidential race. Elise Preston reports on expert tips to lower political worry.
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U.S. officials believe another two fake videos circulating online and publicly identified by the FBI as an attempt to push false election security claims are likely part of a Russia-backed malign influence campaign ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, two sources familiar with the process told CBS News.
The news comes after the FBI said in a statement Saturday that the videos “are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false.”
The agency said that one of the videos falsely claims “the FBI has apprehended three linked groups committing ballot fraud, and the second relates to first gentleman Doug Emhoff.”
The FBI in its statement did not say who was behind the videos, and when reached by CBS News, declined to comment further.
It added that the two videos — using Justice Department and FBI signage within them and images of Emhoff — were being circulated as part of “attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI operations.”
The FBI did not attribute the creation of the propaganda to any actor.
Saturday’s disclosure brings to four the number of fake videos produced and distributed by Russia to mislead the American electorate that have been publicly identified in recent days by the U.S. government.
On Thursday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said a video which purports to show Haitians claiming that they illegally voted for Harris is fake and likely the work of a Russian troll farm.
And in a joint statement Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the intelligence community “assesses that Russian influence actors” manufactured the video.
Another fake video that appears to show someone destroying mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County is also fake, both state and federal officials said.
The ODNI, the FBI and the CISA said a statement Friday that “Russian actors manufactured and amplified” that video.
In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence and Microsoft have assessed that U.S. adversaries have been conducting influence campaigns to mislead voters in the 2024 election.
Both the U.S. government and Microsoft have said that Russia favors former President Donald Trump, while Iran favors Vice President Kamala Harris.
Margaret Brennan is the moderator of CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” Based in Washington, D.C., Brennan is also the Network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent and a contributing correspondent to 60 Minutes.
Harris and Trump campaign in battleground states in election’s final stretch; Chef attracts diners from around the world with seasonal Scottish cuisine.
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Amid the home stretch to election day, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials issued a new warning on foreign interference. On Friday, they declassified intelligence and confirmed Russia is behind a fabricated viral video spreading lies about early voting. Moscow denied the claims.
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Three top government agencies are calling out two fabricated videos spreading lies about early voting, and they say a familiar foe is to blame. Nicole Sganga has more.
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Elon Musk’s political action committee has created a group on his platform X that has become a repository for election misinformation, galvanizing more than 58,000 members to report instances of “voter fraud or irregularities” that are often unsubstantiated, misleading or flat-out fabricated.
The “Election Integrity Community,” which launched in late October, has hundreds of new posts each day, many of which contain misleading or false claims, CBS News found. Misinformation experts are concerned that mobilizing people to gather unverified claims of election fraud is fueling the spread of false narratives that undermine trust in election security.
Musk has become a prominent voice in the 2024 election with his outspoken public and financial support of former President Donald Trump, and he frequently uses his X account to amplify election misinformation. A CBS News investigation found that half of Musk’s posts on election security this year contained false or misleading claims.
Many of the claims originate elsewhere on X and are reposted onto the community page. Some of the posts falsely claimed that voting machines are “flipping votes” from Trump to Harris. Other posts reshared a fabricated video that officials say was likely created by a Russian troll farm. Another recirculated a debunked claim that Michigan voters were casting multiple ballots.
Max Read, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the X community could serve as a “one stop shop” for users looking to amplify election fraud claims.
“The X community is sort of a consolidation point of a lot of different false, unverified claims about the election process,” Read said.
Some users in the community have attempted to dox individuals they falsely accuse of election fraud. In one instance, users tried to identify a postal worker dropping off ballots at an election office who they falsely claimed was illegally “harvesting” votes. A county executive told NBC News the postal worker was being harassed as a result of the video.
Musk’s X community echoes the “Stop the Steal” efforts on Facebook during the 2020 election, where Trump supporters spread false claims and organized protests that culminated in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The X group is part of a broader effort “built on years of the Big Lie from 2020 and 2021,” said Nora Benavidez, a civil rights attorney at Free Press helping to monitor social media platforms’ preparedness to handle election misinformation.
“Efforts to intimidate voters or make them feel like there could be violence is really a way to already plant the seeds that a Trump loss is illegitimate,” Benavidez said.
Since Musk took over X, formerly Twitter, in October 2022, he has reinstated accounts previously suspended for violating the platform’s policies and fired the department responsible for content moderation, opting instead for a crowdsourced method that often fails to quickly debunk false claims.
“He has a ton of power over the platform and over a platform that has a lot of users,” said Steven Rathje, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University who has studied changes on X since Musk’s takeover. “He’s changing the information diet we experience on a daily basis.”
With the hours ticking down to Election Day, nervous political obsessives are watching every single poll, attempting to glean some new information that goes beyond “The race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is very close.” But what if those polls are off again? This possibility concerns Sean Trende, the senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, who is one of the most astute observers of American elections. (Among other things, he was early to warn of Democrats’ big problems with white working-class voters and to observe that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock had a real chance to win their Senate races in Georgia.) I spoke with him about where he sees the race heading, the importance of abortion referendums to the outcome, and what makes him nervous about polling after two significant misses in a row.
On October 23, you wrote an article with the headline “It’s Close, But the Signs Aren’t Good for Harris.” I’m wondering if that’s still your basic view of the election a few days out. I think the headline was a little bit overstated, in retrospect. I think, overall, the polls are close — all point to a very close race. But if you look at the bigger picture and everything else surrounding the race — I think to the extent we’re going to rely on vibes, they’re better for Trump. I think Trump’s had a couple rough news cycles since then, but I still think, on balance, once you get past the polls — which, again, point to a very close race — the way I might put it is I’d rather be playing his hand than hers.
And why is that? Well, you look at what the campaigns are doing beyond what the polls say. Harris went to Texas, which I thought was perhaps an encouraging sign for her campaign, but he’s doing things like going to Coachella …
And you mentioned the Madison Square Garden rally in your piece. Of course, that didn’t end up going so well for Trump. No. But these are the types of things you do when you think things are going well and you’re trying to maybe win the popular vote or save some House seats.
The counterpoint to that, though, is that Trump projects crazy confidence at all times, and his campaign does the same. And that’s fair. I had the line, which with Trump is only a half-joke, that maybe he just always wanted to play the Garden.
The way it played out does give me some pause, or some additional pause, I guess. But I still think I’d rather have his hand than hers. You look at what’s going on with early voting in Nevada, which is hard to read stuff into. But Jon Ralston, who’s accidentally forgotten more about early voting in Nevada than I have ever known, is pretty bearish on Democrats. And he is not that bearish that often.
It’s a commonly held view among analysts that his analysis on this is the only one that matters. Part of it is that Jon’s just really good at it and he’s done it a long time and he’s an honest broker, but part of it is that there isn’t much of an Election Day vote in Nevada. I think in 2020, 10 percent of the vote was cast on Election Day, and in 2022, 20 percent was. So when you’re looking at the early-voting data, you’re getting a really good sense in that state of what Election Day is going to look like or what the overall numbers are going to look like. And they’re really bad for Democrats. Now Republicans have changed their strategy. Donald Trump’s not telling his supporters not to vote early; he’s telling them to vote early, which is a smart move.
A masterstroke. For Trump, I think it counts as one, but those numbers are scary. And to the extent you can look at other states, it really does look like minority turnout is down.
You’re looking at Georgia and North Carolina there? Those are the two states I was going to say. The thing that got me about North Carolina is that Republican and independent votes are about what they were, but Democratic votes are down from where they were. And, again, you don’t know. Maybe people are going to shift and vote on Election Day; maybe they’re going to vote later in the early-voting cycle. It really is entrail-reading.
It’s almost like choosing your own adventure. I see people saying, “Well, the gender split is very advantageous for Democrats — more women than men.” And I have no idea whether that means anything. If I’m Republicans, I would much rather have a bunch of Republican women voting than a bunch of Democratic men. But yeah, the early-voting stuff really is entrail-reading. You can think of the election as an equation — like, a party’s vote share is the number of early votes times its share of the early votes plus the number of Election Day votes times its share of Election Day votes. And, really, all we know are the number of early votes.
I was told there would be no math. Well, maybe you can play that part back a couple times. We know how many votes have been cast early to date and then people try to guess what the partisan breakdown is, even though we don’t really know. And then we know nothing about the Election Day vote. So unless you’re in a state like Nevada, where the Election Day vote is just tiny, it is really tough to read things into it.
You also wrote recently that the abortion referendums in Arizona and Nevada were being a bit underplayed, and that made you more bullish on Harris in those states. Do you still think that that could provide some kind of boost for her? It’s not just a turnout thing, although it can be. But if you’re a moderate pro-choice Republican woman and you go in and you think maybe you’re voting Trump-Vance because you think Harris is going to raise your taxes or whatever and then you look at your ballot and there’s an abortion question on it, it primes your thought process. So for wavering voters, I think that priming can have an effect. How much it’s worth, I don’t know, but I could see it being worth a couple points of people who go in kind of wishy-washy, but maybe they’re leaning Trump fans — and then they see the abortion referendum and they decide they’re going Harris. It’s like having one of her core messages right there on the ballot.
And those questions have done very well for Democrats pretty much everywhere they’ve been, often way surpassing the vote share of their candidates. I think that’s right. Michigan is one of the states that had a big pro-Republican skew in the polls in 2022, and I honestly do think it’s the abortion referendum there. So, yeah, that could easily move things a couple points.
The simplest path for Harris still seems to be the Midwest “Blue Wall” states — Pennsylvania and Michigan, Wisconsin — which, on the whole, are a bit stronger for her than all the other states we’ve mentioned so far. Do you agree with that assessment? I think that’s right. If Trump doesn’t lose any states from 2020, which I don’t think most people think he will — except maybe North Carolina — and adds Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, he gets to 268. So he really needs one of those three: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan. And Harris’s polling has held up pretty well there. That was the story before Biden had his debate. That was the story for him, too, and that’s basically what we’ve gotten back to. The Sun Belt states seem to be slipping away. Trump’s doing well in the popular vote, but those Rust Belt states are holding tight. But then I start thinking to myself that an ABC News–Washington Post poll had Biden up by 17 in Wisconsin.
Ah, the infamous 17. Yeah. Those are the states where the polls were terrible.
I’ve talked to Charles Franklin, who runs the Marquette poll in Wisconsin, and others about how they’ve tried to fix the state errors. Nobody really knows whether they’ve successfully done it. Again, when you’re asking, “What’s your vibes reaction to the election?,” I do think you have to give some weight to the possibility that the pollsters are going to underestimate him. Maybe not by 17 points like WaPo did. But even if they’ve only fixed half of the problems from 2020 …
And then, of course, there’s a possibility that they’ve overcompensated, which many have pointed out as a possibility. The thing that I come back to when I think about Trump voters who turn out in presidential elections is — when I go through back roads here in Ohio, there’s the house where you always wonder, Gosh, who lives there?, and the front yard is just completely decorated in Trump signs. The theory is that maybe Trump supporters, all other things being equal, just have low levels of social trust — and you can’t weight for that. Maybe the low level of social trust is why they don’t talk to pollsters.
That’s the most compelling theory I’ve heard. There’s just nothing you can do about it. And that keeps me awake at night.
There’s also been some talk of pollster “herding” recently, the idea that all these surveys come out and they show nearly exactly the same thing. Do you see any evidence that that’s happening? Are people worried that they’re going to get it so wrong again that they’re not revealing their true numbers? There’s some of that. It’s a one-way attitude, because the biggest penalty of the four outcomes is saying, “Trump’s going to win,” and he loses. If you say Harris is going to win and she loses, you’ve told a lot of people in media circles what they wanted to hear, and so they’re mad you’re wrong. But if you say Trump’s going to win and he loses, you’re a laughingstock.
I don’t know if I agree. If you say Harris is going to win and she loses, people are going to be devastated. They’re going to blame you. But if Harris wins, media circles will be in a good mood, so they won’t really care. Natalie Jackson had a good rejoinder on herding, which is that what’s going on with polling these days is that, because response rates are so low, everything’s modeled and weighted. And when you do that, you lose some of the natural variance. That causes its own problems, because any time you model or weight, you’re injecting the pollsters’ views of things. It’s not like the old days where you would take your sample, maybe weight for race, and then send it out into the world — where you would get that kind of wide variance that you expect. All the data is so massaged that it just becomes more stable. So it’s not necessarily herding, but it’s things that can have the same effect. And that does make me nervous. We should have more outliers than we have.
We had two examples that came out from 2014 where pollsters showed the Virginia Senate race close, and they just didn’t publish the result.
That’s pretty egregious. I think it’s the same thing: Do we really want to show Mark Warner in a close race and then he wins by ten like everyone else had been saying?
And, of course, it did end up close, right? Oh, yeah. It was very close. But it’s the same kind of public-pressure thing. If someone were to say, “I think Trump’s going to win,” and go the full Trafalgar —
You never want to go full Trafalgar. You don’t. But in Trafalgar’s defense, they were right and they got mocked for it. They got mocked for being basically right in 2016 and 2020.
But they also get mocked for being very opaque with their methods. Yeah, there’s more to it than just that skew. But if your final answer this time is that Trump wins the popular vote by five and he loses it by one, you’re going to take a hit. No one wants to be that pollster. And so that’s kind of what happened, I think, in 2014, was they had these polls showing a close race, but no one else was showing it, and they didn’t want to be the odd pollster out. We know herding does occur to some degree, and it’s a legit concern.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
