Welcome to October Surprise, the Daily Beast’s daily countdown to the biggest election of our lifetime. It’s only one day until Election Day and here’s what’s happening in the race to the White House between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
THE DOWNLOAD
Top Democratic campaign officials said Monday that Kamala Harris has “multiple pathways” to win the presidency.
“We don’t have to pick and choose, we just have a lot of options,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters during a video call.
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O’Malley Dillon said while “we feel good about Pennsylvania,” a Harris victory doesn’t necessarily depend on winning the Keystone State. Nevertheless, the vice president spent the entire day ahead of Election Day in the crucial battle state, where 75 percent of the state’s voters will cast their ballots on Tuesday in person.
“We like what we’re seeing in Georgia,” Dillon said, adding that Harris is “on pace to win a very close race” in the Peach State. “We truly believe we have multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes,” she said. Read more here.
As Donald Trump makes his last pitch to voters on the eve of Election Day, the GOP presidential nominee’s supporters are failing to show up en masse at his campaign events.
The former president, who has spent months boasting about his crowd sizes and MAGA enthusiasm, struggled to pack the seats of his final rallies, despite claiming otherwise.
Trump’s multi-stop trip to North Carolina began with rows of empty seats at his rally at the Dorton Arena in Raleigh. The former president, taking the stage an hour behind schedule, spoke to a couple thousand of his supporters inside after failing to pack the stadium. (The day prior, video shows supporters leaving a Kinston, North Carolina, event five minutes into the GOP presidential candidate’s speech, to which he arrived two hours late.) Read the story here.
POLLS OBSESSED
An Election Eve poll has Harris with a 4-point lead over Trump among likely voters nationally. The PBS News/NPR/Marist poll shows Harris leading Trump 51 percent to 47 percent, which is just outside the survey’s 3.5-point margin of error.
ON THE MOVE
Harris spent the day barnstorming all over Pennsylvania ahead of her star-studded rally finale late Monday night in Philadelphia, where she’ll be joined by Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin, The Roots, Fat Joe, and others. Trump is making his closing statement in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after holding rallies in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both presidential candidates’ running mates hit Wisconsin and Michigan.
MONDAY MEMORIES
On Nov. 4, 2020, it was the day after election day, the winner was yet to be called but seemed extremely likely to be Joe Biden–and, David Rothkopf wrote in the Beast, the coup attempt had begun. Trump had spoken early in the morning at the White House to claim “frankly, we did win this election.” Rothkopf eerily foretold the weeks of attempts by Trump to overturn his loss, writing. “He made clear he would, given the opportunity, attempt to steal the power that the Constitution gives to us as individuals and collectively, as an electorate.” Read more here
BEAST OF THE DAY
Pete Buttigieg sat in the center of a circle of 25 undecided Michigan voters in a new video released the day before the 2024 election, as each of them brought their views—some well-informed and others fueled by internet misinformation—and asked him to change their minds.
“I know that I’m simultaneously speaking to some people who come at this from a more conservative perspective and are deciding whether to go for Trump even though they’re not sure, others who are coming from a more left of center perspective and deciding whether to vote third party or whether to vote at all,” Buttigieg said in the video, addressing the surrounding voters. But “if you’re skeptical of him and if you’re willing to give her a chance, I’m urging you not just to withhold your vote from him but to use your power to make sure that she becomes the next president of the United States,” he continued.
Buttigieg is asked to answer for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ records on everything from crime to reproductive rights to the environment, and to challenge some of their views that Donald Trump or third party candidate Jill Stein were better candidates. His claims for why Harris is the best candidate were challenged by the surrounding undecided voters, which were made up of 11 people who were leaning towards not voting at all, five leaning third party, four leaning towards voting for Trump, and six leaning towards Harris. Read here.
SHAMELESS PLUG
It’s the final chance to hear from The New Abnormal hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy before the election. It won’t be relaxing but they’ve got must-listen guests Doug Rushkoff who’s sounding the alarm on billionaires in politics and Katherine Stewart who’s got a separate alarm to sound on Christian nationalists.
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Find the Daily Beast’s coverage of the 2024 election here. Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast.
