In the crucial swing state of Michigan, the Arab and Muslim community is divided over who to vote for.
Arab and Muslim Americans in the state of Michigan are grappling with a critical choice this election. Nearly 400,000 Arab Americans in the state were instrumental in delivering Michigan to elect Joe Biden in 2020. This time, however, many feel betrayed by his administration’s support for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. With candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris running neck and neck in Michigan, what stance will these voters take?
In this episode:
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Tamara Khandaker and Sarí el-Khalili, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Duha Mosaad, Hagir Saleh, Cole van Miltenburg, and our host, Malika Bilal.
The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Sarí el-Khalili, Tamara Khandaker, Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Chloe K. Li, Ashish Malhotra, Khaled Soltan, and Amy Walters. Our editorial interns are Duha Mosaad, Hagir Saleh, and Cole van Miltenburg. Our host is Malika Bilal.
Our engagement producers are Munera Al Dosari, Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Aya Elmileik is lead of audience engagement.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editor is Hisham Abu Salah. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
The court won’t hear arguments until early next year and the 2024 elections are proceeding under the challenged map, which could boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the closely divided House of Representatives.
A lower court had invalidated the map, but the justices allowed it to be used in 2024 after an emergency appeal from the state and civil rights groups.
The issue in front of the justices is whether the state relied too heavily on race in drawing a second majority Black district.
The court’s order Monday is the latest step in federal court battles over Louisiana congressional districts that have lasted more than two years. Louisiana has had two congressional maps blocked by lower courts and the Supreme Court has intervened twice.
The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 Census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district in a state that is about one-third Black.
Noting the size of the state’s Black population, civil rights advocates challenged the map in a Baton Rouge-based federal court and won a ruling from U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.
The Supreme Court put Dick’s ruling on hold while it took up a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use the maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges.
The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.
Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, had defended Louisiana’s congressional map as the state’s attorney general. Now, though, he urged lawmakers to pass a new map with another majority Black district at a special session in January. He backed a map that created a new majority Black district stretching across the state, linking parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.
A different set of plaintiffs, a group of self-described non-African Americans, filed suit in western Louisiana, claiming that the new map was also illegal because it was driven too much by race, in violation of the Constitution. A divided panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 in April in their favor and blocked use of the new map.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to put that ruling on hold and allow the map to be used.
State Attorney General Liz Murrill, whose office has defended both maps enacted by lawmakers, called on the court to “provide more clear guidance to legislators and reduce judicial second-guessing after the Legislature does its job. Based upon the Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncements, we believe the map is constitutional.”
The state and civil rights groups were at odds over the first map, but are allies now.
“Federal law requires Louisiana to have a fair map that reflects the power and voice of the state’s Black communities,” Stuart Naifeh of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund said in a statement. “The state recognized as much when it adopted a new map with a second majority-Black district in January. Now the Supreme Court must do the same.”
The Supreme Court vote to use the challenged map in this year’s elections was unusual in that the dissenting votes came from the three liberal justices, who have been supportive of Black voters in redistricting cases. But, in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, they said their votes were motivated by their view that there was time for a new map to be drawn, and their disagreement with past court orders that cited the approach of an election to block lower-court rulings.
“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” Jackson wrote in May.
In adopting the districts that are being used this year, Landry and his allies said the driving factor was politics, not race. The congressional map provides politically safe districts for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, fellow Republicans. Some lawmakers have also noted that the one Republican whose district was greatly altered in the new map, Rep. Garret Graves, supported a GOP opponent of Landry in last fall’s governor’s race. Graves chose not to seek reelection under the new map.
Among the candidates in the new district is Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, a former congressman who is Black.
___
Associated Press writer Sara Cline contributed to this report from Baton Rouge.
After a historic US election cycle that saw the incumbent president step down from his party’s ticket and two assassination attempts against the Republican presidential nominee, voters are (finally) casting their ballots.
Tens of millions of Americans will have already voted by the time that polls close on 5 November, but tens of millions more will cast ballots in person on election day. In 2020, more than 200 million Americans voted in the presidential race, as turnout hit its highest level since 1992.
This year, election experts expect voter turnout to be similarly robust, with Americans eager to make their voices heard in what will probably be a very close contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Voters will also have the opportunity to weigh in on thousands of other elections happening at the federal, state and local levels.
As voters head to the polls, here’s a guide on how to navigate an election night that is guaranteed to be eventful:
6pm ET: polls start to close
The first polls will close in eastern Kentucky and much of Indiana at 6pm ET. Democrats’ expectations are low in the two Republican-leaning states: Trump is virtually guaranteed to win both, and Republicans are expected to easily hold most of the two states’ House seats as well.
7pm ET: polls fully close in six states, including Georgia
Americans will get their first clues about the outcome of the presidential race at 7pm ET, when polls close in the battleground state of Georgia. Joe Biden won Georgia by just 0.2 points in 2020, after Trump carried the state by 5 points four years earlier. This year, Trump appears to have a slight advantage over Harris in the Peach state, but a strong night for Democrats could put Georgia in their win column again.
As Georgia starts to count its ballots, polls will also close in Virginia, where both parties hope to flip a House seat. Republicans are looking to expand their narrow majority in the House, and the results in Virginia’s second and seventh congressional districts could give an early indication of the party’s success.
7.30pm ET: polls close in North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia
North Carolina represents one of the largest tests for Harris, who has run neck and neck with Trump in the state’s polling. Trump won North Carolina by 1 point in 2020 and 3 points in 2016, and a loss in this battleground state could doom the former president. Democrats also expect a victory in the North Carolina gubernatorial race, given the recent revelations about Republican Mark Robinson’s disturbing internet activity.
Meanwhile, the results in Ohio and West Virginia could decide control of the Senate. Republicans are expected to pick up a seat in West Virginia, where the independent senator Joe Manchin decided against seeking re-election; and the Democratic incumbent, Sherrod Brown, is facing a tough race in Ohio. If Republicans win both races, that would erase Democrats’ current 51-49 advantage in the Senate.
8pm ET: polls fully close in 16 states, including Pennsylvania
This will represent a pivotal moment in the presidential race. Whoever wins Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes is much more likely to win the White House, a fact that both nominees acknowledged as they held numerous campaign events in the state.
“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said at a rally in September. “It’s very simple.”
Pennsylvania will also host some of the nation’s most competitive congressional races. If it is a good night for Republicans, they could flip the seat of the incumbent Democratic senator Bob Casey, who is facing off against the former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick.
But if Democrats have an especially strong night, they may set their sights on Florida, where the final polls close at 8pm ET. In addition to Harris’s long-shot hopes of flipping a state that Trump won twice, the Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is looking to unseat the Republican senator Rick Scott, who has maintained a polling advantage in the race. An upset win for Mucarsel-Powell could allow Democrats to maintain their Senate majority.
8.30pm ET: polls close in Arkansas
There won’t be much suspense in Arkansas, as Trump is expected to easily win the solidly Republican state. Arkansas does have the distinction of being the only state where polls will close at 8.30pm ET, but most Americans’ attention will be on the results trickling in from battleground states by this point in the night.
9pm ET: polls fully close in 15 states, including Michigan and Wisconsin
This will be the do-or-die moment for Harris. In 2016, Trump’s ability to eke out narrow victories in the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin sent him to the White House, but Biden won all three battlegrounds four years later.
Harris’s most likely path to 270 electoral votes runs through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this year, so Trump could secure a second term if he can pick off even one of those states.
Michigan and Wisconsin will also play a potentially decisive role in the battle for Congress. Democrats currently hold two Senate seats in the states that are up for grabs this year, and Republican victories in either race could give them a majority. Michigan’s seventh congressional district, which became an open seat after Elissa Slotkin chose to run for the Senate rather than seek re-election, has been described as “the most competitive open seat in the country”.
In New York, where polls also close at 9pm ET, Democrats have the opportunity to flip several House seats that Republicans won in 2022. If they are successful, it could give Democrats a House majority.
10pm ET: polls fully close in Nevada, Montana and Utah
Harris hopes to keep Nevada in her column, as Democratic presidential candidates have won the state in every race since 2008. Trump previously led Nevada polls, but Harris has closed that gap in the final weeks of the race.
Another two Senate races will come to a close at this point in the night as well. In Nevada, the Democratic incumbent, Jacky Rosen, is favored to hold her seat, but her fellow Democratic senator Jon Tester’s prospects appear grim in Montana.
If Republicans have not already clinched a Senate majority by the time Montana’s polls close, this may be the moment when they officially capture control of the upper chamber.
11pm ET: polls fully close in four states, including California
While Harris is virtually guaranteed a victory in her home state of California, the state’s House races carry important implications for control of Congress. Five House Republicans face toss-up races in California, according to the Cook Political Report, so the state represents Democrats’ biggest opportunity to regain a majority in the chamber.
12am ET: polls close in Hawaii and most of Alaska
By the time polls close in Hawaii and most of Alaska, Americans should have a much better sense of who will be moving into the White House come January. But if 2020 is any indication, the nation may have to wait a bit longer to hear a final call on who won the presidential race.
In 2020, the AP did not declare Biden as the winner of the presidential election until 7 November at 11.26am ET – four days after the first polls closed. And in 2016, it took until 2.29am ET the morning after election day to declare Trump as the winner.
Given how close the race for the White House is expected to be, Americans might have to settle in for a long night – or even week – to learn who their next president is.
With just one day remaining until the US presidential election, campaigning has hit overdrive.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump are on a tour of swing states aiming to sway undecided voters. On Sunday, Harris was in Michigan, while Trump focused on North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
What are the latest updates from the polls?
A recent New York Times/Siena poll shows that Trump and Harris are effectively tied in Pennsylvania, each receiving 48 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, according to FiveThirtyEight’s National Polls tracker, Harris holds a narrow lead of 1 percentage point over Trump.
However, this lead is shrinking, indicating that either candidate has a strong chance of winning.
In critical swing states, the competition is intensifying, with candidates frequently alternating their lead based on the latest polls.
Key battleground states include Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily tracker, Harris holds a narrow lead in Michigan and Wisconsin, with margins of approximately 0.8 points and 0.6 points, respectively.
On the other hand, Trump is gaining ground in Arizona, where he currently has a 2.5-point advantage over Harris. In North Carolina and Georgia, his lead hovers at about 1.5 points. Additionally, Trump maintains a 0.9-point advantage in Nevada and holds a slim margin of 0.3 points in the crucial state of Pennsylvania.
What was Harris up to on Sunday?
Harris made her first stop in Detroit, where she spoke to a church congregation.
“We heard Harris speak about the need to unite the country, to help it heal after a polarising election,” Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Detroit, Michigan, said.
“She’s certainly appealing to the African American voters in Michigan, a crucial swing state. Recent polls show that she’s lagging behind, especially among African American men. Many people we have spoken to say they are not going to vote because they don’t believe it will impact their lives,” Bo said.
Harris visits Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit, Michigan [Leah Millis/Reuters]
Later in the day, Harris mentioned that she had submitted her mail-in ballot for the 2024 election, sending it to California. She continued her campaign in Michigan in efforts to earn the support of Arab American voters.
“I have been very clear [that] the level of death of innocent Palestinian children is unconscionable. We need to end the war, and we need to get the hostages out. And as president of the United States, I will do everything in my power to achieve that end,” she said.
Many Arab Americans, who have historically favoured Democrats, have shifted towards the Republican presidential candidate this election amid widespread anger and frustration over US support of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.
Harris gestures during a campaign rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing [Carlos Osorio/Reuters]
What was Trump up to on Sunday?
The former president started his campaign in Lititz, Pennsylvania where he said he felt he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his 2020 election loss, which he has yet to concede.
The Republican presidential candidate also launched into a tirade against the voting process, accusing his opponents of “fighting so hard to steal this damn thing”. He also lashed out at the press.
“I have this piece of glass here,” said Trump, referring to the ballistic glass placed in front of him at events following a gunman’s attempt to assassinate him at a July rally. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.”
Reporting from a Trump rally in North Carolina, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher noted that Trump appeared tired during his speech in Kinston.
“It’s a very low-energy sort of performance for Donald Trump, understandably, since he’s been on the road for a long time,” Fisher said.
“He started the day in Pennsylvania, is here in North Carolina, and has still one more rally to do in Georgia. He’s already running about two hours behind.
In Georgia, Trump slammed the Biden-Harris administration on immigrants and the economy. “I am hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer.”
Trump gestures as he finishes speaking at a campaign rally in Lititz [Evan Vucci/AP]
What’s next for the Harris and Trump campaigns?
Harris heads to Pennsylvania
Harris will spend the final day before the election at a series of campaign events in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
She will be joined by several celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Just Blaze and Oprah Winfrey at a Get Out the Vote event in Philadelphia on Monday night.
Harris will also campaign with D-Nice, Katy Perry and Andra Day in Pittsburgh.
In Pennsylvania, which holds 19 Electoral votes, all eyes are on what many see as the “tipping point” in the race for the White House.
According to FiveThirtyEight, the race in Pennsylvania is nearly deadlocked. A recent poll by Univision and YouGov shows that more than 60 percent of Latino voters in Pennsylvania say they plan to support Harris in the election.
Trump is back in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan
Trump will hold a rally in North Carolina in the morning before travelling to Pennsylvania for events in Reading, west of Philadelphia, and in Pittsburgh.
He will end the day with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he will seek to energise his base to vote on November 5.
Trump won North Carolina in 2016 and 2020. But according to Al Jazeera’s Fisher, Trump needs to win again in the swing state.
“The fact that four of his last 10 events have been here in the state tells us his campaign is not certain it is a done deal,” Fisher added.
Police escorts, sealed containers and chain of custody documentation: These are some of the measures that Pennsylvania counties take to secure ballots while they are transported from polling places to county facilities after polls close on Election Day.
The exact protocols vary by county. For instance, in Berks County, poll workers will transport ballots in sealed boxes back to the county elections office, where they will be locked in a secure room, according to Stephanie Nojiri, assistant director of elections for the county located east of Harrisburg.
In Philadelphia, local law enforcement plays a direct role in gathering ballots from polling places.
“Philadelphia police officers will travel to polling places across the city after the polls close and collect those ballots to be transported back to our headquarters at the end of the night,” said Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, who serves on the board that oversees elections in the city. “Each precinct is given a large canvas bag, and the containers that hold the ballots are placed into that bag and transported by the police.”
After polls close in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, poll workers will transport ballots in locked, sealed bags to regional reporting centers, where the election results are recorded, said David Voye, division manager of the county’s elections division.
From there, county police escort the ballots to a warehouse where they are stored in locked cages that are on 24-hour surveillance.
Poll workers and county election officials also utilize chain of custody paperwork to document the transfer of ballots as they are moved from polling places to secure county facilities.
For instance, in Allegheny County, chain of custody forms are used to verify how many used and unused ballots poll workers are returning to county officials, Voye said. Officials also check the seals on the bags used to transport the ballots to confirm that they are still intact.
There are similar security procedures for counties that use ballot drop boxes to collect mail and absentee ballots. In Berks County, sheriff’s deputies monitor the county’s three drop boxes during the day, according to Nojiri. When county elections officials come to empty the drop boxes, which are secured by four locks, they unlock two of the locks, while the sheriff’s deputies unlock the other two.
Officials remove the ballots, count them, record the number of ballots on a custody sheet, and put the ballots in a sealed box before they transported back to the county’s processing center.
“There’s all kinds of different custody sheets and all that, again, is reconciled in the days after the election,” Nojiri said.
Philadelphia has 34 ballot drop boxes, which are emptied daily and twice on Election Day by election workers, according to Bluestein. The bags used for transporting ballots from drop boxes are also sealed, and workers who are returning these ballots complete and sign a chain of custody form.
“The transportation of ballots is done in a secure, controlled manner, and the public should have confidence in the integrity of that ballot collection process,” Bluestein said.
___
This story is part of an explanatory series focused on Pennsylvania elections produced collaboratively by WITF in Harrisburg and The Associated Press.
___
The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here.
With the clock ticking, Harris risks losing support of Michigan’s 200,000-strong Arab Americans, who denounce the US handling of Israel’s war.
In her closing pitch for the presidency of the United States, Democrat aspirant Kamala Harris has promised to end the war in Gaza.
Campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, home to many Arab Americans, Harris, 60, on Sunday tried to reach voters disgruntled by the ongoing genocide, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced almost the entire 2.3 million residents of Gaza.
“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. And 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 realise their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination,” Harris said to applause during a rally in East Lansing city of Michigan, home to 200,000 Arab Americans.
She did not elaborate on how she planned to end the Gaza war, which critics say is backed by the US, the largest military supplier to Israel.
Both Harris, the current US vice president, and her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, 78, are making their final appeals with less than 36 hours left until polls open for Tuesday’s election.
Israel’s ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon have been a contentious issue in the campaign, with many voters condemning the US’s continued support for Israel amid mounting deaths, displacement and destruction in both places.
Since Israel began bombing Gaza following a rare Hamas attack inside Israel in October last year, Harris, like her boss, President Joe Biden, has repeatedly stated that Israel had a right to defend itself against its enemies. That, despite expressing concerns over disproportionate Palestinian civilian deaths due to Israel’s military campaign.
Harris, who has also promised to continue arming Israel if elected, badly needs to secure a majority in the seven pivotal battleground states in this year’s election amid a virtual dead heat with Trump nationally. A compilation of opinion polls by the RealClearPolitics website has Trump ahead by just 0.1 percent nationally, with five polls indicating they are locked in a tie.
Michigan, with a vibrant Arab and Muslim community and 15 Electoral College votes at stake, is crucial to Harris’s prospects. It, as well as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are considered this year’s swing states.
Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – once considered reliably Democratic – are crucial this year. Known as the “blue wall”, these states fell to Trump in 2016, only to be secured by Biden in 2020.
Trump on Friday visited Dearborn, Michigan, the heart of the Arab American community, and promised to end the conflict in the Middle East, also without saying how.
Ahead of Election Day, more than 78 million Americans have already cast early ballots, including about 700,000 more Democrats than Republicans, according to data published by the University of Florida Election Lab.
Intent on firing up volunteers in Pennsylvania, Vice President Kamala Harris chants: “Let’s get out the vote.” Harris spoke to her supporters in Scranton, a key area that could decide whether she or former President Donald Trump wins the state.
Intent on firing up volunteers in Pennsylvania, Vice President Kamala Harris chants: “Let’s get out the vote.” Harris spoke to her supporters in Scranton, a key area that could decide whether she or former President Donald Trump wins the state.
Published [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]
One of four U.S. House vacancies will be filled Wednesday by voters in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district. The winner will complete the term of Democrat Donald Payne Jr., who died in April.
As the New Jersey Globe reports, “Democrats nominated LaMonica R. McIver, a two-term Newark city councilwoman, in a special primary election on July 16. She faces Republican Carmen Bucco, a Kenilworth businessman, and two independent candidates, Rayfield Morton and Russell Jenkins.”
Payne was reelected in 2022 by a 78% to 20% margin over his Republican challenger in this deep blue Newark-area district. Republicans last won the 10th district in 1946.
Polls close at 8:00 PM Eastern.
Payne’s death came after the filing deadline for the statewide June 4 primary. He was unopposed on that ballot, and thus posthumously renominated. Democratic officials in the affected counties chose McIver to replace Payne on the November ballot shortly after her special primary win. Bucco will again be her major party opposition.
House Vacancies
Republicans currently hold a 220-211 partisan edge over Democrats in the U.S. House, likely to move to 220-212 after Wednesday’s special election.
Two of the other three vacancies will be filled in November 5 special elections, held concurrently with the general election. Winners will serve during the lame-duck session of Congress.
The incumbent party is expected to hold these seats, with Democrats favored in TX-18, Republicans in WI-08. Assuming no other vacancies, the House will complete this term with a 221-213 Republican margin.
The final vacancy, in NJ-09 will not be filled this term. Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. died last month.
This combination of photos shows Vice President Kamala Harris, left, on Aug. 7, 2024 and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on July 31, 2024.
AP
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned around southwestern states this week as they sought to shore up the Latino vote with only five days until Election Day.
Latino voters account for %14.7 of all eligible voters in the upcoming election, according to Pew Research Center. New Mexico, where Trump campaigned on Thursday, has the highest share of Latino voters with around 45% the population. The states with the next largest share of Latino voters include California, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. While California is reliably blue and Texas reliably red, Arizona and Nevada, where Harris held her rallies, are battleground swing states.
Although Democrats tend to have a historical advantage among Latino voters, that advantage has declined over the past four presidential cycles, according to a national NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll from September, especially as Trump makes strides with Latino men. One of the big reasons behind this, according to experts, is inflation and the cost of living crisis, two issues on which voters tend to trust Trump over Harris.
“So I’m here for one simple reason. I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community,” Trump told the crowd in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Thursday, before asking them not to make him “waste a whole damn half a day here.”
The state is blue-leaning; President Joe Biden won in 2020 by 10.8 points and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won by 8.3 points in 2016. But Trump thinks he can shift it,
“We almost won it twice, and let me tell you, I believe we won it twice,” Trump said of the results of the presidential election out of New Mexico in 2020 and 2016, suggesting that the votes were rigged and that he believes he can win the state this year.
“One of the biggest reasons we will win this state is that you have among the worst border problems of any state in America, and I am the only one that knows how to fix it,” Trump said.
But the Trump campaign also found itself in the middle of a controversy this past week that could dampen his support among Latino voters, when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made racist remarks about Latinos at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.
Hinchcliffe joked that Latinos “love making babies” and he called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” And while campaign officials were quick to distance Trump from these remarks, the former President himself has yet to personally apologize for them.
US President Donald Trump arrives for a roundtable rally with Latino supporters at the Arizona Grand Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Arizona on September 14, 2020.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
Although Trump’s speech in New Mexico centered mostly around immigration and border security, a recent CNBC poll rated the issue as only the fourth most important area of concern for Latino voters, well behind inflation, jobs and threats to democracy. Even then, the poll showed that more Latinos believe immigration helps the country more than it hurts it. But the ratio was the smallest since 2006.
Meanwhile, Harris held three rallies in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada, where she presented an economic pitch to the voters while also taking jabs at Trump’s stance on immigration.
“With five days left in this campaign, my opponent is also making his closing argument to America. It is an argument full of hate and division,” Harris told the crowd in Phoenix. “He insults Latinos, scapegoats immigrants, and it’s not just what he says, it’s what he will do if elected. You can be sure he will bring back family separation policies, only on a much greater scale than last time.”
Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Jennifer Lopez attend a campaign rally in North Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 31, 2024.
David Swanson | Reuters
Harris also had Latino musicians open for her on Thursday, most notably singer Jennifer Lopez in Las Vegas, Nevada. Lopez highlighted her Puerto Rican descent and appealed to immigrant and Latino voters as she introduced the vice president.
“[Trump] has consistently worked to divide us. At Madison Square Garden, he reminded us who he really is and how he really feels,” Lopez said. “It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans that were offended that day, it was every Latino in this country.”
Both campaigns have been amping up their Latino voter outreach efforts as Nov. 5 gets closer. Last week, Trump hosted a roundtable in Florida with Latino business leaders, while Telemundo aired a pre-taped interview with Harris.
