Vice President Kamala Harris and former US President Donald Trump are neck and neck in polls as millions of US citizens head to voting stations on Tuesday.
Both campaigns have been laser-focused on seven key swing states that are likely to decide the eventual winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Most US states lean heavily, or at least very clearly, towards either Republicans or Democrats. Swing states – also known as battleground states – are the outliers, where support for both parties and their candidates is almost the same.
But the states that meet the bar to be categorised swing states were not always theatres that witnessed close contests.
Here is a look at how these seven states have swung in previous decades and more recent elections.
Arizona (11 Electoral College votes)
The southwestern state has long been a strong Red state. Barring Democrat Bill Clinton’s win in 1996, the state consistently voted for Republican candidates since 1952, when it backed Dwight Eisenhower.
Until 2020, when it all changed, and Biden won by 0.3 percentage points over Trump, making Arizona swing state territory.
According to poll tracking platform FiveThirtyEight, Trump is ahead in the state by 2.1 percentage points entering into Election Day. But that margin – as with all swing states this time – falls well within the margin of error for polls. The state has more Republican registered voters (34.7%) than Democrats (30.5%). Others are third-party voters.
Here’s who Arizona voted for in the past six presidential elections:
2000: Republican (51.0%)
2004: Republican (54.9%)
2008: Republican (53.6%)
2012: Republican (53.7%)
2016: Republican (48.7%)
2020: Democratic (49.4%)
Georgia (16 Electoral College votes)
This is another southern state that usually votes Republican but swung Blue in 2020. Since 1972, only two Democrats managed to win here: Jimmy Carter, who was from the state, won in 1976 and 1980, and Clinton won in his first election, in 1992.
Trump won in 2016 by five percentage points over Hillary Clinton. But Biden flipped the state, winning narrowly – by 0.2 percentage points – in 2020.
Democrats are counting on the state’s Black and immigrant population in Atlanta to help Harris clinch a win this time, while Republicans are hoping that Georgia’s majority rural and white population will pull it back to their fold. FiveThirtyEight has Trump ahead by 0.8 percentage points.
Here’s who Georgia voted for in the past six presidential elections:
2000: Republican (54.7%)
2004: Republican (58.0%)
2008: Republican (52.2%)
2012: Republican (53.3%)
2016: Republican (50.8%)
2020: Democratic (49.3%)
North Carolina (16 Electoral College votes)
Like Arizona and Georgia, the southern state has typically voted Red.
Since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, only two Democrats have won North Carolina: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008.
Trump won the state in both 2016 (3.6 percent) and 2020 (1.3 percent).
He is in the lead again, although by a tiny gap – 0.9 percentage points – according to FiveThirtyEight.
One Trump campaign official, speaking to reporters last week, said it is the “one state that could bite you in the a**”, betraying the team’s nervousness over the narrow margins in the state. Trump has returned to North Carolina to campaign almost every day in the past week. A surge of early-voting Republicans gives the party some hope, analysts say.
Here’s who North Carolina voted for in the past six presidential elections:
2000: Republican (56.0%)
2004: Republican (56.0%)
2008:Democrat (49.7%))
2012: Republican (50.4%)
2016: Republican (49.8%)
2020: Republican (49.9%)
Nevada (6 Electoral College votes)
A small state of 3 million people, Nevada enjoys a bit of a bellwether status: Barring 1976 and 2016, it has voted for the eventual winner.
Voting in recent elections has swung both ways, although since 2008, Democrats have won consistently. The state has a growing immigrant population and large numbers of third-party voters who could prove influential in shaping the outcome.
In a column this week, Jon Ralston, editor of The Nevada Independent, predicted that Harris has the edge: “There are a lot of nonpartisans who are closet Democrats.” As of Tuesday morning, Trump was ahead of Harris by just 0.3 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Here’s who Nevada voted for in the past six presidential elections:
2000: Republican (49.5%)
2004: Republican (50.5%)
2008: Democrat (55.2%)
2012: Democrat (52.4%)
2016: Democrat (47.9%)
2020: Democrat (50.1%)
Pennsylvania (19 Electoral College votes)
It is the biggest prize among the swing states, with most Electoral College votes on offer. And many analysts believe that whoever wins Pennsylvania is likely to win the presidency – barring other surprises.
Voters in the northeast state had voted for the Democratic Party candidate consistently since Bill Clinton’s 1992 win – until Trump beat the odds, and Hillary Clinton, in the state in 2016.
The state appears deadlocked now – and both campaigns held their final pre-election rallies in Pennsylvania. According to FiveThirtyEight, Harris was 0.2 percentage points ahead, entering Election Day.
Here’s who Pennsylvania voted for in the past six presidential elections:
2000: Democrat (50.6%)
2004: Democrat (50.9%)
2008:Democrat (54.5%)
2012: Democrat (52.0%)
2016: Republican (48.2%)
2020: Democrat (50.0%)
Michigan (15 Electoral College votes)
George HW Bush was the last Republican to win the election in the midwestern state until Trump shattered predictions to win Michigan in 2016.
In 2020, Biden won the state back for Democrats, backed, among others, by the state’s large Arab American population – the largest in North America. But the community is now angry at Biden and Harris for their steadfast support for Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and Lebanon, and many have threatened to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, or even for Trump.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Harris is one percentage point ahead.
Here’s who Michigan voted for in the past six presidential elections:
2000: Democrat (51.3%)
2004: Democrat (51.2%)
2008:Democrat (57.4%)
2012: Democrat(54.2%)
2016: Republican (47.5%)
2020: Democrat (50.6%)
Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes)
Like Pennsylvania and Michigan, Wisconsin had been a reliably Democratic state for several election cycles before Trump breached that fortress to win in 2016. Before Trump, Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to win Wisconsin, in 1984.
Biden won the state back, narrowly, in 2020.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Harris is one percentage point ahead.
Here’s who Wisconsin voted for in the past six presidential elections:
In an advertisement for the Democrats in the United States in October, an image of left-wing environmentalist politician Jill Stein morphs into the face of Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump within the blink of an eye.
“A vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump,” a cautionary voiceover in the advertisement, titled “Crucial”, says. The video segues into Trump at a Pennsylvania rally this year, saying: “Jill Stein? I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them.”
On October 28, the Democratic National Committee announced that it would spend about $500,000 in a last-minute effort to persuade voters in swing states against voting for third-party candidates such as Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for the presidential election, and the unaffiliated candidate, Cornel West.
Both Trump and the Democrats have implied that Stein could dent the vote for Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris, paving the way for a Trump win.
But what do the polls say? How much impact could Stein, a third-party candidate, have on the outcome?
Who is Jill Stein and what are her key positions?
Stein, 74, is the US Green Party nominee for the presidential election. She announced her candidacy via a video message on X on November 9, 2023. She previously ran for the 2012 and 2016 elections.
Born in Chicago and raised in Illinois, Stein graduated from Harvard College in 1973 and from Harvard Medical School in 1979. Her campaign website describes her as a practising physician.
The Green Party is a left-wing federation of Green state parties in the US, advocating for environmentalism and social justice.
Her positions on some of the key issues in this election are:
Israel’s war on Gaza
Stein has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the blockade of the Palestinian enclave, the provision of humanitarian aid and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails alongside Israeli captives being held in Gaza. According to her campaign website, she wants to “stop US support and arms sales to human rights abusers”. She wants to “end the longstanding US practice of vetoing UN Security Council resolutions to hold Israel accountable to international law”. She also says she wants to disband NATO and “replace it with a modern, inclusive security framework that respects the security interests of all nations and people”.
Russia-Ukraine war
The Green Party wants to “stop fuelling” the Russia-Ukraine war and work on negotiating a peaceful end to it.
Climate change
Stein’s party wants to advance the Green New Deal proposal to transition to clean energy and achieve zero emissions. The party says it takes an “eco-socialist approach” towards the environment, centring and compensating Black people, Indigenous people and the poor. Stein wants to declare a climate emergency and ensure the release of $650bn annually to boost renewable energy and clean transport.
The economy
A Stein administration would seek to create an economy that “works for working people, not just the wealthy and powerful”. Stein wants to introduce an economic bill of rights, abolishing private schools and guaranteeing free childcare and a lifelong free public education for all from preschool to graduate school. Additionally, she wants to cancel student debt for 43 million people in the US. She also wants to reduce taxes on incomes below the real median income of $75,000 per household, and increase taxes on “the ultra-wealthy and giant corporations”.
How is Stein faring in the polls?
Overall, Stein was polling at about 1 percent nationally, according to The New York Times polling released in the first week of October.
However, discontent is brewing among many Arab-American and Muslim voters towards both the leading candidates – Harris and Trump – because of their unwavering support for Israel in its war in Gaza.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a US-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation, revealed on Friday that 42.3 percent of Muslim voters prefer Stein compared with 41 percent of Muslim voters who prefer Harris.
The poll of 1,449 verified Muslim American voters was conducted between October 1 and 31. It showed just 9.8 percent of Muslim voters were in support of Trump.
On February 27 this year, CAIR estimated that there were about 2.5 million registered Muslim American voters. That is approximately 1.6 percent of some 160 million registered voters in the US.
How is Stein polling in the swing states?
Between October 30 and 31, Brazil-based analytics and data intelligence website AtlasIntel polled samples of voters in the seven swing states.
Arizona: 1.1 percent of voters preferred Stein; 50.8 percent preferred Trump; and 45.9 Harris
Georgia: 2 percent for Stein; 48.8 percent for Trump; and 47.2 percent for Harris
Michigan: 1.7 percent for Stein; 49.2 percent for Trump; and 48.3 percent for Harris
Nevada: 1.2 percent of voters chose “Others”; 50.5 percent chose Trump; and 46.9 percent chose Harris; Stein did not figure on the ballot
North Carolina: 0.7 percent for Stein; 50.7 percent for Trump; and 46.7 percent for Harris
Pennsylvania: 1 percent for Stein; 48.5 percent for Trump; and 47.4 percent for Harris
Wisconsin: 0.8 percent for Stein; 48.5 percent for Trump; and 48.2 percent for Harris
Could Stein swing this election?
As the margins between Harris and Trump are so slim, some experts believe that votes for Stein could indeed swing the election.
“The vote right now is so close that a small amount of tipping in one direction or another could swing it,” Bernard Tamas, professor of political science at Valdosta State University, told The Guardian newspaper.
The Guardian also quoted Nura Sediqe, an assistant professor in American politics at Michigan State University, who said: “Muslims are split. They’re not all voting third party, but let’s imagine a third are: then you’ve got up to 50,000 votes that had traditionally gone to the Democrats moving away. So if the margin is as slim as it was last time, it may affect the Democratic party.”
On Friday, the European Green family, including Green parties all over Europe, released a joint statement calling on Stein to withdraw from the race and endorse Harris. “We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House,” the statement read.
However, Kyle Kopko, an adjunct professor of political science at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania told Al Jazeera that while Stein can, in theory, swing the election, in practise it depends on how close the election results are.
It will have to be an “extraordinarily close election” for her to swing the vote, Kopko said.
Have votes for Stein swung elections before?
Stein contested the 2016 election and won 132,000 votes across battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Together, the three states are worth 44 Electoral votes.
In these three states, Democrat Hilary Clinton lost by a combined 77,000 votes. Despite winning the popular vote, therefore, Clinton lost the Electoral College vote to Trump, who won 304 votes compared with Clinton’s 227.
The Republican leader beat Clinton in Michigan with a 0.3 percentage point margin of victory, in Pennsylvania with a 0.7 point margin of victory and in Wisconsin with a 0.7 point margin. These narrow victories earned him 44 Electoral votes combined from the three states.
In November 2016, an analysis cited by Vox suggested that if every Stein voter had voted for Clinton instead, she could have won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and therefore, the election.
Kopko said this might be misleading, however. If Stein had not been on the ballot, it is unlikely that every Stein voter would have voted for Clinton. “Some voters would be disillusioned and not vote at all, or find another third party candidate to vote for,” he said.
Have other third-party candidates affected election results?
In the 2000 US presidential election, Green Party candidates Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke contested the election on the party’s ticket and ended up winning 2.7 percent of the popular vote. Nader made inroads in swing states Florida and New Hampshire, and it is believed that this allowed the states to switch from the Democrats to the Republicans.
This fed speculation that the Green Party ticket ate away the vote share for Democrat Al Gore to bolster a Republican George Bush win. The Green Party denied this.
Gore won more than half a million votes and conceded only after a monthlong legal battle.
The two-party political system has made it difficult for third parties to make a dent in election results.
Only four third-party candidates have been able to win Electoral College votes since 1920. They are – Robert La Follette, who won 13 Electoral votes in 1924; Strom Thurmond, who won 39 in 1948; George Wallace, who won 45 in 1968; and John Hospers, who won one Electoral vote cast by a faithless elector in 1972.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is projected to lose a segment of her party’s traditional share of Indian American voters – who have historically sided with the Democrats – in the 2024 United States election, a new survey of the community’s political attitudes has found.
Even though Harris could become the first ever Indian American president of the US, a survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has found that she is likely to secure fewer votes from the community than incumbent President Joe Biden did in 2020.
An estimated 61 percent of respondents from the community will vote for Harris, the survey found, down by nearly 4 percent as compared to the last presidential election in 2020.
The 5.2 million-strong Indian American community is the second-largest immigrant bloc in the US after Mexican Americans, with an estimated 2.6 million voters eligible for casting a ballot for the November 5 election.
There has been a decline in the community’s attachment to Harris’s party as well, with 47 percent of respondents identifying as Democrats, down from 56 percent in 2020. Meanwhile, the researchers noted “a modest shift in the community’s preferences”, with a slight uptick in willingness to vote for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.
Small but influential
Both parties have ramped up their outreach to the immigrant group in the last few years as the community continues to grow its political clout and influence. While Harris is today the face of the party, several Indian Americans have gained prominence on the Republican side too – from former presidential contender and ex-ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to entrepreneur-turned-Trump surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy, and vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance.
Four days before November 5, pollsters say the election is too close to call, with Harris’s national edge over Trump shrinking, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker. And in all seven battleground states – Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada – the two candidates are separated by less than 2 percentage points, within the margin of error for polls.
The result of the presidential race may come down to a few thousand votes in these crucial swing states, where smaller communities – like Indian Americans – could play a pivotal role, political analysts and observers told Al Jazeera.
“Even though the Indian American community is not very big in absolute numbers, they can help swing the decision in one direction or another,” said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-author of the paper. “There are many states where the community’s population is larger than the margin of victory in the 2020 presidential election.”
Indian Americans are the largest Asian American community in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. There are more than 150,000 Indian Americans in both Pennsylvania and Georgia – a number much higher than the margin by which Biden won these two states, with 35 Electoral College votes between them – in 2020.
But why is the community’s vote drifting away from Democrats?
Deepening gender divisions
For Aishwarya Sethi, a 39-year-old Indian American voter based in California, Harris’s pitch to reclaim abortion rights in the country strikes a chord, she told Al Jazeera. But her husband, who works at a tech company in the state, she said, is increasingly tilting towards the Republican base. “I cannot understand why his politics is shifting but it is happening gradually,” she said. “I’ll still try to convince him to vote for greater sexual autonomy.”
This gender-based partisan divide is reflected in several research papers and leading exit polls across the US. Within the Indian American community, as per the latest survey, 67 percent of women intend to vote for Harris while 53 percent of men, a smaller share, plan to vote for the vice president.
“Reproductive freedom is a paramount concern for women across America, including South Asian women and the [female] support for Harris is not surprising given her position on abortion rights,” said Arjun Sethi, an Indian American lawyer based in Washington, DC.
“Whereas a growing number of South Asian men favour strong border policies and a more friendly taxation regime, [therefore] aligning with Trump.”
A closer look at the data reveals that the gender gap is starkest with younger voters.
A majority of men and women above the age of 40 say they plan to pick Harris. Among voters below the age of 40, however, the male vote is split almost equally between Harris and Trump, while women overwhelmingly support Harris.
“There is also a growing scepticism among some Indian American men voting for a female president,” added Vaishnav, co-author of the paper. The deepening gender gap in voting preference among the immigrant community is “a new cleavage that didn’t exist before, however, [it] is in line with the larger national trend in the US”.
Trump’s tougher stance on “illegal and undocumented immigration and a very aggressive populist, nationalist politics” may find resonance among a segment of Indian American voters, said Sangay Mishra, an associate professor of international relations, with a specialisation in immigrants’ political incorporation, at Drew University.
“This pitch is primarily aimed at white voters but also trickles down to minorities, especially among men.”
However, at the same time, Mishra warns against reading too much into the reported shift in the survey. “This paper captures the dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party but it does not necessarily mean greater identification with the Republican Party,” he said, “because within the Indian American community, the Republicans are still associated with the Christian, or white, nationalist position”.
No takers for Indian heritage?
Harris’s mother was born in India and migrated to the US in 1958 for graduate studies at the University of California Berkeley, while her father is Black with Jamaican roots. The Democratic candidate has also identified herself as a Black woman in multiple instances.
That identification with African American roots, rather than more openly embracing her Indian background, has also pushed away a few voters in the South Asian community, said Rohit Chopra, a professor of communication at Santa Clara University. “There is actually more enthusiasm for someone like Tulsi Gabbard or Usha Vance, than for Kamala Harris [in the Indian American community],” he said. “In the American mainstream, Harris is perceived as African American.”
This “strategic decision” by her campaign is also driven by numbers, Chopra added. “The ‘Indianness’ does not have the same trade-off value [like Black voters], it’s strategically not worth it for them.”
As per the new survey, Indian Americans (61 percent) are less inclined to vote for Harris than Black voters (77 percent), and marginally more so than Hispanic Americans (58 percent). However, Harris’s support is down among Black and Latino voters too, compared to the norm for the Democratic Party.
Within the Indian American community, Harris’s position as a more liberal leader appeals to 26 percent of voters as compared to 7 percent who say they are enthusiastic about her Indian heritage. Meanwhile, 12 percent of the respondents in the survey said that they are less enthusiastic about the Democratic ticket because “Harris identifies more with her Black roots”.
The Gaza heat
There are other worrying signs for Democrats too: The number of Indian Americans who identify themselves as Democrats has dropped to 47 percent in 2024, down by nine points from 56 percent in 2020.
Meanwhile, 21 percent identify themselves as Republicans – the same as in 2020 – while the percentage of Indian Americans who identify as independents has grown, up to 26 percent from 15 percent.
One reason for this shift, say experts, is Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 43,000 people have been killed, and President Joe Biden’s administration’s steadfast support for Israel.
Earlier in the year, more than 700,000 Americans voted “uncommitted” in state primaries as a message to Biden, the then-Democrat nominee, that he would lose significant support on the November 5 election day. As per recent polls, Trump is narrowly leading Harris among Arab Americans with a lead of 45 percent to 43 percent among the key demographic.
“A large number of young people, particularly young Indian Americans, are disillusioned with the stance that the Democrats have taken on Gaza,” said Mishra of Drew University. “There is a lot of conversation about uncommitted voters, or giving a protest vote, to show that people are unhappy with what’s happening in Gaza – and that is influencing at least a section of Indian Americans.”
Sethi, the Indian American lawyer based in DC, added that he is confident that “a growing number of younger South Asians are voting for a third-party candidate because they are deeply committed to ending the genocide in Gaza, and therefore refuse to vote for either Trump or Harris”.
‘Domestic issues over foreign policy’
Multiple immigration experts and political analysts have said that a slight shift among the Indian American community towards Trump is also driven by his apparent friendship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist leader.
In a message on Diwali, the Indian festival of light on Thursday, Trump tried to woo the Hindu American vote.
“I strongly condemn the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh, which remains in a total state of chaos,” he said on X. “It would have never happened on my watch. Kamala and Joe have ignored Hindus across the world and in America.”
“We will also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left. We will fight for your freedom. Under my administration, we will also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Prime Minister Modi.”
However, Vaishnav, the co-author of the paper, claimed that it is a rather “common misperception that Indian Americans tend to vote in the presidential elections based on their assessment of US-India ties”.
Vaishnav added that the last two surveys, in 2020 and 2024, on the political attitude of the community reveal that “foreign policy may be important to Indian Americans, but it is not a defining election issue” because of a bipartisan consensus that the US and India should grow together.
Instead, the voters are more motivated by daily concerns like prices, jobs, healthcare, climate change and reproductive rights, Vaishnav said.
On Thursday, presidential candidates made a final push to energise voters in the western United States.
At rallies, Vice President Kamala Harris warned supporters that abortion rights are under threat. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump focused his campaign on immigration and border control.
What are the latest updates from the polls?
Recent polls from AtlasIntel, released on Thursday, show Trump holding a slight lead of one to two percentage points over his opponent. However, a separate poll from TIPP Insights indicates that the candidates are currently tied.
A recent survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reveals that about 70 percent of Americans feel anxious or frustrated regarding the election, with few expressing enthusiasm.
Both Democrats and Republicans share these sentiments, but Democrats report higher levels of anxiety: 80 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans express interest in the campaign, while only 54 percent of independents feel similarly. Furthermore, 79 percent of Democrats report feeling anxious, compared with 66 percent of Republicans.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s National Polls tracker, Harris maintains a narrow national lead of about 1.2 points as of Thursday. However, this lead has gradually decreased and falls within the margin of error, indicating a highly competitive race.
In critical swing states, which could determine the election outcome, the competition is even tighter.
Key battleground states include Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. FiveThirtyEight’s daily poll tracker indicates that Harris’s lead in Michigan remains slight, at approximately 0.8 points. However, she has lost her lead in Nevada, where Trump now leads by 0.3 points.
In Wisconsin, her lead has dropped to 0.6 points, down from 0.8 points on Wednesday.
On the other hand, Trump’s advantage in Pennsylvania has increased slightly, rising from 0.4 points to 0.7 points. His lead in North Carolina has returned to last week’s levels, now at 1.4 points. Trump is also gaining ground in Arizona, where he leads Harris by 2.4 points, and in Georgia, where his advantage is 1.8 points.
What was Kamala Harris up to on Thursday?
The Harris campaign has zeroed in on what Trump said last night at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he told an anecdote about telling his team that he intends “to protect the women of our country”.
“I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not,” Trump said.
“It actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” Harris said before embarking on a day of campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.
In Phoenix, Mexican American band Los Tigres del Norte kicked off Harris’s rally with a song expressing a desire to eliminate the border and unite the two countries. Founded in the 1960s, the band has a deep resonance on both sides of the border and continues to captivate generations of devoted fans.
In Phoenix, her speech was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters in the first 10 minutes.
Harris paused briefly to acknowledge them. “Hey guys, you know what? Here’s the thing – let’s talk for a moment about Gaza,” she said. “We all want this war to end and get the hostages out, and I will work on it full-time when I am elected president, as I’ve been.”
Harris also contrasted her willingness to engage with those who disagree with her against Trump’s remarks about jailing his opponents. This was mentioned as several protesters were being escorted out, and she said: “Democracy can be complicated sometimes. It’s OK. We’re fighting for the right for people to be heard and not jailed because they speak their mind.″
Since winning the Democratic nomination earlier this year, Harris has at times adopted a confrontational stance towards protesters.
When a group of protesters interrupted her at an August event by chanting, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide,” Harris responded directly: “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
On Thursday, during her final stop of the day in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jennifer Lopez also spoke, and there was a performance by the Mexican rock band Mana.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris walks on stage as she arrives for a rally in Reno, Nevada [AFP]
What was Donald Trump up to on Thursday?
At his first rally in New Mexico, Trump urged the crowd to vote for him, promising to solve the border issue. The state, with five Electoral College votes, is widely expected to vote for Harris.
“One of the reasons we will win this state is you have one of the worst border problems of any state, and I’m the only one who will fix it,” he said.
In Henderson, Nevada, Trump accused Harris of operating a lax border policy and promised a mass deportation programme if he is elected.
He began by demonising migrants, saying some are “horrible, deathly” people. He also called Harris “horrible, the worst there is”, while urging his supporters to vote early.
“We’ll fix it fast, and we’re going to have an America that’s bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer and stronger than ever before,” he added.
In Nevada, many of his supporters wore orange and yellow safety vests.
The fashion choice comes a day after Trump wore a similar ensemble to draw attention to recent comments by President Joe Biden that suggested his supporters were “garbage”.
Trump walks in front of his supporters during a rally at Albuquerque International Sunport, in Albuquerque, New Mexico [Brendan McDermid/Reuters]
Al Jazeera’s John Holman, who attended the rally, noted that while Trump concentrated on migration, the primary concern for voters in Nevada is the economy.
“Trump’s rally had a lot of talk about migration, but actually, the key issue here in Nevada for voters – according to polls – is the economy,” Holman said.
“This is the state with the highest unemployment in the US. It’s been hit hard with inflation. Gas prices, in particular, are high, and it’s a state that has never completely recovered from the pandemic,” Holman added.
During his rally, Trump also spoke about inflation, and “he briefly said that he was going to abolish a federal tax on tips,” Holman said.
Trump also spoke at Tucker Carlson’s live tour event in Glendale, Arizona.
Trump speaks during a rally in Henderson, Nevada [Mike Blake/Reuters]
What’s next for the Harris and Trump campaigns?
Harris heads to Wisconsin
Harris is heading to Wisconsin, where she is expected to hold an event in the Appleton area at approximately 23:00 GMT, followed by another in Milwaukee at about 02:00 GMT.
The Milwaukee rally and concert features performances by GloRilla, Flo Milli, MC Lyte, The Isley Brothers, DJ GEMINI GILLY.
Cardi B is also anticipated to make an appearance at her rally, joining a growing list of celebrities who have campaigned for her in the final days of the 2024 election.
President Joe Biden will travel to Philadelphia and, on Saturday, to his hometown of Scranton, both in Pennsylvania, where he will aim to energise voters in this key swing state.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is expected to also campaign in the battleground state of Michigan.
Trump heads to Michigan and Wisconsin
Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Dearborn, Michigan – home to the largest Arab-majority population in the nation – on Friday, where he is expected to hold a rally at Macomb Community College in Warren at 20:30 GMT.
As the Arab American vote in Michigan has increased over the years, it has become a critical factor in major elections, such as Bernie Sanders’s primary victory in the state in 2016.
Consequently, Dearborn has drawn significant attention from national and international media during campaign season.
Trump is the first major 2024 candidate to visit the city.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who served in the state legislature as a Democrat, has not endorsed any candidates, urging residents to “vote their conscience” instead.
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is facing outrage after former President Bill Clinton – while campaigning for her – suggested that Zionism predates Islam and that Hamas “forces” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians.
Dearborn, Michigan – Abdullah Hammoud was pacing across his office, having an animated phone conversation about former President Bill Clinton’s claim that Hamas “forces” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians.
By the time the mayor of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn sat down for an interview, he had shaken off the anger – at least on the surface.
Hammoud, 34, appeared clear-eyed about the future of the city known as the capital of Arab America and the way forward for its bereaved community amid Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon.
“There’s a blanket of grief that has just covered this community, and people are just trying to manage, obviously, amidst the entirety of the presidential election with the backdrop of a genocide, the war in Lebanon, the bombing in Yemen and so on,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera.
Hammoud, one of the most prominent Arab American elected officials in the United States who served in the State Legislature as a Democrat, has not endorsed any of the candidates, urging residents to “vote their conscience” instead.
In a close race, the tens of thousands of Arab voters in Dearborn – a city of 110,000 people – and across Michigan may prove crucial for the outcome of the election in the state and possibly the country.
That’s not lost on the candidates: on Friday, Trump is expected to visit Dearborn, and Harris has met Hammoud previously during the campaign, but not in Dearborn.
Hammoud stressed the need to come out and vote for the community to make its voice heard.
“In this moment in time, what is more important than anything else is standing firm in our values and our principles and standing firm on the side of one another in the city,” he said.
But for Hammoud, the struggle to end Israel’s killing machine in Gaza and Lebanon – the ancestral home of thousands of Dearborn residents, including the mayor himself – does not end when the polls close on November 5 and a new president is elected.
“Whoever assumes that office, we’re prepared to hold their feet to the fire and hold them to account,” he said. “Everybody’s promising a ceasefire, but nobody’s saying how they’re going to deliver it.”
‘Pressure will be turned up’
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has said she would push for ending the war and her Republican rival Donald Trump has promised “peace” in the Middle East.
But both the vice president and former president are staunch in their support for Israel.
Hammoud noted that the two candidates have not articulated how they would deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has pledged repeatedly to continue the carnage until “total victory”.
“But the pressure will be turned up from our end. And we’ll be leaning on the broader antiwar coalition that has been built – our union labour leaders, who have all stepped forward and called for not only a ceasefire, but also an arms embargo against Israel,” the mayor said.
“Heck, even at this point, I’ll be leaning on young Republicans who favour an arms embargo.”
For Hammoud, change is possible regardless of the outcome of the election. “The policy is there. Americans, by the millions, support this,” he said.
“And what you’re not going to see is 50 million, 100 million Americans move on their values and principles. I think it’s feasible for us to believe that millions of Americans can move a single person in the White House on this issue.”
Dressed in a blue blazer over a white shirt, Hammoud hit out at both major candidates over their stance on the Middle East as well as their approach to the Arab community in Michigan.
In his office hung a map of Lebanon over a Yemeni dagger, a firefighter’s helmet, an American football with the Detroit Lions logo, the city’s seal – featuring an old car owing to the city’s manufacturing history as the hometown of industrial pioneer Henry Ford – as well as other items representing Dearborn’s history and diverse communities.
‘Policy outcomes aren’t dissimilar’
Hammoud enumerated some of Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian policies, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off humanitarian aid to Palestinians and recognising Israel’s claimed sovereignty over Syria’s occupied Golan Heights.
He also invoked Trump’s ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries as well as recent comments by the former president’s surrogate Rudy Giuliani, who proclaimed that Palestinians are “taught to kill us” at two years old.
“But I think the difficulty is you want to counter Trump with something that seems to be more welcoming,” Hammoud said.
“And so when you see the remarks of former President Bill Clinton, talking about how Israel is forced to kill civilians, and how the Israeli government’s claim to the land predates the existence of Islam, it gets extremely frustrating.”
Clinton was addressing Arab American voters at an official Harris campaign event in Michigan when he made those comments this week.
Earlier this month, Harris also campaigned in Michigan with ex-Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney – the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq and the so-called “war on terror”.
“When you have surrogates like Liz Cheney campaigning across the state of Michigan, talking about how even Dick Cheney – the war criminal – is supporting Vice President Harris, is that supposed to be a welcoming message to this community?” Hammoud asked.
He also noted that the Biden-Harris administration did not reverse Trump’s pro-Israel policies.
“Yes, rhetoric may be different,” he said, referring to the approach of Harris and Trump. “Sometimes policy outcomes aren’t dissimilar, and I think that’s been the frustration for many.”
‘Hope exists’
With the race for Michigan heating up, attention is turning to Dearborn, the country’s first Arab-majority city.
Campaign billboards can be seen across the city. Residents are getting piles of advertisements in their mailboxes daily, focusing on Arab issues and Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon.
But residents do not appear to match the enthusiasm of the campaign. The city’s Arab American community, especially its large Lebanese American population, is dealing with the anguish of watching the war that is destroying their homeland from afar.
The conflict is deeply personal to them. Their families are being displaced, home villages decimated and loved ones killed by mostly US-supplied bombs. The community lost a respected leader, Kamel Jawad, who was killed in an Israeli bombing in south Lebanon on October 1.
“We’re attending funerals far more frequently than celebratory events,” Hammoud said.
Across the city, Lebanese and Palestinian flags and yard signs for school board candidates far outnumber those for Trump and Harris.
Despite voters’ frustration and the growing sense of disenchantment with the political system, Hammoud warned against disengaging from the political process, calling it a “great fear”.
The mayor highlighted the importance of elections, especially at the local level. He cited the election of officials like himself and other representatives, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who have amplified the community’s demands around the conflict.
He said while people are struggling with the presidential question, “hope exists” on the ground.
“There are rallies happening all across this world, and the centre of America has moved on Israel-Palestine, and the centre of the world has moved,” he said.
“I think we are one generation away from having a generation of elected leaders who will be more reflective of the policy stances and the values and the principles of the broader electorate.”
Trump and the Republican party continue to connect with several segments of Christian voters, a diverse group of denominations that spans racial identities and political perspectives.
A Pew Research poll released in September found Trump commanded 82 percent of white evangelical Protestant voters, 58 percent of white non-evangelical Protestant voters, and 52 percent of Catholics. Harris, meanwhile, had 86 percent of support among Black Protestants, a group that has long skewed heavily Democratic.
Those numbers are especially significant in a swing state like Georgia, which carries 16 Electoral votes and went to US President Joe Biden in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes. It was the first time the state had gone to a Democratic presidential candidate in 18 years.
White evangelical Protestants – themselves divided into several sub-denominations – account for 38 percent of Georgia’s population. That is by far the largest segment of any religious group, followed by Black Protestants at 17 percent.
Cindye and Stan Coates say they do not agree with the emphasis on Israel support from Republicans ahead of the vote [Joseph Stepansky/Al Jazeera]
Evangelicals remain some of the staunchest supporters of Israel, according to a recent analysis of polling by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The entrenched support is rooted, in part, in some segments of the denomination that believe that Jewish people must be in control of Jerusalem for the second coming of Jesus, which will beckon in the Rapture, when living and dead Christians alike will rise to heaven.
Polls have shown that up to 82 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, according to the analysis.
The group is the most supportive of Israel out of all Christian denominations – at least 60 percent say they fully oppose putting any arms restrictions on Israel, while 64 percent believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza are justified.
But the polls also show a more complicated story: Thirty-three percent of White evangelicals say they support some form of restrictions on aid to Israel, with another 11 percent reporting that they feel Israel has gone too far in the war on Gaza.
That may be a reflection of wider trends within the Republican party, with a Data for Progress poll in October showing 52 percent of Republicans aged 18 to 29 supported an arms embargo on Israel.
Speaking to Al Jazeera after buying a black “Make America Great Again” bucket hat in Austell, 20-year-old voter Troy said he was among those who were uncomfortable with continued aid to Israel, which he broadly categorised with other forms of foreign assistance, including large transfers to Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion.
“I don’t really understand why Israel is that big of an issue in this election cycle,” said Troy, who declined to give his last name, but identified himself as an Anabaptist Protestant.
“I don’t think the United States should be so involved in anything overseas like that. We keep sending billions to Ukraine, there are still people reeling from the hurricane that came through,” he said, referring to Hurricane Helene, which ravaged Georgia in September.
For his part, Trump has framed himself as a “protector” of Israel, even as he has broadly claimed that the October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed at least 1,139 people, and the war that has spiralled since would not have happened on his watch. Still, speaking during a debate in July, he said US President Joe Biden should allow Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza, and has also claimed to speak to Netanyahu on a near daily basis.
Donald Trump says Liz Cheney might not be such a ‘war hawk’ if she had guns pointed at her, prompting response by ex-Republican lawmaker.
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has attacked Liz Cheney, suggesting the former lawmaker who has endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris in the race to the White House should face combat with guns trained on her for her policy stance.
“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said on Thursday at a campaign event with ex-Fox News television host Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, also calling Cheney “a deranged person” and “a very dumb individual”.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained to her face,” he added, noting that she and her father, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, refused to back his third presidential run.
Trump has repeatedly promised to investigate or prosecute his political rivals, including Cheney, as well as election workers, journalists and left-wing Americans, among others. The former president has also said the military could be used against what he calls “radical left lunatics” if there is unrest on Election Day.
In response, Cheney on Friday called Trump a “vindictive, cruel” dictator.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant,” Cheney responded in a post on X on Friday, adding “#Womenwillnotbesilenced.”
Later on Friday, Harris described Cheney as a “a true patriot” and said Trump’s increasing “violent rhetoric” should disqualify him from becoming president again.
“His enemies list has grown longer. His rhetoric has grown more extreme,” Harris told reporters after arriving in Madison, Wisconsin, one of her campaign stops on Friday. “And he is even less focused than before on the needs and the concerns and the challenges facing the American people.”
One of the most high-profile Republicans to turn against Trump, Cheney has endorsed Harris in the November 5 election, saying she crossed party lines to put the country before politics and calling Trump a “danger”.
Once one of the party’s top leaders in the US House of Representatives, Cheney lost her seat in Congress after backing Trump’s second impeachment for his role in his supporters’ January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol and then helping to lead the investigation into the attack.
In recent weeks, Cheney has campaigned with Harris, including in Michigan, a crucial battleground state with large Arab and Muslim populations who the Democrats are trying to win over.
Her father has long been pilloried by Democrats for his central role in pushing for – and executing – the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 on grounds that turned out to be fake. Cheney has embraced her father’s neoconservative legacy throughout her career, leading to questions where Cheney’s support could help Harris win votes in the knife-edge race or end up hurting her prospects.
“When you have surrogates like Liz Cheney campaigning across the state of Michigan, talking about how even Dick Cheney – the war criminal – is supporting Vice President Harris, is that supposed to be a welcoming message to this community?” Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, home to the largest per capita Muslim population in the US, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, are targeting key swing states in a final push to win over undecided voters as they continue to crisscross the United States before Tuesday’s election.
The two contenders, who are locked in a tight race for the White House, will host duelling rallies on Friday night about 10km (6 miles) from one another in Milwaukee, the largest city in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic votes in the state, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to reclaim the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020.
Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than 1 percentage point, or fewer than 23,000 votes, and the race is just as tight this time around.
After appearing with music star Jennifer Lopez at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday, Harris will tap musicians such as GloRilla, the Isley Brothers and Flo Milli in Milwaukee. Grammy award-winning rapper Cardi B, who has more than 200 million followers on social media platforms, was also due to speak at the campaign event.
Trump, meanwhile, will return to the Fiserv Forum, the venue where in July he formally accepted his party’s presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention.
Earlier, he made a campaign stop in Michigan, in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, home to a large Arab American community.
Asked why Dearborn was important to him, the former president said: “We have a great feeling for Lebanon, and I know so many people from Lebanon, Lebanese people and the Muslim population [like] Trump, and I’ve a good relationship with them.”
He said: “We want their votes. We’re looking for their votes, and I think we’ll get their votes.”
Trump also disparaged Harris and claimed if elected to the White House again, “we’re going to have peace in the Middle East”.
In comments that echoed claims he has made about ending the conflict in Ukraine, he said bringing peace to the Middle East was possible “but not with the clowns you have running the US right now”.
Opinion polls, both nationally and in the seven closely divided battleground states, suggest the two candidates are virtually tied with four days to go before election day. More than 66 million people have already cast early ballots.
Trump has focused his campaign on stirring fears about violence he blames on immigrants and pessimism over the economy. The former president continues to falsely claim his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud in multiple states, and he and his supporters have spread baseless claims about this election in the key state of Pennsylvania.
On Thursday, Trump stepped up his unfounded allegations that probes into suspect voter registration forms are proof of voter fraud. Some of his supporters also alleged voter suppression when long lines formed this week to receive mail-in ballots.
“This is sowing the seeds for attempts to overturn an election,” said Kyle Miller, a strategist with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “We saw it in 2020, and I think the lesson Trump and his allies have learned since is that they have to sow these ideas early.”
State officials and democracy advocates said the incidents show a system working as intended. A judge extended the mail-in ballot deadline by three days in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, after the Trump campaign sued over claims that some voters were turned away before a Tuesday deadline.
Election officials discovered potentially fraudulent registrations in Lancaster and neighbouring York counties, prompting investigations by local law enforcement. There is no evidence the applications have resulted in illegal votes.
“This is a sign that the built-in safeguards in our voter registration process are working,” Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s top election official, told reporters this week.
Harris, meanwhile, is running on warnings about an authoritarian takeover, pledging to help the middle class and pushing back against Republican abortion bans and restrictions.
An issue top of mind for voters is the economy, with many complaining about inflation and wages that do not keep up with rising prices.
Economists said the US economy is actually in robust shape, shrugging off the remaining impact of the coronavirus pandemic with low unemployment and strong growth. New figures on Friday, however, showed drastically lower job growth last month with only 12,000 new jobs created.
Analysts largely attributed this to knock-on effects from hurricanes and a strike at the aerospace giant Boeing.
Russia denies the claims as ‘baseless’ and ‘malicious slander’, says it respects ‘the will of the American people’.
Intelligence agencies in the United States have accused “Russian influence actors” over a video that falsely claimed election fraud was taking place in the battleground state of Georgia, days before the country’s knife-edge presidential vote.
The video began circulating on X, the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk – a staunch supporter of Republican candidate Donald Trump – on Thursday afternoon. It claims to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs who says he is planning to vote multiple times in two counties.
In a joint statement issued on Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said “Russian influence actors manufactured a recent video that falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally” in Georgia.
“This judgment is based on information available to the IC [intelligence community] and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities,” the agencies said
The activity is “part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans”, the statement alleged.
Russia, which has previously dismissed as absurd US intelligence claims that it is seeking to meddle in the November 5 election, on Saturday called the latest allegations “baseless”.
Russia’s embassy in the US said it “has not received either any proof for these claims during its communications with US officials, or any inquiries regarding the narrative being promoted by the press” in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
“As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed, we respect the will of the American people. All insinuations about ‘Russian machinations’ are malicious slander, invented for use in the internal political struggles” in the US, Moscow’s mission said.
It described as an “unfortunate tradition” that US authorities and media “descend into hysteria about ‘Russian disinformation and interference’, attempting to attribute any problems to external influence”.
Earlier on Friday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his state has been targeted with a video that is “obviously fake”.
He added that the clip is likely the product of Russian trolls “attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election”, calling on social media companies to remove it from their platforms.
The original video was no longer on X on Friday morning, but copycat versions were still being shared widely.
An analysis of the information on two of the IDs in the video confirmed it did not match any registered voters in the counties, The Associated Press news agency reported.
Trump referenced the claims during an election debate against his rival, Democrat Kamala Harris, in September viewed by tens of millions of people. Following that, Springfield saw dozens of bomb threats that forced evacuations and public building closures, as well as the cancellation of a diversity festival.
Opinion polls, both nationwide and in the seven closely divided battleground states, suggest Trump virtually tied with Harris, with four days to go before Election Day. More than 66 million people have already cast early ballots.
As the United States presidential election approaches on November 5, polls show Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump locked in a tight, too-close-to-call race.
But while the US election is about who the American people want to see leading them, the country’s outsized influence means the contest is being watched closely in capitals around the world.
So who would various world leaders want to see in the White House?
Vladimir Putin, Russia
While the Russian leader has suggested — perhaps in jest — that he might prefer Harris as president, many signs point towards Putin actually favouring a Trump win.
“Putin would love Trump as president for various reasons,” Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.
“First, Putin thinks Trump is soft on Russia and will roll over to give him a great deal on Ukraine – cutting military support to Ukraine and lifting sanctions on Russia,” he said.
“I think Putin looks at Trump and sees a mirror image of himself, an authoritarian, sociopath. He likely thinks he understands Trump,” Ash added.
Furthermore, Putin “hates” the system of Western liberal market democracy, and the Russian leader “thinks Trump will continue where he left off in Trump 1.0 in sowing disunity and chaos”, undermining institutions like NATO and the European Union.
However, Russian analysts say regardless of who wins, Moscow officials believe the US’s aversion towards Russia will remain, the Anadolu news agency reported.
Putin has previously been outspoken about his thoughts on US presidential politics and has made endorsements for candidates time and time again since 2004.
Before the 2016 election, Putin talked Trump up to reporters during an annual news conference. “He is a bright and talented person without any doubt,” he said.
In July 2016, the US intelligence community accused Putin of election interference with the aim of helping Trump defeat Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. In 2020, a bipartisan US Senate report found that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. US intelligence also alleged that Russia meddled in the 2020 election.
On July 9 this year, a US intelligence official – without naming Trump – indicated to reporters that Russia favoured Trump in the 2024 race.
“We have not observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections, given the role the US is playing with regard to Ukraine and broader policy toward Russia,” the official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said.
In September, Putin made a tongue-in-cheek reference to Harris, describing her as having an “expressive and infectious laugh” which, he said, indicates “she’s doing well” and maybe would not impose sanctions on Russia.
“I don’t know if I’m insulted or he did me a favour,” Trump responded at a campaign rally on the same day as Putin made the wry remarks.
In October, veteran reporter Bob Woodward alleged in his new book that Trump had made at least seven phone calls to Putin since he left the presidency in January 2021. These allegations were rejected by Trump’s campaign and by Trump himself. “He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,” Trump said about Woodward to ABC News.
Later in October, during the closing of the BRICS summit, Putin said Trump “spoke about his desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine. I think he is being sincere”.
Trump has been critical of the aid the US sends to Ukraine against Russia’s war and says he will promptly “end the war” if elected.
US President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the beginning of a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018 [Pablo Martinez Monsivais/File]
Xi Jinping, China
China’s President Xi Jinping has not publicly made an endorsement.
As with Russia, both Democrats and Republicans have taken a tough stance towards China. During his presidency, Trump started a trade war with China, imposing tariffs on $250bn of Chinese imports in 2018. China hit back, placing tariffs on $110bn of US imports.
It does not seem like Trump would back down from that if elected, but Democrats could also rally against China’s growing influence worldwide.
When Joe Biden became president, he kept Trump’s tariffs in place. Furthermore, on September 13 this year, the Biden administration announced increases in tariffs on certain Chinese-made products. If Harris wins, she is expected to stay consistent with Biden’s policy towards China.
Neither Trump nor Harris have gone into detail about what their course of action would be towards China if they are elected.
Despite Trump’s trade war, he has boasted of his good relationship with Xi. After Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 14, he said world leaders had reached out to him. “I got along very well with President Xi. He’s a great guy, wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened,” Trump told a rally.
However, behind the scenes, Chinese officials may be slightly leaning towards Harris, NBC News quoted Jia Qingguo, the former dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, as saying.
“The irony is, Xi probably wants Harris, as does Iran,” Ash told Al Jazeera while talking about Putin.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly endorsed either candidate. However, it is widely believed that he leans towards a Trump win.
Netanyahu and Trump had a good relationship during the former US president’s first term. In 2019, at the Israeli-American Council, Trump said: “The Jewish state has never had a better friend in the White House than your president.”
The feelings were mutual. Netanyahu, in a 2020 statement, said that Trump was “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”.
Relations between Trump and Netanyahu soured after Biden was elected. When Biden was sworn in, Netanyahu congratulated him. Trump said he felt betrayed by this, in an interview.
However, the Israeli prime minister has made attempts to rekindle the old bond. During a US visit in July this year, Netanyahu visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Axios reported that an ally of Netanyahu even travelled to Mar-a-Lago before the actual meeting of the two leaders, to read passages from Netanyahu’s book, praising Trump.
The Israeli leader also posted a video on social media expressing shock about the assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania in July, which was reposted by Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social.
At the same time, the Biden administration has shown unwavering diplomatic and military assistance to Netanyahu’s government amid Israel’s war on Gaza, where the death toll of Palestinians stands at 43,061 according to the United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA), as of October 29.
Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7 last year – following a Hamas-led attack on villages and army outposts in southern Israel – Biden’s government has sent billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.
Last October 4, Biden told a news conference that he does not know whether Netanyahu is purposefully holding up a ceasefire deal in Gaza, despite reports and speculation that the Israeli leader might have been holding up an agreement on purpose, possibly to influence the US election result.
“No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None. None. None. And I think Bibi should remember that,” Biden said during the news conference, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
Former US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they pose for a photo at their meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, in Palm Beach, Florida, United States, on July 26, 2024 [Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images]
European and NATO leaders
A majority of European leaders prefer Harris as the US president.
“I know her well. She would certainly be a good president,” Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany told reporters.
Trump has threatened to leave NATO several times. However, Politico reported that his national security advisers and defence experts say it is unlikely he will exit the alliance.
Regardless, his complaints about NATO remain. It is expected that he would want NATO allies to increase their defence spending targets.
In February, Trump stirred the pot with allies in Europe by suggesting he would tell Russia to attack NATO allies that he considered “delinquent”.
Additionally, Trump’s victory could mean less alignment with European countries on collaboration for renewable energy initiatives.
This is because Trump has campaigned for more fossil fuel production to enable the US to reduce reliance on foreign energy imports. “We will drill, baby, drill,” he told the Republican National Convention while accepting the party’s nomination in July.
On the other hand, Harris is likely to continue with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and clean energy transition plans, creating opportunities to collaborate with Europe. However, Harris has also been accused of making a U-turn on sustainability promises such as fracking.
During her 2019 run for the presidential primaries, Harris had promised to ban fracking, a technique of extracting oil and gas by drilling into the earth – which environmental campaigners say is particularly damaging as it consumes large amounts of water and releases the greenhouse gas methane. Trump had criticised her for this promise.
During the presidential debate between Harris and Trump in Pennsylvania in September, however, Harris said: “I will not ban fracking, I have not banned fracking as vice president.”
Narendra Modi, India
While India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared a close relationship with Trump during the latter’s presidency, Modi was also one of the first world leaders to congratulate Biden on his 2020 election victory.
“I don’t believe that Modi has a strong preference for one candidate over another,” Chietigj Bajpaee, a senior research fellow for the South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme at the Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.
“There is a high degree of bipartisan consensus in Washington on deepening relations with India and viewing it as a long-term strategic partner – arguably as much consensus as there is on viewing China as a long-term strategic rival,” Bajpaee wrote in an article for Chatham House.
He wrote that the three key pillars of US engagement with India are that India is the world’s largest democracy, that the US sees India as a bulwark against China, and India’s potentially growing economy.
Michael Kugelman, the director of the Washington, DC-based Wilson Center think tank’s South Asia Institute, told Al Jazeera that the Indian government will weigh the pros and cons for both candidates.
When it comes to Trump, “there may be a sense in New Delhi that that would be a good thing for India because there may be a perception that Trump would not make a fuss about internal matters in India, including human rights issues,” Kugelman said, adding that despite this, the government of India would be concerned about Trump’s “unpredictable” governing style.
“While Donald Trump is more familiar to Modi from his first term in office, a Kamala Harris presidency offers a degree of continuity from the current Biden administration,” Bajpaee told Al Jazeera.
Under Biden, ties between the US and India deepened in terms of defence, technology and economy. Biden made India a Major Defence Partner, despite India not being a formal military ally and its reliance on Russia for military assistance.
In May 2022, on the sidelines of the Quad summit in Tokyo, India and the US announced an Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), to enhance cooperation in AI, quantum computing and other technological advances.
Before Modi’s visit to India in September this year, Trump called Modi “fantastic” but, at the same time, called India an “abuser of import tariffs”.
South Korea
South Korea is a key ally of the US in the Asia-Pacific. While the country’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has not explicitly endorsed a candidate, the relationship between South Korea and the US has flourished under Biden.
Commentary published in September by US think tank Brookings said that during the Trump administration, “South Koreans were dismayed by charges they were not contributing enough to their defence and to the upkeep of US forces, despite providing the bulk of front-line combat forces against North Korea”.
On the other hand, “the Biden administration has done little to address the North Korean nuclear threat. It has, however, focused on strengthening bilateral and trilateral ties between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul,” Edward Howell, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera.
Howell said this was made evident at the Camp David Summit of 2023, as well as in presidential-level meetings between Biden and Yoon Suk-yeol.
Howell added that South Korea will want to make sure that US support for it does not wither under the next president “at a time when the East Asian region faces not just the threat of a nuclear North Korea, but an increasingly coercive and belligerent China”.
Japan
For US ally Japan, a Trump win may mean he will shift focus to domestic policy and reduce collaboration with Japan, increase tariffs, as well as expect Japan to increase military spending, an analysis published by the Japanese website Nippon Communications Foundation says.
However, Japanese government officials have formed relationships with officials from the last Trump administration, including Bill Hagerty, who is a former ambassador to Tokyo and is seen as a favourite for secretary of state, the analysis by Kotani Tetsuo says.
On the other hand, while a Harris administration would mean more consistent policy with the Biden administration, new relationships would have to be formed with the officials on Harris’s team.
Australia
For US ally Australia, “a Trump victory would raise many questions”, Australian reporter Ben Doherty wrote for The Guardian.
Doherty added that many in Australia believe Trump is likely to withdraw from the Paris Agreement if he is re-elected, which could weaken the influence of the informal climate coalition, the Umbrella Group, which Australia is a part of.
Australia also shares a trade relationship with China and a Trump win could mean a trade war with China, which could be detrimental to Australia’s economy.
