The polling map does not consider forecasts of how the election will go in November. It is best thought of as an ‘if the election was today’ view of things.
State-level polling for the nascent general election match-up is extremely limited to this point, but should become more plentiful in the weeks ahead.
Given the lack of polling, each state on the map is rated based on the following methodology:
The calculated Harris vs. Trump polling average (if multiple qualifying polls) or most recent poll (if only one)
If nothing available in #1, we use the Biden vs. Trump average (or most recent poll if only one) as of July 21, the date of the president’s withdrawal
If nothing available in #2, we use the 2020 margin between Trump and Biden
America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk that has led the ground game operation for Donald Trump’s campaign, was warned in September about increasing numbers of door knocks being flagged as potentially fraudulent, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The confrontation marked the first time that America Pac’s leadership became aware of the problem – canvassers falsely claiming to have knocked on doors – that has raised the possibility that thousands of Trump voters might not be reached by the field operation.
As America Pac rapidly sought to scale up its field operation on behalf of the Trump campaign in late fall, executives at some of the canvassing vendors contracted to knock on doors in battleground states observed that internal audit systems were increasingly flagging doors as suspicious.
The executives were seeing the uptick both through the “unusual activity logs” on the Campaign Sidekick software used by America Pac and their managers in the field spotting fraud by canvassers on door knocks teams across several states, including Pennsylvania.
By 24 September, the situation had so alarmed Drew Ryun, the chief executive of Sidekick, that he raised the issue via email with Musk’s newly hired political adviser Chris Young, a former national field director for the Republican National Committee, the people said.
Whether any changes were implemented as a result is unclear. A review of the unusual activity logs in Arizona and Nevada for instance showed that the percentage of potentially fraudulent doors remained constant in the period before and after Ryun’s missive, hovering around 20-25% with occasional spikes.
America Pac has previously disputed that their doors were falling victim to its canvassers cheating their way through walkbooks, a problem that has dogged the paid canvassing industry for years, saying their audit program essentially prevented door knocks being faked.
But the Guardian has reported that tens of thousands of door knocks in Arizona and Nevada, for instance, remain dubious based on the unusual activity logs. In one instance, GPS data showed a canvasser sitting at a restaurant half a mile away from doors he was supposedly hitting in Arizona.
As a result of that reporting, America Pac moved to restrict access to the unusual activity logs and toggled off the feature for dozens of users, who promptly complained and ultimately had their user privileges restored, two of the people said.
A Trump spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
The problem of suspicious door knocks in the America Pac field operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared with traditional volunteers or campaign staff.
With the Trump campaign targeting their low-propensity voters – Trump supporters who have not voted in several previous elections – the walkbooks have had what canvassers refer to as “bad turf”, where target doors are separated by particularly large distances that are tedious to complete.
Musk donated $75m to America Pac, according to federal disclosures. Roughly $37m has been spent on the ground game operation to drive the Trump vote, with the rest put towards digital and mail advertising for him, as well as for down-ballot Republican candidates.
The billionaire owner of SpaceX has also been trying to return Trump to the White House in other ways, notably through a petition that asks registered voters in battleground states to submit their address, phone number and emails in exchange for $47 and to enter a daily-$1m prize draw.
Some campaign finance lawyers and the US justice department have warned Musk that the America Pac petition offer is illegal as it amounts to paying people to register to vote in violation of federal law. America Pac has also been used by Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner.
Musk’s defenders say it is simply a contest open to registered voters; in theory, Democrats registered to vote in battleground states can complete the petition and have a chance to win the $1m lottery.
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.
The influential podcast host Joe Rogan has endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.
Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”
Rogan shared his endorsement along with a link to a nearly three-hour-long interview with Musk, posted on Monday.
The great and powerful @elonmusk. If it wasn’t for him we’d be fucked. He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way. For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump. Enjoy the podcast pic.twitter.com/LdBxZFVsLN
Rogan is a former mixed martial arts commentator, comedian, and gameshow host whose show, The Joe Rogan Experience, is Spotify’s No 1 podcast offering.
In an era of distrust in traditional media outlets, Rogan’s outsider persona, and long conversations with famous and infamous guests, from Kanye West to Edward Snowden to Alex Jones, has won him a massive audience.
But Rogan’s views and interviews have also sparked condemnation, and even a boycott of Spotify, which reportedly signed a $100m deal in 2020 to host his podcast, and finalized a new multiyear deal, reportedly for $250m, earlier this year.
In January 2022, a group of 270 US doctors, scientists, professors, and other healthcare professionals wrote an open letter to Spotify, raising concerns about Rogan’s podcast and what they called its “concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the Covid-19 pandemic”.
“Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy,” promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19,” the letter said.
Rogan’s night-before-the-election Trump endorsement is not the first time one of his shows with Musk has made news headlines. Tesla shares suffered and some Tesla executives resigned in 2018 after Musk infamously smoked a joint on the live webcast of Rogan’s show in 2018.
The move left UAV — an investment partnership of former “Apprentice” contestants Andrew Litinsky and Wes Moss — owning just 100 shares in Trump Media, which operates the Truth Social app.
The amount of money UAV got from the stock sales, which occurred within the past week, was not disclosed.
But the price range that DJT shares has traded at during that time – which saw unusually heavy trading volume — suggests that UAV would have received between $128 million and $170 million for its stock.
UAV was allowed to dump its 5.4% stake in Trump Media after a lock-up agreement that barred company insiders from selling expired on Sept. 19.
UAV is the only known insider to sell off shares after that day.
Litinsky and Moss had pitched the idea of a social media company to former President Donald Trump, the star of the “Apprentice” show, and co-founded Trump Media with him in 2021.
The two later fell out with Trump and since then have been embroiled in lawsuits with Trump Media over their shares.
Trump owns 114.7 million DJT shares, more than 56% of Trump Media’s stock.
After UAV’s sale of its stake, the only other entity that holds more than 5% of Trump Media shares is ARC Global Investments II LLC, which holds slightly more than 11 million shares.
DJT stock closed Thursday at $13.98 per share, a decrease of about 1%.
The Republican presidential nominee Trump on Sept. 13 said “I have absolutely no intention of selling” his shares in the company after the lock-up period expired.
CNBC has requested comment from Trump Media and a lawyer for UAV about the sales by Litinsky and Moss’ company.
Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that UAV owned 7,525,000 shares of Trump Media as of March 25, the day the company completed a merger with the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corp., which led to Trump’s company becoming publicly traded.
UAV later was awarded another 3.44 million shares that were issued “for no additional consideration based on the performance of our shares of Common Stock,” Trump Media said in an SEC filing on Sept. 5.
That left UAV owning more than 10.96 million shares.
Thursday’s SEC filing disclosing UAV’s sale of the vast majority of those shares does not give the dates or prices for the selloff.
Trump Media had warned in a Florida lawsuit that UAV was planning to sell “all of its shares as soon as possible” once the lock-up period expired.
UAV’s disclosure of the sale in a 13G filing with the SEC came on the heels of a Sept. 6 ruling by a federal judge in Delaware in UAV’s favor in a lawsuit against a securities transfer agent, Odyssey Transfer and Trust Company.
That ruling barred Odyssey from interfering with the transfer of UAV’s Trump Media shares to UAV when the lock-up period expired.
Odyssey had indicated before the ruling that it would take directions from Trump Media on the transfer of share, and Trump Media had refused to say if it would allow Odyssey to remove transfer restrictions without preference to any shareholder.
Trump Media stock soared in its trading debut on the Nasdaq, reaching an intraday high of $79.38 per share and sending the company’s market capitalization north of $10 billion.
But DJT’s price quickly pulled back.
In recent months it has suffered a downward slide that erased more than 80% of the company’s value at its post-merger peak. The company’s market cap is now below $2.8 billion.
Analysts view DJT as a meme stock whose wild price swings were driven more by investors’ support for Trump, the majority shareholder and Truth Social’s main draw, than its business fundamentals.
Trump Media has reported net losses of around $344 million on revenues of less than $2 million in its last two quarterly earnings reports.
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.
Republicans are already laying the ground for rejecting the result of next week’s US presidential election in the event Donald Trump loses, with early lawsuits baselessly alleging fraud and polls from right-leaning groups that analysts say may be exaggerating his popularity and could be used by Trump to claim only cheating prevented him from returning to the White House.
The warnings – from Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans – come as Americans prepare to vote on Tuesday in the most consequential presidential contest in generations. Most polls show Trump running neck and neck with Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee, with the two candidates seemingly evenly matched in seven key swing states.
But suspicions have been voiced over a spate of recent polls, mostly commissioned in battleground states from groups with Republican links, that mainly show Trump leading. The projection of surging Trump support as election day nears has drawn confident predictions from him and his supporters.
“We’re leading big in the polls, all of the polls,” Trump told a rally in New Mexico on Thursday. “I can’t believe it’s a close race,” he told a separate rally in North Carolina, a swing state where polls show he and Harris are in a virtual dead heat.
An internal memo sent to Trump by his chief pollster is confirming that story to him, with Tony Fabrizio declaring the ex-president’s “position nationally and in every single battleground state is SIGNIFICANTLY better today than it was four years ago”.
Pro-Trump influencers, too, have strengthened the impression of inevitable victory with social media posts citing anonymous White House officials predicting Harris’s defeat. “Biden is telling advisers the election is ‘dead and buried’ and called Harris an innate sucker,” the conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec posted this week.
GOP-aligned polling groups have released 37 polls in the final stretch of the campaign, according to a study by the New York Times, during a period when longstanding pollsters have been curtailing their voter surveys. All but seven showed a lead for Trump, in contrast to the findings of long-established non-partisan pollsters, which have shown a more mixed picture – often with Harris leading, albeit within error margins.
Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on 30 October. One poll puts her ahead of Trump by one point in the state, but another behind him by three points. Photograph: Peter Zay/Anadolu/Getty Images
In one illustration, a poll last Tuesday by the Trafalgar Group – an organisation founded by a former Republican consultant – gave Trump a three-point lead over Harris in North Carolina. By contrast, a CNN/SRSS poll two days later in the same state put the vice-president ahead by a single point.
The polling expert Nate Silver – who has said his “gut” favours a Trump win, while simultaneously arguing that people should not trust their gut – cast doubt on the ex-president’s apparent surge in an interview with CNBC. “Anyone who is confident about this election is someone whose opinion you should discount,” he said.
“There’s been certainly some momentum towards Trump in the last couple of weeks. [But] these small changes are swamped by the uncertainty. Any indicator you want to point to, I could point to counter-examples.”
Democrats and some polling experts believe the conservative-commissioned polls are aiming to create a false narrative of unstoppable momentum for Trump – which could then be used to challenge the result if Harris wins.
“Republicans are clearly strategically putting polling into the information environment to try to create perceptions that Trump is stronger. Their incentive is not necessarily to get the answer right,” Joshua Dyck, of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, told the New York Times.
Simon Rosenberg, a Democrat strategist and blogger, said it followed a trend set in the 2022 congressional elections, when a succession of surveys favourable to Republicans created an expectation of a pro-GOP “red wave” that never materialised on polling day.
“These polls were usually two, three, four points more Republican than the independent polls that were being done and they ended up having the effect of pushing the polling averages to the right,” he told MeidasTouch News.
“We cannot be bamboozled by this again. It is vital to Donald Trump’s effort if he tries to cheat and overturn the election results, he needs to have data showing that somehow he was winning the election.
“The reason we have to call this out is that Donald Trump needs to go into election day with some set of data showing him winning, so if he loses, he can say we cheated.”
Trump, who falsely claims that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, is also paving the way for repeating the accusation via legal means.
Bucks County, in Pennsylvania, was ordered to extend early voting by a day after voters waiting to submit mail-in ballots were turned away. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
He told a rally in Pennsylvania that Democrats were “cheating” in the state, and on Wednesday his campaign took legal action against election officials in Bucks County, where voters waiting to submit early mail-in ballots were turned away because the deadline had expired. A judge later ordered the county to extend early voting by one day. There is no evidence of widespread cheating in elections in Pennsylvania or any other state, and mail-in ballots are in high demand in part because Trump himself has encouraged early voting.
Suing to allege – without evidence – that there has been voting fraud is part of a well-worn pattern of Trump disputing election results that do not go his way. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, his team filed 60 lawsuits disputing the results, all of which were forcefully thrown out in court.
Anti-Trump Republicans have expressed similar concerns to Democrats about Trump’s actions. Michael Steele, a former Republican national committee chair and Trump critic, told the New Republic that the GOP-commissioned polls were gamed to favour Trump.
“You find different ways to weight the participants, and that changes the results you’re going to get,” he said. “They’re gamed on the back end so Maga can make the claim that the election was stolen.”
Stuart Stevens, a former adviser to Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican candidate, and a founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, told the same outlet: “Their gameplan is to make it impossible for states to certify. And these fake polls are a great tool in that, because that’s how you lead people to think the race was stolen.”
Trump-leaning surveys have influenced the polling averages published by sites such as Real Clear Politics, which has incorporated the results into its projected electoral map on election night, forecasting a win for the former president.
Elon Musk, Trump’s wealthiest backer and surrogate, posted the map to his 202 million followers on his own X platform, proclaiming: “The trend will continue.”
Trump and Musk have also promoted online betting platforms, which have bolstered the impression of a surge for the Republican candidate stemming from hefty bets on him winning.
A small number of high-value wagers from four accounts linked to a French national appeared to be responsible for $28m gambled on a Trump victory on the Polymarket platform, the New York Times reported.
Trump referenced the Polymarket activity in a recent speech. “I don’t know what the hell it means, but it means we’re doing pretty well,” he said.
