There are just two days to go until America decides whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be the next president
On Saturday evening, Trump told a rally in North Carolina that 5 November “will be liberation day in America” and said the US is an “occupied country”
Harris ended the day by appearing on Saturday Night Live, taking part in a live comedy sketch alongside comedian and actor Maya Rudolph
More than 75 million people have already cast their ballot but both campaigns are still pushing to win over undecided voters
The race for the White House is on a knife edge
When I arrived ahead of the Kamala Harris rally in Charlotte North Carolina on Saturday, there was one thing that immediately struck me – the absence of pro-Harris swagger.
I noticed a few lone vendors wandering on foot selling T-shirts, and one tent selling merchandise.
It was a stark comparison to the Donald Trump rally I attended in Wilmington, North Carolina back in September.
That had the feel of a Trump festival – a Trump-a-palooza – with dozens of tents and vendors lined up one after the other, stretching as far as I could see. They sold everything imaginable with Trump’s name, and oftentimes, face on it. Shirts, hats, pins, stuffed animals.
The gold-painted Mercedes Benz parked out front, featuring the former president’s signature, was not for sale, however.
Who is leading in the polls?
Harris has had a small lead over Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead – 48% to 47%, according to the latest data from 538/ABC News, external.
While national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the whole country, they’re not the best way to predict the election result.
That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.
There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.
In the seven swing states identified as key in this election, the race is also very close. Trump has a slight lead in Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Harris commands a small lead in Wisconsin and Michigan.
But it’s also important to note all these polling numbers are well within the margin for error, which means they could be wrong in either direction.
Graphic of seven swing states and who is leading polling averages. Trump leads Pennsylvania and Nevada by <1, North Carolina by +1, Georgia and Arizona by +2. Harris leads Wisconsin by <1 and Michigan by +1.
More than 75 million people have already voted
More than 75 million people in the US have already cast their ballots, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida, which is tracking declaration information from across the country.
According to its latest figures, that includes nearly 41 million in-person early votes and more than 34 million returned postal ballots.
Trump and Harris fishing in the same waters during the final days of the campaign
Such is the importance of North Carolina that the candidates’ planes were parked side by side on the tarmac at Charlotte Airport, while Donald Trump and Kamala Harris made their final appeals to voters.
Trump won the state in 2016 and narrowly again in 2020, but opinion polls suggest he’s running neck and neck with Harris in one of the country’s most competitive races.
At the second of four rallies the former president is holding in the state this weekend, he told his supporters he will “end inflation” and “stop the massive invasion of criminals into our country”.
During her rally in North Carolina, Harris was joined by celebrities including Jon Bon Jovi. She told her supporters she would “fight on your behalf as president”.
More than 75 million Americans have now voted. The next two days will see the candidates making a final flurry of visits to the key battleground states, with the race on a knife edge.
Trump promises supporters ‘Liberation Day’ on 5 November
During Donald Trump’s Saturday night campaign rally in North Carolina, we heard him urging his supporters to vote as soon as possible, saying: “When you’re winning by a lot, you can still lose by a little.”
He told them the US is “now an occupied country, but it will soon be an occupied country no longer”, adding that the 5 November election “will be liberation day in America, it’s going to be liberation”.
“I’m working hard, because we have to win it,” he said, after asking the crowd if they would mind if he condensed his remarks because it was so “late at night”.
Trump ended up speaking for around 90 minutes, which is fairly common for his rallies. They often last several hours with guest speakers – and Trump regularly speaks for more than two hours himself.
The former president told the crowd he’s planning a packed schedule of rallies over the last two days of the campaign, with three planned for Sunday and four on Monday.
According to his campaign schedule, Trump will hold rallies tomorrow in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
Donald Trump continues swing state tour with North Carolina rally
Donald Trump’s day of campaigning on Saturday ended in North Carolina, where he boasted about holding “the biggest rallies in the history of any country”.
We heard him run through some familiar lines, including attacking media organisations at the event as “fake news” and repeatedly calling his opponent Kamala Harris a “liar”.
Speaking to the crowd about Harris’s claims that a Trump presidency would lead to restrictions on in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments, he said “I consider myself to be the father of fertilisation” – a repetition of a claim to be the “father of IVF” that we heard earlier in the campaign.
He also addressed Project 2025, a document detailing how Trump could overhaul the US government along conservative lines. The Harris campaign has repeatedly pointed to the document during the campaign.
Several former Trump administration employees contributed to the plan, but Trump has never publicly endorsed it. “I’ve never read it, I don’t want to read it,” he said last night.
Actor Maya Rudolph reprised her impression of Kamala Harris alongside the vice president herself during last night’s Saturday Night Live
The pair hugged and laughed during the scripted sketch, the latest in recent years to feature a high-profile politician running for election
The pair jointly delivered the long-running show’s opening refrain “And Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night”
‘Keep calm-ala and carry on-ala’: Harris appears in SNL skit
In case you missed it last night, Kamala Harris turned primetime comedy performer for a few minutes last night.
The Democratic nominee appeared in a sketch on the US comedy show Saturday Night Live, alongside actor and comedian Maya Rudolph, who is known for her impressions of the vice president.
In the skit, Rudolph sits down in a dressing room and looks into a mirror – through which Harris, dressed in identical attire, is looking back.
The live audience erupted with cheers when Harris was revealed, and they laughed along as the pair performed a scripted sketch featuring puns on Kamala Harris’s first name (“keep calm-ala and carry on-ala” and “kick back in our pyjama-alas and watch a rom com-ala”).
Towards the end of the sketch, Rudolph tells the vice-president she is going to “vote for us”, to which Harris asks hopefully: “Any chance you’re registered in Pennsylvania?”
“Worth a shot,” she adds.
Trump and Harris blitz the battlegrounds as polling day looms
Grace Garrett, an alum, wears a shirt reading “I want everybody to vote!” as she poses for a portrait during the homecoming football game at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.
There are just two full days left of campaigning before the US decides who will be the next president. If you are just joining our coverage, here’s a summary of what’s been happening in the last few hours:
Kamala Harris has appeared on the long-running comedy show Saturday Night Live, where she took part in a sketch alongside actor Maya Rudolph
It capped off a day of campaign rallies for the vice president in key swing states Georgia and North Carolina
Donald Trump also continued his tour of the battleground states, ending the day with a rally in North Carolina
He told the crowd that the US is “occupied” and 5 November “will be liberation day in America”
With two days to go until election day, the polls still indicate this race could not be closer.
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