Trump Raises Harris’s Gender at Florida Rally: Campaign Update
President Donald Trump reclaimed Queens as his hometown at the final debate.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump says Kamala Harris is too liberal to be president, especially as a woman. The Trump campaign is dealt another blow on voting in Pennsylvania. And Democrats are dominating mail-in voting in the Keystone State.
There are 11 days until the election and 52 days until the Electoral College meets.
Other Developments:
Trump Says Harris, as Liberal Woman, Shouldn’t Be President
Trump told a campaign rally Friday that Harris, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate, was too liberal to be president, “especially” because she’s a woman.
Trump is shedding support among female voters with 11 days until the Nov. 3 election, and moments earlier at the rally in Florida, he’d pleaded with suburban women to “like him” like they did in 2016, when 52% voted for him. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Biden leading Trump by 31 points among likely female voters.
Describing his policy differences with the Democratic ticket, Trump falsely described Harris, the vice presidential nominee, as “the most liberal member of the Senate.”
“By the way Kamala will not be your first female president,” he said, mispronouncing the California senator’s first name. “We’re not going to have a socialist president -- especially a female socialist president. We’re not going to have it. We’re not going to put up with it.” -- Justin Sink
Pennsylvania Court Rebuffs Trump on Ballot Signatures (3:00 p.m.)
Pennsylvania’s top court said county officials couldn’t reject absentee or mail-in ballots based on their own comparisons of signatures, handing a setback to the Trump campaign’s efforts to challenge the state’s procedures for the November elections.
A federal judge earlier this month also rejected a Trump campaign effort to exclude ballots with perceived signature mismatches. The state Supreme Court on Friday issued its own ruling on signature mismatches and other issues, with a finding similar to the federal court’s.
The Keystone State is a highly contested battleground and could decide the election. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes over Hillary Clinton. The RealClearPolitics average of state polls gives Biden a lead of just over 5 points in Pennsylvania.
A Pennsylvania court has previously turned aside the Trump campaign’s effort to bar the use of unstaffed ballot drop boxes. And an evenly divided U.S. Supreme Court this month allowed a three-day extension for the receipt of mail-in ballots, in another blow to the president.
The Trump campaign has brought suits in several states to curb mail-in voting, which the president calls rife with fraud. -- Chris Dolmetsch
Democrats Dominate Pennsylvania Mail-In Voting (12:45 p.m.)
However well President Donald Trump does on Election Day in Pennsylvania, he’s likely to see his share of the vote erode substantially as mail-in ballots are counted.
With the commonwealth barring mail-in ballots from being processed until Election Day, elections officials are preparing for the count to take through at least Friday of election week.
And new figures show it will likely be mostly Democratic votes they’ll be tallying.
Of the 1.45 million ballots returned as of Friday -- almost matching the total mail-in and absentee votes cast in the commonwealth’s June 2 primary with 11 days to go until the election -- 71% are from Democrats and only 20% from Republicans, according to the Department of State.
There have been more than 2.9 million mail-in and absentee ballots requested so far ahead of Tuesday’s deadline, with 63% from Democrats, 25% from Republicans and 11% from other voters, data show. -- Mark Niquette
Young Voter Turnout Surging in Early Ballots (11:53 a.m.)
Some potential good news for Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign: Youth turnout is up dramatically over 2016 in battleground states, according to a report released Thursday.
The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University found that 257,720 voters from 18 to 29 have cast ballots already in Florida, nearly six times the number who had voted by this time in 2016.
In North Carolina, young people voting early jumped from 25,150 to 204,986; in Michigan, from 7,572 to 145,201; and in Arizona, from 18,550 to 99,049.
“In Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, early votes cast by youth have already exceeded the 2016 margin of victory in each state,” the researchers wrote.
The study also found voter registration among 18- to 24-year-olds was 34% higher than in November of 2016 in Georgia and 12% higher in Michigan, but down 3% in Pennsylvania.
Polls show young voters overwhelmingly support Biden over Trump, but youth turnout is much less consistent than among older voters.
Biden Leads by 9 Points in Michigan (10:11 a.m.)
Trump and Biden have very different strategies for winning Michigan. With 11 days until the election, Biden’s seems to be working.
In recent days, Trump has attacked the popular governor of Michigan -- even after a plot to kidnap her was foiled -- prompting chants of “lock her up” at a rally there. At Thursday’s debate, he compared the state to “a prison.”
Biden, meantime, is campaigning with the popular singer Lizzo in Detroit on Friday.
The results? In a poll released Friday, Biden leads by 9 points among likely voters in the battleground state, which Trump won by just over 10,000 votes in 2016, the slimmest margin of any state in that election.
Conducted Oct. 15-19, the EPIC/MRA poll found 48% of likely voters backed Biden and 39% backed Trump. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. -- Emma Kinery
Trump Will Vote in Person, After All (9:19 a.m.)
Trump’s on-again, off-again relationship with in-person voting is back on again.
After months in which he’s both attacked vote-by-mail and run Facebook ads encouraging voters to request mail-in ballots just like him, the president said Thursday that he will cast his ballot in person Saturday.
“I’ll be in Florida, we’re doing rallies and then I’m going to vote in person,” he told reporters on Air Force One as he headed back to Washington from the Nashville debate site.
Trump voted by mail in Florida’s primary this year after attacking vote-by-mail, without evidence, as rife with fraud for months. With Democrats now at an advantage in requests for mail-in ballots in the state, his campaign began running ads encouraging his supporters to vote by mail.
Early in-person voting started Monday in Florida, where more than 4.2 million people have already voted by mail or in person, according to the U.S. Elections Project. -- Mario Parker
Trump Reclaims Queens as His Hometown at Debate (6:57 a.m.)
Trump often mentions his erstwhile hometown of New York City, though he rarely brings up the borough he grew up in.
But in a quiet moment in Thursday’s presidential debate, he reclaimed Queens.
Trump had just claimed, falsely, that Biden’s proposals to fight climate change would cost $100 trillion -- an estimate that a right-leaning think tank came up with for the Green New Deal, which Biden has specifically rejected. Biden responded by wondering aloud where he got that number.
“I don’t know where he comes from,” Biden said. “I don’t know where he comes up with these numbers.”
“Queens,” Trump said quietly into his microphone.
Biden Is Ahead in Polls, Fundraising, Except in His Ads
Biden has been ahead in every national poll taken in October, and most polls in the six battleground states.
His campaign raised a record-breaking $383 million in September, $135 million more than the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, and had tens of millions more cash on hand heading into October.
But you wouldn’t know that from his ads.
On Facebook, the Biden campaign’s pitches to grassroots supporters argue that “brand new polls” show the race might be “extremely close” in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, adding Georgia, Iowa and Ohio, three states that weren’t in the mix until recently.
They also claim that “internal polls are scary close.”
The ads seeking small-dollar donations also say “we were outraised,” comparing the full amounts the Trump and Biden campaign raised for the entire election cycle, even though much of that money has already been spent.
Coming Up:
Trump will hold a rally at The Villages in Florida Friday evening.
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