Anywhere but Washington: the battle to win millennial voters
Why a Nevada congressman is poster boy for Republicans’ election fears
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8.01pm BST
the feeling when you're building the matriarchy with your bud pic.twitter.com/wR6d1Ovc7l
8.00pm BST
Obama contrasts Clinton’s and Trump’s visions.
She says Trump’s vision is grounded in hopelessness and despair and he “calls on us to turn against each other.”
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“I know that there are some folks out there who have commented that it’s unprecedented for a sitting first lady to be so actively engaged in a campaign. That may be true. But this is truly an unprecedented election,” Obama says.
She’s transitioning to her stump speech. Michelle Obama has a stump speech.
7.56pm BST
Obama: “You guys are pretty fired up right?”
People are screaming.
7.53pm BST
Clinton closes with an exhortation to vote early! Vote this afternoon!
She introduces the first lady. Very excited crowd.
7.52pm BST
We can never forget how Trump disrespects our military families, like the Khans. https://t.co/cWxnRsqU6r
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Clinton now is relating to Michelle Obama as a first lady. She says it’s hard to raise kids in the White House. “And let’s be real, as our first African American first lady, she’s faced pressures I never did. And she’s handled them with pure grace.”
7.44pm BST
“Among the many real privileges I’ve had is to see the president and first lady dance. Now she also planted an amazing vegetable garden at the White House. And I will promise you, if I win, I will take good care of it, Michelle.
“And boy, didn’t she dazzle the world with that wise and beautiful speech at the Democratic convention this summer?”
7.41pm BST
“There are so many things I admire about our first lady. .. Michelle reminds us to work hard, stay true to our values, be good to one another and never ever stop fighting,” Clinton says.
The crowd cheers every line. Who’s running again?
7.40pm BST
Clinton is describing the stakes of the election. She gets to “dignity for women and girls.”
“I wish I didn’t have to say this, but indeed dignity and respect for women and girls is also on the ballot in this election, and I want to thank our first lady for her eloquent, powerful defense of that basic value!”
7.34pm BST
Clinton compares Michelle Obama to Maya Angelou, a “woman whose voice we need now more than ever.”
We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I don’t mean just in the presidential race, Clinton says. She calls for Democrat Roy Cooper to be elected governor. “He will repeal HB-2,” the state’s transgender discrimination law, Clinton says. “And let’s send Deborah Ross to the United States senate.”
7.31pm BST
Obama and Clinton come in to Andra Day. The crowd is going nuts. They get to the lectern and there’s a big big hug. Clinton is going to talk first. They’re at Wake Forest university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
7.29pm BST
OK here now are Michelle Obama and Clinton:
7.28pm BST
Trump is cruising along. He says Clinton wants open borders and should not be allowed to run for president for wanting that. He says “we will build a wall” at which the crowd chants “Build the wall.”
“And,” says Trump, “who is going to pay for the wall?”
Trump: Every time you see a closed factory in Ohio, it was essentially caused by the Clintons
7.20pm BST
Trump begins a sentence “if we win in November” – and then he registers or pretends to register some protest in the crowd. He apologizes.
When we win, he says:
We don’t want to take it for granted but we are winning in a lot of states. The media well, they’re going wild, because they’re saying this guy’s winning in Florida, he’s winning in North Carolina, he’s winning in Iowa, he’s winning in Ohio –
[No one’s saying that. –Ed.]
7.16pm BST
Trump predicts an Ohio win. He cites a poll from Remington research, which leans Republican, showing him four points up. “Job-killing Obamacare is just one more way the system is rigged,” Trump says. Then he goes hard on Wikileaks. “If the Clintons were willing to play this fast and loose when they weren’t in the White House, just imagine what they’ll do... I think we’ve had enough of the Clintons, to be honest.”
That’s an applause line.
7.07pm BST
Trump comes out. Watch here:
7.01pm BST
Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn has just taken the stage in Springfield, Ohio. “Let’s get it going,” he says.
.@BorisEP was just introduced at the Trump rally. The crowd is NOT happy. They chant, "We want Trump!" It was supposed to start at 1.
6.51pm BST
Still waiting for Trump in Springfield:
Mike Flynn at Trump rally: "This is a very digital election"
Shouts of Hillary to Gitmo at this Trump rally
6.47pm BST
Retired Lt. general Michael Flynn is introducing Trump in Springfield Ohio. He’s explaining why Trump is better for women than Hillary Clinton. “Look at the money that she has taken from countries that just totally denigrate women,” Flynn says. He gets some people to chant, “Women for Trump.”
“That is awesome,” Flynn says. He’s vamping. He says Trump is backstage doing local media.
6.35pm BST
Video: Adele endorses Clinton
Adele tells a crowd at Miami’s American Airlines Arena on Wednesday night that she is backing Hillary Clinton, while also rejecting Republican candidate Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was at the concert and later said she was thrilled to receive the singer’s support. Trump meanwhile said the move was ‘unfair’:
6.33pm BST
From the moment that Donald Trump denied, in a nationally televised presidential debate, that he had ever groped or kissed a woman without her permission, it was only a matter of time before Gloria Allred got involved.
An ambulance chaser to her critics, a righteous crusader to her admirers, the 75-year-old women’s rights attorney is never far when a scandal of this nature bursts into national view. No one knows this better than Allred herself. “I knew,” she said in a recent interview, “as soon as I heard those words – the denial in the debate – that women would start contacting me and want to come forward.”
Related: Gloria Allred: 'Many women contacted me even prior to the Trump tape'
6.16pm BST
Incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin appears likely to lose his reelection bid. In any case he’s down six in polling averages and always has been. And he’ll drink to that:
What you do when the Tavern League of Wisconsin endorses you: pic.twitter.com/wTo8q5BbVg
6.04pm BST
RIP Vine.
People: https://t.co/qZWklxR0VH
My favorite 2016 vine https://t.co/gS7T1OdQTi
6.01pm BST
5.53pm BST
We’re eager to watch a Donald Trump event about to begin in Springfield, west-central Ohio. Here’s a live video stream:
5.47pm BST
The news that Twitter will discontinue the mobile app Vine “in the coming months” has caught journalism off guard. How will this kind of reporting happen from now on?
Vine announces shut down day before @HillaryClinton returns to Cedar Rapids. Coincidence or massive conspiracy? https://t.co/KLTq58r2F8
Still my favorite https://t.co/SZvGAI0PWQ
5.31pm BST
A federal judge has demanded an explanation from New York state elections officials for a ban on ballot selfies, after pop star Justin Timberlake deleted such a selfie for fear of having transgressed a similar ban in Tennessee.
Officials have until 1 November to defend the ban, the Village Voice reported:
Yesterday afternoon Judge P. Kevin Castel issued an order to show cause requiring New York State election officials to defend the constitutionality of the state law, which prohibits New York voters from taking a photograph of their election ballots, typically inside a voting booth, and posting them on social media,” the Village Voice reported.
Thanks to Justin Timberlake's selfie gaffe, we have a handy dandy guide of 5 things you can't do in a voting booth https://t.co/ByakCj67V8
5.17pm BST
For the first time there are as many millennials eligible to vote in the US election as there are baby boomers, and nearly half of them might vote for a third-party candidate. Paul Lewis and Tom Silverstone travel to Tucson, Arizona, to explore why large numbers of young people appear poised to sit out the election or vote for either Gary Johnson or Jill Stein:
5.10pm BST
Addendum to our earlier post on the “tightening” race:
Hey @RalstonReports. CNN moved Nevada towards Trump. Does that sound right?
No. https://t.co/zhlclroFqB
Podcast! Jon Ralston of @RalstonReports on the Nevada Senate race, the GOP's only chance at a pickup. https://t.co/A7NugDS08r
5.00pm BST
Clinton maintains a healthy, 7-point lead in the latest edition of The Upshot’s remarkable poll of Pennsylvania voters, which selects respondents from an L2 voter file of active Pennsylvania voters stratified by age, gender, party, county, a modeled turnout score and a modeled race and ethnicity classification:
Clinton leads by 7 in Pennsylvania, 46 to 39 percent, in the Upshot/Siena poll of Pennsylvania https://t.co/bBEqeCFvSL
Black voters in Upshot/Siena polls:
FL (Sept): Clinton 82, Trump 4
NC (Sept): 86-3
NC (Oct): 88-2
PA (Oct): 90-1
4.53pm BST
Right? Right??
Since this campaign hasn’t been about issues, Clinton at least will have a mandate not to endlessly re-litigate email scandals right?
If I ran the Clinton campaign, I'd much prefer a "this random poll shows tightening" story to a "Clinton has it in the bag" storyline.
4.21pm BST
Many news organizations are playing with their maps these days. It’s hard to find one that works for Trump, though. Here’s an example: CNN has just moved Nevada and Florida from “lean Democratic” to “tossup”. Both state have already seen significant early voting.
If Trump won every battleground in this scenario – a big “if,” given his numbers in Florida, North Carolina and Nevada especially – if he won all the yellow, he’d still lose:
CNN updates its electoral college map to move 2 states in Trump's direction, from "lean Democratic" to battleground https://t.co/T9EAsjxhqb pic.twitter.com/haM6QKwF7Q
4.14pm BST
The Donald Trump campaign has produced an extraordinary new ad targeting Indian-Americans in which the candidate speaks some Hindi.
He adapts “Abki Baar Modi Sarkar,” the campaign slogan of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. Quora explains: ‘“Abki Baar” means “This time” and the word “Sarkar” means government.’
That some of Mr. Trump’s most passionate followers are Indian may seem, at first, somewhat strange, given how fond he is of scorning Asian countries where cheap labor saps demand for American workers. A poll on Asian-Americans’ political leanings conducted in August and September found that just 7 percent of Indian-Americans said they would vote for Mr. Trump.
But in one of the more peculiar pairings of this most peculiar political season, Mr. Trump has unwittingly fashioned a niche constituency in the overlap between the Indian right and the American right, which share a lot of the same anxieties about terrorism, immigration and the loss of prestige that they believe their leaders have been too slow to reverse.
4.05pm BST
We’re not going within a thousand yards of the word “bedfellows” in describing this pair, but “strange” certainly captures it.
Filmmaker Michael Moore has been talking for months about how Donald Trump is going to win the presidential election. He has given powerful explanations for Trump’s appeal among the left-behind Rust Belt former manufacturing workers whose lives and thinking he has repeatedly documented. Moore’s description of white working-class support for Trump squares with some polling.
He is the human Molotov cocktail that they’ve been waiting for. The human hand grenade that they can legally throw... and on November 8th... they’ve essentially lost essentially everything they had except one thing... the right to vote... they might be fucked over and fucked up, it doesn’t matter, because it’s equalized on that day... so on November 8th, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth... and put a big fucking X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the system that has ruined their lives: Donald J Trump...
All the blows get to go and blow up the whole goddamn system because it’s your right. Trump’s election is going to be the biggest Fuck You ever recorded in human history. And it will feel good.”
I agree, @MMFlint- To all Americans, I see you & I hear you. I am your voice. Vote to #DrainTheSwamp w/ me on 11/8. https://t.co/D7nBwkogBb
3.50pm BST
It’s hard to be a Republican candidate these days if you were late to the renounce-Donald-Trump party. It’s especially tough to be Joe Heck.
The three-term Nevada congressman is embroiled in what may be the highest-profile contest for the US Senate in 2016: the race to fill the seat of Democrat Harry Reid, the powerful, outgoing Senate minority leader and the man Republicans most love to hate.
Related: Why a Nevada congressman is the poster boy for Republicans' election day fears
3.46pm BST
The Democratic party has taken legal action to try to enforce 1980s-era decrees that forbid the Republican party from organizing “poll watchers” and engaging in other “ballot-security measures” promoted by the Trump campaign.
Bloomberg reports:
The Democratic National Committee asked a judge to block the Republican Party from supporting efforts to discourage minorities from voting based on Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election is ‘rigged,’” Bloomberg reports:
In a preemptive strike against what it called a coordinated effort to intimidate voters, the Democratic Party’s governing body alleged Wednesday that the Republican National Committee is violating a court order in a case that started 35 years ago.
3.33pm BST
This bus in Denmark makes Donald Trump look like a google-eyed American cuckoo:
Epic Bus Ad from the political party SF in Denmark is mocking @realDonaldTrump and encouraging Americans abroad to vote. #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/MfyeOYtDuQ
1.42pm BST
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Michelle Obama will join Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail for the first time today to encourage early voters in North Carolina. Chelsea Clinton will be campaigning separately in the Tar Heel state, Tim Kaine has a couple of Ohio events and Jon Bon Jovi will rock Pittsburgh this evening on Clinton’s behalf.
Donald Trump is scheduled to rack up three events in Ohio, while Mike Pence has stops in Omaha, Nebraska, and Fort Dodge, central Iowa.
Related: Khizr Khan: I would stand up to Trump 'again and again and again'
Trump on People reporter being afraid to come forward: "Give me a break...She would have gotten the Pulitzer Prize" https://t.co/jPqwF4Yq3b
Trump says Melania has agreed to give 2 or 3 speeches: "I think it's going to be big speeches, important speeches." https://t.co/wkbiBlVSIL
Today, housed across from a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery along Interstate 410 in San Antonio, the digital nerve center of Trump’s operation encompasses more than 100 people, from European data scientists to gun-toting elderly call-center volunteers. They labor in offices lined with Trump iconography and Trump-focused inspirational quotes from Sheriff Joe Arpaio and evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.
To compensate for this, Trump’s campaign has devised another strategy, which, not surprisingly, is negative. Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks emails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls – particularly in Florida.
6. Trump advisor: “We have three major voter-suppression operations under way,” including one targeting African-American voters: pic.twitter.com/Oz6UggoWal
The memo at one point refers bluntly to the money-making part of Clinton’s life as “Bill Clinton Inc.” and notes that in at least one case a company – global education firm Laureate International Universities – began paying Clinton personally after first being a donor to the Clinton Foundation.
The 12-page document, prepared in November 2011 by Band with input from Clinton adviser John Podesta, came as Chelsea Clinton was pressing for changes to the foundation’s governance and complaining that Band, Teneo co-founder Declan Kelly and others were profiting from their ties to her father and the foundation.
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