The News
The US election has entered its final sprint, with the candidates traversing swing states in an effort to win over stray voters that could make the difference on Tuesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris was in Michigan over the weekend in a last-ditch effort to secure the support of Arab American and Black voters, while Republican nominee Donald Trump held rallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
SIGNALS
Trump’s ‘dark message’ contrasts to Harris’ ‘optimism’
News outlets largely characterized the final moments of campaigning as a sharp contrast between Trump’s “dark message,” as The Wall Street Journal put it, and what CNN described as Harris’ “optimism and aspiration,” even as she warned about the perils of a second Trump administration. Trump’s rhetoric has become more aggressive over time, which may be a calculated move to whip up support among young, working-class men who would otherwise stay home, The American Prospect’s editor-at-large argued. Still, there are some signs his campaign is trying to rein him in: On Sunday Trump said he “wouldn’t mind so much” if someone would “shoot through all the fake news,” a statement campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung later said had “nothing to do with the Media being harmed.”
Iowa poll winds down the Trump trade
The final Des Moines Register poll by J. Ann Selzer — a “gold standard” pollster — found Harris leading Trump among likely voters in deep red Iowa, by a 47-44 margin. The shock finding appears to be spurring investors to unwind bets on the so-called Trump trade, as dollar and crypto currencies dipped while bonds rallied, The New York Times reported. Many traders now feel too wary to make bets one way or another, Bloomberg wrote. “We are not positioning for an outcome in the election because it is a coin flip,” one investor said. “It does not make sense to make a bet.” Meanwhile, political prediction markets also saw Trump’s odds of victory fall following the Iowa poll.