How one Georgia teacher convinced his friend to vote for Harris

John Sudworth

Reporting from Atlanta, Georgia

The black vote is the bedrock of Democratic Party support in Georgia. But there’s concern that the huge advantage Kamala Harris enjoys with that demographic might be slipping a bit among young black men. And in such a tight race, every vote counts.Mike Brady is a school teacher in Atlanta, waiting here with his family to see Harris speak. He tells me he’s already persuaded one of his black friends away from casting a vote for Donald Trump.“I said, you gonna vote?,” Mike tells me. “He said, ‘I’m voting for Trump because prices are high.’”“I told him,” Mike continues, “If you vote for Trump, that’s gonna hurt your kids and grandkids. And he kinda woke up. He voted Monday and he voted for Harris. Blew my mind!”

'Trump puts the American economy first'

Ana Faguy

US reporter

A new president will not be the biggest change in Ben Maurer’s life come November.

The 38-year-old truck driver from Pennsylvania is expecting his second child just weeks after the election.

Maurer, a lifelong Republican, is hopeful that next month will mark the starting point of a more prosperous time for his family as Trump potentially returns to the White House.

Last year, his wife quit her job because the cost of childcare was higher than her income. Since then, Maurer has been the sole provider for the family and his wife has stayed home with their eldest child as they await the new arrival.

This would not be the case, Maurer believes, if Trump were president.

“I feel like [Trump] has a handle on making it about the American economy first and the American worker first,” he says.

Four million Georgians turn out for early voting

As we've just reported, four million people in the battleground state of Georgia cast their ballots before the early voting window closed on Friday, meaning more than half of the state's registered voters have already turned out.

In a statement released announcing this, Brad Raffensperger, the state's top election official said: "This was the most successful early voting period in Georgia history because voters trust the process."

In 2020, the last presidential election, less than three million Georgians cast their ballots by the end of early voting.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are targeting Georgia in the final days of the election campaign, with Harris set to speak at a rally in Atlanta in the next couple of hours, and the Trump campaign holding a women's rally in the same city later, featuring the former president's daughter-in-law Lara Trump.

Trump doubles down in North Carolina in final days of election

Brandon Drenon

Reporting from North Carolina

Donald Trump will be making two stops in North Carolina today, in Gastonia and Greensboro.

It's reflective of an atypical amount of campaigning for a Republican presidential candidate in the state, having long been a stronghold for the party.

However, over the years, Democrats have gained ground here. In 2020, Trump only beat Joe Biden in North Carolina by a little over 1%.

Democrats believe this election could be their year. Their optimism is being partly aided by the presence of a scandal-plagued gubernatorial candidate, Republican Mark Robinson.

Robinson, a Trump-backed candidate whom the former president once called "Martin Luther King on steroids", allegedly called himself a "black Nazi" years ago on the chat board of a porn website.

The controversy added to his already polarizing race, having said things on the campaign trail like "some people need killing".

Democrats are hoping that with Robinson on the ballot, more of their party's voters, along with centrist-Republican voters, will turn out to support Robinson's challenger and vote for Harris at the same time.

Nicole Wallace calls on Bush to denounce Trump

Nicole Wallace, who used to work in the White House under former Republican president George W Bush, is calling on her old boss to back Kamala Harris.

During her regular programming on MSNBC, she encouraged Bush to have a "change of heart" over his position to remain silent this election.

"Where is George W Bush," Wallace asked.

Her comments were made in the wake of Donald Trump's remarks about Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman who has been both a vocal Trump critic and Harris supporter.

Trump previously said about Cheney: "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her."

Elected leaders on both sides of the aisle have condemned his comments. Harris said it should disqualify him from office. Trump said he wasn't suggesting violence at Cheney but was criticising her record of being a "war hawk".

The women who want to deliver for Harris

The gender gap may be the biggest divide heading into next week's election, a whopping 17 points, according to the Pew Research Institute.

While Donald Trump is favoured by young men, Kamala Harris is up nine points among women, a lead that jumps even higher among college-educated women.

With polls neck-and-neck both nationally and in battleground states like Michigan, Harris is counting on these women to show up, in big numbers, to win her the election.

That responsibility is not lost on University of Michigan student Hannah Brocks, 20, who waited in a long line last week to attend a packed Harris and Walz rally in Ann Arbor in a local park. She’s been involved in the school’s young Democrats club, knocking on doors, sending flyers and making phone calls to try to convince people to vote for Harris.

“I just like the way she talks about people in general,” Ms Brocks said. “It’s just so much love and empathy in the way she talks about other people."

Read more about the women who could take Harris to the White House

Ad suggesting women secretly vote for Harris sparks conservative furore

A new pro-Harris campaign advertisement encouraging women to secretly vote for Kamala Harris, while their husbands vote for Donald Trump, has caused a stir among conservatives.

In the advertisement, external, narrated by actress Julia Roberts, a man who seems to support Donald Trump tells his wife, "your turn honey", after he casts his ballot.

Roberts then begins by saying: "In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose", before the man's wife then marks her vote for Harris.

The husband then asks "did you make the right choice", to which the woman replies, "sure did honey".

Discussing the ad, Fox News host Jesse Watters said: "If I found out Emma was going to the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair."

Trump himself has also commented on the ad, saying: "Can you imagine a wife not telling a husband who she’s voting for? Did you ever hear anything like that... That’s a ridiculous ad. So stupid."

For context: Polls suggest a widening gender gap, with women voting exponentially in favour of Democrats while men are increasingly voting for Trump and Republicans.

This Republican is voting for Harris and encouraging others to also

Brandon Drenon

Reporting from North Carolina

Michael Tucker is the North Carolina director of Haley Voters for Harris, a group of anti-Trump Republicans who voted for his challenger Nikki Haley in the primaries and are now voting for Kamala Harris.

Tucker says he plans to spend the final weekend before election day going all in for Democrats, attending Harris's rally in Charlotte on Saturday and door-knocking to encourage votes for Harris on Sunday.

During the presidential primaries, 250,000 North Carolina voters cast their ballots for Haley. That's more than triple Trump's margin of victory over Joe Biden in the state in 2020.

Democratic strategists believe this chunk of voters, the former Haley-backers, could be a persuadable group willing to flip their ticket this year. Tucker is one of them.

"We have a big enough problem from some of the rhetoric that Trump's using here, that we can't gamble on hoping that a third party is going to pull some sort of an upset," Tucker says.

"We have to work with the Democratic party, because they are the best tool for us to be able to stop Trump right now.

"There's no other choice but to pull behind Democrats and make sure they win this."

Trump supporter brings trash bag to rally: 'That's what Biden thinks we are'

Helena Humphrey

reporting from North Carolina

We’ve been here since before dawn in Gastonia, North Carolina - and so has this line of Trump supporters.

This is likely to be the former president’s penultimate rally of this election cycle, and people here tell us they’re hoping for a fun day ahead.

In the line, we meet Becky, who explains her outfit. “I’m wearing a 2020 cap,” she tells me, pointing to her pink hat “because thanks to Bidenomics, I can’t afford a new one.”

“And you want to see my outfit for later?” she exclaims, gesturing to the trash bag she plans to wear in the crowd. “Because that's what Biden thinks we are,” she says, referring to the president's remark appearing to call Trump backers "garbage" earlier this week - though Biden's office has denied that was his meaning.

Vice President Kamala Harris has sought to distance herself from her boss' comment, saying she strongly disagrees with criticising people based on who they vote for.

Trump complains about microphone at Wisconsin rally

Donald Trump's rally in Wisconsin on Friday night had a slight hiccup about 10 minutes into the event as the former president encountered issues with his microphone.

The crowd at the Milwaukee event began chanting "fix the mic" because they couldn't hear him.

"I think the mic stinks," the former president said before removing it from the stand.

He later asked his audience: “Do you want to see me knock the hell out of people backstage?”

“I get so angry. I’m up here seething. I’m seething," he added, while holding the mic in his hand.

"I’m blowing out my left arm, now I’m going to blow out my right arm, and I’m blowing out my damn throat too, because of these stupid people."

He then jokingly said: "I'll make you a deal. Pretend you’re listening to it perfectly and I’ll come back and do another one, OK?” before hitting the mic against the stand.

How are people deciding who to vote for?

As millions of Americans pick their next president, what is it that drives their choice as they mark the ballot paper in front of them?

The BBC has spoken to a handful of people about what's been influencing their decisions.

Allison McCullough, a 43-year-old paediatric nurse and mother of two, has been a reliable voter for the Democrats. But McCullough says she will cast her ballot elsewhere due to the war in Gaza.

"I cannot morally vote for someone who is allowing us to send millions of dollars and support somewhere where they’re actively killing women and children in the name of self defence," she says.

John Doty, who is in his 30s, says he liked Trump's toughness, until his family taught him otherwise. His confidence in Trump began to unravel after he says his wife's mum, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was taken away by police.

From there, John's confidence in Trump began to unravel, and by 6 January 2021, the day of the Capitol riots, he had turned on the president for good.

You can read more about their views and those of five other people by clicking here.

Trump and Harris hit North Carolina simultaneously - again

Brandon Drenon

Reporting from North Carolina

I'm in North Carolina, a key battleground state that both candidates have pumped considerable time and money into.

On Saturday, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will both be making stops here, their second time this week appearing in North Carolina on the same day.

Republicans see the state as a must-win and are pushing back against heightened efforts by Democrats to pull off the upset. Only one Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina in the last 50 years.

The latest polls suggest the race is extremely close, with either candidate winning by a single percentage point, which effectively amounts to a tie.

Experts are watching two things on election night: the turnout in the mostly-Republican western part of the state, destroyed by Hurricane Helene; and how many black voters, particularly those in the eastern rural part of state, vote for Harris.

More than 70 million voters cast their ballots before election day

The official polling day for the US election isn't for a few more days - Tuesday 5 November - but more than 70 million people have already voted, according to the latest figures from the University of Florida's Election Lab, external.

While the figure is below the record set in 2020 of 101.5 million - impacted by Covid - it is still higher than the number of early votes cast in 2016 (47.2m) and 2012 (46.2m).

The BBC's North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher delves deeper into what early voting can - and can't - tell us about the US election.

Path to 270: The states Harris and Trump need to win

There are 50 states in the US and most of them vote for the same party - Democratic or Republican - at every election.

That leaves just a handful of states where either candidate could win. At this election there are seven.

They are known as the swing states and can be divided into two groups: the Sun Belt (Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia ) and the Rust Belt (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania).

Across the entire US there are a total of 538 electoral college votes up for grabs and the winner will be the candidate who gets 270 or more.

In all but two states, the presidential candidate with the most individual votes from the residents there wins all the state’s electoral college votes.

Both candidates will need to win at least three swing states to get them over the line.

You can read more from the BBC Visual Journalism team's interactive guide on the 2024 US presidential election here.

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 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.

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.

Who is winning in swing state polls?

Right now the leads in the swing states are so small that it's impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages.

You can read more about the latest election data via our poll tracker here.