Election updates and polls: Harris, Trump make final push in Pennsylvania

It had been seen as a near-inevitability by some for months. With the loss of West Virginia’s seat thanks to the retirement of Joe Manchin, the defeat of Jon Tester — the incumbent senator from Montana, who has been trailing his opponentTim Sheehy through the summer and fall — was set to throw the majority into GOP hands, unless Democrats unseated a Republican incumbent elsewhere.

With just under 24 hours until Election Day, the contrast between the two campaigns — and the mood of their employees — couldn’t be more clear.

Harris, who just a few weeks ago appeared to have run out of the momentum she’d quickly gathered after President Joe Biden ceded the Democratic ticket to her this past July, is surging thanks to a series of late-game missteps by Trump and his allies. Those missteps include the disastrous decision to include a comedian who called Puerto Rico an “island of floating garbage” in the lineup at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally late last month.

Trump called his hundreds of rallies “flawless” apart from sometimes making an “aggressive statement.”

“We’re going to get together again, but it’s going to be different. It’s not going to be a rally. It’s going to be applause for what we’re doing,” the former president said.

“These incredible rallies, and there may have been like 900 of them, a tremendous amount over nine years,” he added. “We celebrated 507 – it was a few years ago … I don’t know whatever it was, but it’s hundreds and hundreds, and they’ve been flawless, right? Every once in a while I make a little aggressive statement that people didn’t like, but don’t forget, I’m rarely on the teleprompter.”

Trump brought several family members up on stage during his Reading, Pennsylvania rally.

Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Tiffany Trump, and her husband Michael Boulos appeared on stage in support of the former president.

“I shouldn’t have done that. I gotta follow that,” Trump said after the first four took to the podium to energize the crowd.

“They love our country, but they really are good people,” he added. “They’re kind people, big, big hearts. They’re strong, they can be messy, but they have big hearts those great children of mine.”

Trump slammed decades of policy pushed by President Joe Biden, a longtime former senator.

“30 years ago, Biden wasn’t any good,” Trump said in Reading, Pennsylvania. “He had the worst policy ever – if you would have taken Biden’s policy views over a 40-year period and reversed them, you would have gone down as the single greatest policy expert foreign policy.”

Trump addressed the indictment of New York Mayor Eric Adams, saying that he was charged after making “nasty statements” about migrants entering the city.

“Mayor Adams, he made statements about ‘this is not sustainable … You have to help us with this. Hundreds of thousands of people are piling into New York,’” Trump said on Monday afternoon. “‘You have to help us.’ And I said to my people, ‘he’ll be indicted shortly. They indicted him.”

“One of the indictments, he was upgraded in an airliner. Everyone gets upgraded. Anybody who’s got an upgrade, please raise your hand. You will be indicted,” the former president added. “I’ve been upgraded. I used to fly that way. They used to upgrade me all the time.”

Adams will stand trial in April 2025 on federal corruption charges after pleading not guilty to a five-count indictment accusing him of taking years of luxury travel gifts from Turkey.

Trump claimed that more than 200 million people would enter the US illegally during a Harris presidential term.

“She’s incompetent. If she ever won, she would have open borders the following day after the election, and you wouldn’t have 21 million people, which is a record in history, you would have 221 million people coming over the next four years,” the former president said. “You can forget about your country. You would have no chance.”

Trump took the stage in Reading, Pennsylvania shortly before 3.30pm ET on Monday, boasting of a “massive lead” in a race considered to be historically close.

“You gotta show up. I don’t want any money. I don’t want anything. Just show up and bring your vote,” Trump told supporters. “And if you have somebody else that got a little lazy, bring that person to say … ‘you gotta get off the damn couch.’”

“We’re just one day away from what will be the most important political event in the history of our country. But you have to get out. We have to vote, show up and vote,” he added.

A Harris campaign official has said that results may come in from North Carolina, Michigan, and Georgia as soon as by the end of election night, according to Reuters.

They expect results from Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada to come in on Wednesday and further ahead.

“We may not know the results of this election for several days, but we are very focused on staying calm and confident throughout this period as the process goes through,” campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said during a briefing on Monday that they’re expecting 70 percent of votes reported by 8pm on election night, because of a state law allowing counties to start counting mail-in ballots earlier.