With less than a week to go until the 2024 election, more than 57.5 million Americans have already voted, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida. The number represents more than a third of the total turnout for the 2020 elections – it is hard to say what it means, as 2020 saw a high number of mail-in votes because of the Covid pandemic, but turnout in some states indicates that the Republican push for supporters to vote early is working.
Dressed in an orange hi-vis vest after a campaign stunt in a garbage truck, Republican nominee Donald Trump used a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to take aim at the Democrats over Joe Biden’s “garbage” comments, thanked sanitation workers and promised to protect women “whether they like it or not”.
Elsewhere in Wisconsin, Kamala Harris appealed to first-time voters, for whom she said the issues of climate change, gun control, and abortion access are “not political. This is your lived experience.” She was speaking shortly after a new CNN poll showed her six points ahead of Trump in the state.
Here’s what else happened on Wednesday:
Kamala Harris election news and updates
Harris spoke in Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital, which is in one of the few counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Polls show a tied race in Pennsylvania, which both campaigns are competing fiercely for. The path to winning 270 electoral votes is much more difficult for the candidate who loses Pennsylvania. Harris did not mention the racist remark about Puerto Rico made by a comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, but the state’s sizeable Latino and Puerto Rican population could be a decisive voting bloc.
The former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he is backing Harris in next week’s election. In a long post on X, Schwarzenegger, 77, said that while he doesn’t “really do endorsements”, he felt compelled to formally endorse Harris and her pick for vice-president, Tim Walz.
In an op-ed for the Guardian, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders addressed progressives’ concerns about voting for Harris given the Biden administration’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza. “I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them,” he writes, adding that “on this issue, Donald Trump and his rightwing friends are worse.”
Donald Trump election news and updates
Before his Green Bay rally, Trump refused to apologise for the comments made about Puerto Rico at his Madison Square Garden rally, instead repeating his assertion that he did not know who the comedian was or how he got booked. “He’s a comedian, what can I tell you? I know nothing about him. I don’t know why he’s there.”
A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday sided with Trump’s campaign and agreed to extend an in-person voting option in suburban Philadelphia, where long lines on the final day led to complaints voters were being disfranchised by an unprepared election office.
The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said there would be “massive” healthcare changes if Trump wins next Tuesday, including abolishing Obamacare. “Healthcare reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, told the crowd. “When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table.”
Elsewhere on the campaign trail
A Republican former congressional candidate was charged with stealing ballots during a test of a voting system in Madison county, Indiana, state police said on Tuesday. During the test on 3 October, which involved four voting machines and 136 candidate ballots marked for testing, officials discovered that two ballots were missing, according to the Indiana state police.
A majority of voters in swing states do not believe Trump will accept defeat if he loses next week’s presidential election and fear that his supporters will turn to violence in an attempt to install him in power, a new poll suggests.
The pace of US economic growth slowed over the summer but continued its two-year expansion, according to data released on Wednesday. US gross domestic product (GDP) – a broad measure of economic health – rose by 2.8% in the third quarter, short of economists’ expectations of 3.1%, and down from the previous quarter’s 3% reading.
Officials in south-west Washington were able to salvage almost 500 damaged ballots from a ballot box that was set on fire on Monday in what officials have called an attack on democracy. An unknown number of ballots were destroyed when someone placed incendiary devices in a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, while three ballots were damaged in a fire at a box in nearby Portland, Oregon. Those fires and one other are linked, officials have said.
Read more about the 2024 US election:
Presidential poll tracker
Harris and Trump policies
What to know about early voting