Trump rubbishes Iowa poll predicting his defeat

Donald Trump said a poll showing him three points behind Kamala Harris in the safe Republican state of Iowa was “wrong”, amid fears in his team of a late-stage surge for his opponent.
Speaking to a crowd in Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president angrily denied he is heading for defeat in this week’s presidential election after the shock Iowa survey put him three points behind Ms Harris.
Almost all experts argue the election is likely to be the closest in decades, with Trump and Ms Harris currently polling neck and neck in several of the key swing states.
Trump said at his rally in Lititz: “They told me I’m down in Iowa – I don’t think so. A good friend of mine said that poll is wrong.”
After the latest survey by the respected pollster Ann Selzer, the likelihood of a Trump victory plummeted on the betting markets.
The poll placed Ms Harris on 47 per cent of the vote in Iowa, ahead of Trump on 44 per cent. Trump won the state in both 2016 and 2020, and a shift there has not been on the radar of either campaign in this year’s race.
Ms Harris performed especially well in Iowa with older voters, independents and women, the poll found. If the reported swing towards her is accurate and was replicated on a national level, she would win the election by a landslide.
Trump’s campaign immediately hit back at the findings, issuing a memo from its chief pollster Tony Fabrizio, who described it as an “outlier”. Another poll, released on Saturday, found Trump ahead by nine points in Iowa– the same margin of his victory there in 2020.
The former president himself described Ms Selzer as “a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time”.
At his Pennsylvania rally, he abandoned his pre-prepared speech to argue he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after losing the last election, he described the Democratic party as “demonic” and claimed that this year’s election result will be fraudulent.
“Everyone’s afraid to damn talk about it, and then they accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist,” he said.
Both pollster and betting markets have generally predicted with weak confidence that Trump will win the election in recent weeks, but have narrowed that prediction in the last few days amid an apparent late surge for Ms Harris.
Early voting figures show more than 75 million people have already cast their ballots – almost half the total number of votes recorded in 2020’s election.
Analysis of the profile of early voters suggests Ms Harris has performed well among women and older Americans, especially in the swing state of Nevada.
Both candidates still have multiple routes to the 270 electoral college votes required to win the election, and the key state of Pennsylvania remains on a knife edge.
The last major poll from the New York Times and Siena College, released yesterday, suggests Ms Harris is ahead in Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia, while Trump is ahead in Arizona. All results are within the statistical margin of error.
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“We’re going to turn this thing around,” Donald Trump says.
“The level of enthusiasm for the Trump voters is more than double the enthusiasm for this person that nobody ever heard of,” he adds, referring to Kamala Harris.
Donald Trump claims the press will claim his speech was “long and rambling” but notes: “Everbody’s standing, that’s a sign of respect.”
He is in the process of concluding his rally speech, which seems to have been delivered largely off-the-cuff, before slipping into a tangent about former members of his administration.
“Idiots like Kelly and Mattis and Milley – he’s so stupid,” Trump says, referring to his former chief of staff, defence secretary and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
He then claims John Bolton, his former national security adviser, was a “dumb guy” with “the stupid face and the moustache.”
Donald Trump makes more claims about election interference taking place in Pennsylvania, although there is no proof of this.
“There are so many things happening in Pennsylvania – we’re in court all the time,” he says, adding: “2,600 votes and I don’t think there should be a problem.”
The former president was referring to his previous claim that he had found 2,600 “fake ballots and forms” in Lancaster county. In fact, election workers identified suspicious voting applications that local authorities are investigating.
Trump says: “It was done by the same guy and that guy should go to jail for a long period of time. Now maybe he’s not guilty but you’d have to do a lot of talking I think.” It was not immediately clear which individual the former president was referring to.
He continues: “And then we have other things in other counties.”
Of the October jobs report, Donald Trump says: “These are depression type numbers and that’s where we’re heading.”
He recalls saying that he never wanted to be Herbert Hoover “because he was the president when the Depression came. And that was not good.”
The report shows that the US economy added 12,000 jobs in October, the worst figures of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Donald Trump appears to take a swipe at advisers who have told him to focus his attacks on Kamala Harris rather than Joe Biden.
“We had the worst jobs report in modern history this was done by sleepy slash crooked Joe Biden and Kamala,” he says.
“Who knows with her… she probably wasn’t too involved in it because she wasn’t involved in anything. She’s lazy as hell.
“But you know they all say, ‘Sir, make sure you only say Kamala.’ Well it was probably him more, but she was there.”
“We’ve got to get our country straight,” Donald Trump tells supporters. “You have a chance in two days and if you don’t vote you’re stupid, you’re stupid.”
He adds: “Four years of Kamala Harris have delivered nothing but economic hell for American workers.”
Donald Trump tells the crowd that he is “pretty smart” and says it is thanks to his “genetics” – a favourite subject. “Fast racehorses produce fast racehorses, whether you like it or not,” he says.
After saying he “called Covid”, Trump gave his theory about how coronavirus spread.
“I happen to think it was gross incompetence. The doctor came out of the lab. He had lunch with his girlfriend. She caught it. He caught it. They caught it. Then everybody started dying all over the place,” he said.
“They told me I’m down in Iowa – I don’t think so. A good friend of mine said that poll is wrong,” Donald Trump said.
“They stole the election, right? They stole the election, they walked in. They said, get out,” Donald Trump said at his Pennsylvania rally, before launching into a tirade about unproven deficiencies in the US election system.
“We should have one day of voting and paper ballots,” he said.
Mr Trump has falsely claimed his 2020 loss to Democratic president Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud in multiple states that Trump lost, while he and his supporters have spread baseless claims about this election.
“Do you like it better now or four years ago?” Donald Trump has started his rally by saying. He continued:
“I will end inflation, I will stop the invasion of massive numbers of criminals coming into our country… I will bring back the American dream, and we’ll bring it back stronger than ever before.
“But this is all you need to know – Kamala broke it, and we will fix it.
“The election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of incompetence and failure, which is what we have right now, or whether we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country. I’m asking you to dream that big again. This will be America’s new golden age.”
Donald Trump has taken to the stage to give his speech in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
He is wearing a red Make America Great Again cap and standing to look at his supporters.
“Thank you” he could be seen mouthing.
David Millward, US correspondent, reports
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are level pegging at 49 per cent, according to NBC’s final opinion poll of the campaign.
Trump scores favourably on the economy and the belief that the US is going “in the wrong direction”.
However, Ms Harris has a 20-point lead on abortion and among voters on who will look after the “middle class” – which in the US describes middle-income earners, rather than occupation.
Significantly Ms Harris voters score higher on “enthusiasm”, which would suggest that they are more likely to cast their ballot.
But when third parties are taken into account, Trump has a one point lead over Ms Harris, reinforcing the belief that left-wing candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West could play a decisive role in the contest.
Donald Trump’s convoy has arrived in Lititiz.
Crowds could be heard cheering over the song ‘This Is A Man’s World’ as the cars pulled in.
Crowds of supporters are waiting for Donald Trump to take to the stage in Lititz, Pennsylvania, wearing MAGA hats and waving “Trump will fix it” signs.
The stage is flanked my dozens of US flags, while large screens are broadcasting messages including ‘Dream Big Again’ and ‘Make America Safe Again’.
Music has included ‘Everybody Wants To Rule the World’, and ‘All I Do Is Win’.
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who represents the key swing state of Pennsylvania, has Donald Trump’s lies about election fraud.
“Desperation is the worst cologne,” Mr Fetterman said to CNN’s Dana Bash, referencing Mr Trump’s election interference claims. “I’d like to remind everybody that Biden wrecked his sh*t by 80,000 votes, and now we’re going to be back in the same situation.”
President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by a little more than 81,000 votes.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband, has said there has been a “chilling effect” for businesses that disagree with former president Donald Trump.
“Authoritarianism is terrible for the economy, and if you’ve got somebody who’s threatening corporations and media companies with ramifications if they disagree, you see a chilling effect,” Mr Emhoff said in an interview with Symone Sanders on MSNBC airing Sunday, pointing to decisions by the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to not endorse a candidate this cycle.
“Part of it is they don’t want to get in the crosshairs,” he added.
Report from Robert Mendick in Washington DC and Cameron Henderson in Salem, Virginia
With just days to go to polling day, Donald Trump is denying he has a problem with women. At his latest rally in Gastonia in North Carolina on Saturday afternoon, Trump declared with typical bombast to the cheering crowd: “Women love me.”
Alas for the one-time president, the evidence is starting to suggest otherwise. Kamala Harris has, according to current polling, a lead among women of 14 points, outstripping the six-point lead Trump has among men.
More problematic for Trump is that women are turning out in huge numbers to vote early, fuelling optimism in the Harris camp that the White House is within her grasp and plunging Trump and his aides down the rabbit hole of voter fraud.
The Trump campaign has largely eschewed women.
Key members of Trump’s team are unashamed “bros” like Elon Musk, who was criticised for offering to impregnate “childless” Taylor Swift earlier in the campaign.
Read more
Bill Clinton, the former US president, said he believes Kamala Harris will win the US presidential election and that the economy will “explode” over the next few years, thanks to decisions that Joe Biden made.
In an interview with CNN, Mr Clinton also said he worries about what Donald Trump’s impact on politics means for what comes next – no matter who wins.
“What has surprised so many people – although I’m sure this happened in the ‘30s throughout Europe, when they were considering things with fascism – a lot of people just can’t believe how many voters in America agree that he doesn’t make sense, agree that he’s advocating things that would be bad, but somehow think that if the experience was good for them back then, it was magically his doing and everything was fine,” Mr Clinton said. “So, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain deadlocked in key battleground states days, according to a New York Times/Siena poll published on Sunday.
The survey shows Ms Harris narrowly ahead of Trump in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, while the Republican retained his advantage in Arizona and erased her lead in Pennsylvania.
Ms Harris had 48 per cent support amongst likely voters in North Carolina compared with Trump’s 46 per cent. She also leads in Georgia by 48 per cent to 47 per cent, and in Wisconsin by 49 per cent to 47 per cent.
Trump is ahead in Arizona, with 49 per cent of likely voters backing the Republican against Harris’ 45 per cent. The candidates were tied at 48 per cent in Pennsylvania, where each has campaigned vigorously in recent weeks, and at 47 per cent in Michigan.
The survey was conducted by phone between Oct 24 and Nov 2 with 7,879 likely voters across the seven battleground states whose electoral votes are likely to decide the election.
Russian former president Dmitry Medvedev, a senior security official, said on Sunday the US presidential vote on Tuesday will not change anything for Moscow.
“The elections will not change anything for Russia, since the candidates’ positions fully reflect the bipartisan consensus on the need for our country to be defeated,” Me Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Sunday it had spotted 35 Chinese military aircraft, including fighters and bombers, flying to the island’s south on the way to exercises in the Pacific, a second day in a row it has reported such activities.
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory despite the strong objections of the government in Taipei, regularly sends its military in the skies and waters near the island seeking to enforce its sovereignty claims.
The United States is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, and its arms sales to Taipei, including a $2 billion missile system announced last month, infuriate Beijing.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said that it had detected 37 Chinese military aircraft, including J-16 fighters, nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and drones.
Of those, 35 aircraft flew to Taiwan’s southwest, south and southeast into the Western Pacific to carry out long-range training, the ministry said.
China last month held large war games around Taiwan it said were a warning to “separatist acts”, drawing condemnation from the Taiwanese and US governments.
Kamala Harris is due to campaign in East Lansing, Michigan, a college town in an industrial state that is viewed as a must-win for the Democrat.
She faces scepticism from some of the state’s 200,000 Arab Americans who are frustrated that the sitting vice president has not done more to help end the war in Gaza and scale back aid to Israel. Mr Trump visited Dearborn, the heart of the Arab American community, on Friday and vowed to end the wars in the Middle East.
Mr Trump is due to hold rallies in three smaller cities that could help him galvanise the rural voters who make up an important part of his base. He starts the day in Lititz, Pennsylvania, before heading to Kinston, North Carolina in the afternoon and ending with an evening rally in Macon, Georgia.
It will be the first day since last Tuesday that the two candidates are not campaigning in the same state. On Saturday, their planes shared a swath of tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina, where both candidates held rallies.
US correspondent Susie Coen reports from Pennsylvania
A Trump/Vance sticker punctuates Brandi George’s baby bump as she parades past a long queue of voters.
Cradling her swollen stomach, outside the Bucks County Administration Building, the 35-year-old mother of two has just voted for Donald Trump.
“As a mum of a young family, you know, I’m looking for a candidate who is looking for policies that are just going to make the economy better for my kids to grow up in. I am also religious, I am pro-life, I think that celebrating families is good for the country,” she says.
Mrs George is one of the hundreds of thousands of voters in the critical Bucks County – described by Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro as “the swingiest of all swing counties in the swingiest of all swing states”.
The area helped propel Joe Biden to success in the battleground state. He won Bucks by just over 17,000 votes in 2020, dwarfing Hillary Clinton’s narrow margin of fewer than 3,000 votes.
If Trump wins Bucks County, the most competitive of the Philadelphia suburbs, Kamala Harris’s chances of keeping Pennsylvania, the swing state with the biggest prize of electoral college votes, becomes much harder.
The Keystone State has voted for the winner of every presidential election since Barack Obama, the former president, won in 2008.
JJ Balaban, a Democratic Pennsylvanian political consultant, said the competitive county is “really up in the air”.
Read the full report
Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday, as the continent “will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone”.
Mr Orban opposes military aid to Ukraine and has made clear he thinks Trump shares his views and would negotiate a peace settlement for Ukraine.
He backs former president Mr Trump, the Republic candidate, to beat Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s US election.
“We (in Europe) need to realise that if there will be a pro-peace president in America, which I not only believe in but I also read the numbers that way, … if what we expect happens and America becomes pro-peace, then Europe cannot remain pro-war,” Mr Orban said.
“Europe cannot bear the burden of [the war] alone, and if Americans switch to peace, then we also need to adapt, and this is what we will discuss in Budapest,” he added.
Kamala Harris talks to Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/AJuW7aO7VM
Kamala Harris has had a small lead over Donald Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead – 48 per pent to 47 per cent, according to the latest data from 538/ABC News.
The race is close in the seven key swing states. Mr Trump has a slight lead in Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, while Mr Harris has a small lead in Wisconsin and Michigan.
 
The Chancellor has refused to be drawn on how the Government would respond to a second Donald Trump presidency raising tariffs on all imports to the United States.
Rachel Reeves told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Philips: “We are an open, trading economy. The US is our single biggest trading partner, more than £300 billion of trade between our countries.
“That’s beneficial for the UK but it’s also beneficial for the United States, and so we will work with whoever becomes president and make the case for that free and open trade that we believe in.”
She added: “We look at all eventualities of what might happen in the election this week, but we will make the case for free trade, for open trade.”
Thousands of women descended on Washington on Saturday in a passionate show of support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her calls for access to reproductive health care.
The vice president has made abortion rights a central plank of her White House bid against Republican Donald Trump.
“Voting for the candidate that’s going to support our rights as women is the most important thing to me,” said Leah Brooker, 19. She held a sign reading: “If boys will be boys, then women will be presidents.”
Other signs had slogans like “Voting prevents unwanted presidencies” and “A woman’s place is in the Oval Office.”
Organisers estimated turnout was about 15,000 people. Other US cities hosted sister marches.
“We’re not going back!” the crowd chanted, repeating one of Ms Harris’s campaign slogans.
Retiree Marlene Wagner, 70, came from Nebraska, said she was joining “for my grandkids and my children because I fear for their future.”
In her Midwestern state, abortion is banned after the 12th week of pregnancy.
The restriction came after US Supreme Court justices appointed by Mr Trump tipped the panel in 2022 into ending the national right to abortion.
Abortion access is on the ballot in 10 states, in referendums that are taking place alongside the presidential vote.
Keen on as much TV exposure as possible, the Harris campaign has booked a two-minute spot to air Sunday during football games, including a tie between two NFL teams from the crucial swing states – the Green Bay Packers against the Detroit Lions.
In the ad, Harris pledges to be “a president for all Americans” and promises to “build a brighter future for our nation.”
As of Saturday evening, neither presidential hopeful had a margin greater than three points in any of the seven battleground states set to determine the presidency, according to the polling averages maintained by RealClearPolitics.
Ms Harris – desperate to shore up the Great Lakes states seen as essential to any Democratic ticket – was to spend the day in Michigan, beginning in Detroit before a stop in Pontiac and an evening rally at Michigan State University.
Mr Trump’s Sunday timetable centres on Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, the three biggest prizes in the “Electoral College” system that awards states influence according to their size.