2020 polls: Shock poll puts Trump ahead in Pennsylvania and Michigan - prompting expert row

MSNBC airs 80-second supercut of Trump’s racist remarks over the past 30 years

Amazing that this was even possible - let alone necessary - in a 21st century democracy but here we are.

Graig Graziosi has the story.

Louisiana reconsiders Election Day plans as Tropical Storm Zeta kills six and closes polls in Florida and Georgia 

Gino Spocchia has this on a further layer of chaos set to disrupt Tuesday’s ballot thanks to the same storm that soaked Biden yesterday in Florida and forced Trump to cancel his North Carolina rally.

More than 83.9 million votes cast

Texas has become the second state to surpass its overall 2016 voter turnout, thanks to early voting alone. 

It joins Hawaii, whose turnout also surpassed 2016 numbers on Thursday.

It means that, according to US Elections Project estimates, at least 83.9 million early ballots have now been cast in the 2020 race.

How many ballots cast in Texas?

….approximately 9,009,850, to be precise, with one day of early voting still to go.

And that’s not forgetting Election Day itself, of course.

Trump says he’s ‘way ahead in Texas’

Opinion polls, however, say the Lone Star State is a toss-up for election day, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump statistically tied.

Multiple surveys have shown as little as one percentage point separating the two candidates, which could lead to unexpected results next week.

Crucially, this was a battleground that wasn’t meant to be, with Jimmy Carter being the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Texas, in 1976. 

Can Latino’s win Florida for Trump?

Figures suggest while Trump received around 29 per cent of the Latino vote in 2016, this year that number could increase.

One of the reasons, say experts, is that the loud, swaggering president has grown in popularity among a subset of Latino voters; young men.

Andrew Buncombe has the report: 

Houston looks to boost turnout by offering 24-hour voting

Texans flocked to the polling sites in Harris County - the Lone Star State’s most populous county - to cast their ballots starting late on Thursday and into Friday, the last day of early voting in the state.

"It's very convenient, especially for those people that work at night and sleep during the day," Silveria Sanchez, 36, an emergency medical technician dispatcher, said after voting around 12:30am on Friday during a break from her overnight shift at the Texas Medical Center. She walked five minutes to cast her ballot at a polling station at a food court in the sprawling Houston hospital complex.

Harris County officials have launched some innovative efforts to make it easier to vote in the presidential election. As well as the 24-hour polling sites, the county offers drive-thru voting and has encouraged its voters to cast their ballots early.

 It has also challenged the state over limits on mail-in voting and drop-off boxes for absentee ballots. 

By Thursday evening, Harris County had surpassed its entire 2016 voter turnout of 1.3m and, as of Friday morning, Texas voters had cast more than the state's total 8,969,226 votes of 2016.

"Hopefully in the future, dozens of counties follow our lead and offer a night of 24-hour voting to support their voters," said Harris County clerk Chris Hollins.

Voting sites that stay open 24 hours are rare, according to Michael Pomante, an assistant professor of political science at Jacksonville University in Florida. 

In March, Los Angeles County offered six 24-hour voting locations during the presidential primary.

"Harris County seems to be doing what they can at the county level to improve access to the polls," Pomante said.

AP

50 Americans in 50 states reveal who they’re voting for and why 

My colleague Chris Riotta here completes his magnum opus, having interviewed one voter from every single state in the union (plus DC and Puerto Rico) over the course of the last year to explore their reasons for voting red or blue.

It’s quite an achievement and an extremely enlightening read.

You can also check out Chris discussing the Polarized project below…

…at an Independent Premium Event recorded last week.

Majority of Americans say Trump has damaged US standing in the world, Independent poll reveals

The majority of Americans believe that Donald Trump has harmed the standing of the US in the world, according to an exclusive new poll commissioned by the Independent.

Fifty one per cent of respondents felt that the president had harmed the reputation of the country, and 36 per cent felt that he had improved it.

Mr Trump has been attacked by his critics for withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement — something Joe Biden said he would reverse on his first day in office — and for fostering tense relations with traditional allies such as Canada, France and Germany.  

His critics further accuse him of cosying up to dictators, mocking him for telling a press conference that he believed Vladimir Putin’s word over that of his own intelligence agencies, and worrying that his actions in Syria — where he rapidly withdrew US troops and left the Kurds stranded, at the request of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan — have concerned America’s military allies.

The Independent’s Harriet Alexander reports.

Biden sweeps latest predictions among top pollsters