The Home Stretch: Here's the election news for Nov. 4

We’ve officially reached the final pre-Election Day hours. Today is heavy on campaign events and light on polls (until tomorrow, when Americans conduct the only poll that matters). Here’s the scoop about what Election Day Eve has in store.

Where is everyone?

A little bit of everywhere — and all over Pennsylvania.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, will spend the whole day in the state. She’ll start off in Scranton, then head to Allentown, Reading and right to the Pittsburgh area, where she will hold a rally at the Carrie Blast Furnace in the late afternoon. She’ll be joined here by her husband, Doug Emhoff, as well as musical guests D-Nice, Katy Perry and Andra Day. Harris will close her 2024 run in Philadelphia tonight, with Gov. Josh Shapiro, Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, DJ Cassidy, Fat Joe, Freeway and Just Blaze, DJ Jazzy Jeff, The Roots, Jazmine Sullivan and Adam Blackstone. That event will be part of a simul-streamed series of rallies and concerts for the Harris campaign across all seven swing states.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump will start the day in Raleigh, N.C., before coming to Pennsylvania for events in Reading and at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh. Then he’ll wrap it up in Grand Rapids, Mich., late tonight.

The Vice Presidential hopefuls are also busy. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz will spend much of the day in Wisconsin. He’ll campaign in Milwaukee, La Crosse and Stevens in the toss-up state. He’ll end the night in Detroit, Mich., as part of the simulcast event with musical guests Jon Bon Jovi and The War and Treaty. Republican Sen. JD Vance will also be in La Crosse, Wis., before traveling to Flint, Mich., Atlanta, Ga., and Newton Square, Pa.

Any new data?

The short answer is “not really.”

Most pollsters have packed it up for the election cycle at this point.

Trafalgar Group and InsiderAdvantage both released polls that have Trump up one point in Pennsylvania, 48-47 and 49-48, respectively. Research Co.’s latest survey of the state put Harris up by one, 48-47.

The same slate of pollsters polled the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, with Research Co. and InsiderAdvantage finding Democratic Sen. Bob Casey winning, but Trafalgar Group putting Republican Dave McCormick up, 47-46.

We may see the publication of a couple more national polls later today.

What’s going on?

As Tuesday looms, here are a few tidbits from the campaigns.

The Hill reports that more rank-and-file members of the Republican Party than ever are poised to back Trump if he claims that the election was stolen.

On Sunday, 2024 Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley endorsed Trump in the Wall Street Journal.

At a rally on Sunday, Trump said that he shouldn’t have left the White House after his loss in the 2020 presidential election. He said, “The day that I left, I shouldn’t have left. I mean, honestly, because we did so, we did so well.”

And taking a quick glance away from the presidential race, CNN has a look at 10 U.S. Senate races to watch (spoiler alert: Pennsylvania makes the list).

What’s everyone thinking?

Op-ed writers have taken to making more sweeping declarations as the election nears. Here are some thoughts from opinion pages around the country.

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. puts our home state in the crosshairs with “If Trump loses Pennsylvania, he’ll have no one to blame but himself.” “It’s appropriate that Pennsylvania, with its delicately balanced electorate, might well decide the fate of a divided nation. Even more than other states, it showcases the sharp realignment that Trump has driven. If many of the state’s working-class, onetime union strongholds have shifted Republican, its well-off suburban counties, particularly those that collar Philadelphia, have continued a journey toward the Democrats that began in the 1990s. Two of the leaders of Republicans for Harris in the state, former House members Charlie Dent and James C. Greenwood, and are representative of a style of Republicanism that once thrived in Pennsylvania. They see defeating Trump as the essential first step toward reorienting their party.”

As a guest essayist for the New York Times, Matthew Yglesias penned “Any Other Republican Would Be Running Away With This.” He points out, “Consider, though, that on Oct. 27, Japan’s long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party suffered one of its worst electoral results. In late September, Austria’s center-right People’s Party saw an 11-percentage-point decline in vote share and lost 20 of its 71 seats in Parliament. Over the summer, after being in power for 14 years, Britain’s Conservative Party collapsed in a landslide defeat, and France’s ruling centrist alliance lost over a third of its parliamentary seats. Which is just to say that almost everywhere you look in the world of affluent democracies, the exact same thing is happening: The incumbent party is losing and often losing quite badly.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board turns to the other important contests that are happening Tuesday with “The Senate Stakes Can’t Get Much Higher.” “The race for the White House has tightened again, if you can take more drama, as new polls show Kamala Harris gaining ground in the last week, including Wisconsin, Georgia and even Iowa. This marks a good moment for a reminder of why this year’s U.S. Senate elections are unusually important. If the Vice President wins, while Democrats keep a Senate majority, the House stands a good chance of going her way as well. After that, the progressive deluge.”

The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Ari Jun has a unifying message in “We must have compassion for those on the losing side of presidential election.” “In the present, most who head into voting booths on Tuesday (or voted in advance) have great fervor for their opinions, even if they don’t consider American Democracy sacred. Most have polar opposite feelings regarding Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and anticipate that, should their preferred candidate win, their lives will somehow be better. Meanwhile, most voters carry great fear about the world where “the other one” wins. Harris voters will consider a Trump win cataclysmic; Trump voters will see a Harris victory as an apocalypse. With that recognition comes the need to recognize another compelling civic responsibility: holding empathy for those who lose. We must remember that nearly half the country will experience what they consider a disaster sometime between this Tuesday and whenever the election is called.”