The Home Stretch: Here's the election news for Oct. 27

Campaigning is in overdrive, even on a Sunday, as we enter the last full week until Election Day. Here’s what’s going on with the race to the White House.

Where is everyone?

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City today. Speakers who were tapped for the event include House Speaker Mike Johnson, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and several others. Also on that list is his vice presidential candidate, Sen. JD Vance, who will join him in New York after doing interviews on three Sunday morning talk shows.

Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Philadelphia today, attending a church service in the morning, speaking with voters at a barbershop as well as a Puerto Rican restaurant, and holding a rally in the evening.

Her vice presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz, is going to have a busy day. He will rally in Las Vegas with first a reproductive rights-themed event, then a Native Americans for Harris-Walz event and lastly a “Latinos con Harris-Walz” event. In between, he will hop onto video game streaming site Twitch to play “Madden NFL” head-to-head against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Any new data?

Things are still close.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released this morning surveyed likely voters Oct. 18-22 and found Harris with a four-point lead, beating Trump 51-47. A CBS News poll of likely voters from Oct. 23-25 found Harris with a one-point lead, 50-49.

CNN’s final poll of the election cycle has Harris up one point, 47-46, with registered voters, but tied at 47% (a common theme) with Trump among likely voters, typically the more impactful metric in polling. Likewise, a national general election poll from Emerson College has the two candidates in a dead heat at 49% each.

As for Pennsylvania, Redfield & Wilton released a number of swing-state surveys and found that Harris is up one point, 48-47, here.

FiveThirtyEight has Trump winning in 54 out of 100 of their simulated scenarios, with Harris winning 45 out of 100. What about that last scenario? That’s the dreaded 269-269 Electoral College tie.

What’s going on?

Here are some of the stories dominating the political news sphere today.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance did interviews on Sunday morning shows today, including with Jake Tapper for CNN’s “State of the Union.” Tapper persistently asked Vance about his running mate’s desire to use military force on political rivals defined as “the enemy within.” Vance insisted that Trump was talking about “far-left lunatics who are rioting.”

The New York Post reports that Trump’s supporters have been in line for his upcoming Madison Square Garden rally since as early as 10 a.m. Saturday morning.

Former first lady Michelle Obama made her campaign trail debut when she spoke to a crowd at a Harris rally in Kalamazoo, Mich., on Saturday. In part, she tailored her remarks to on-the-fence male voters. “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage,” she said.

The Harris-Walz campaign announced that, in the last push toward Election Day, the presidential and vice presidential hopefuls will visit all seven battleground states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona) between Monday and Thursday.

The winner of Elon Musk’s daily million-dollar swing-state sweepstakes for signing a petition “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms” on Saturday was from Lancaster.

More than 40 million Americans have already voted in in-person early voting or by mail-in ballot across the country.

What’s everyone thinking?

Here are some opinion pieces from around the Web.

• In National Review, Jack Butler introduces “The ‘Conservatives’ for Harris Time Warp” in which he says “Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Harris has gone beyond weighing her as the lesser of two evils. It has gone beyond vaunting her character above his. It has settled on a view of abortion that aligns more closely with Harris’s than with what was only recently Cheney’s own. It’s a transformation that illustrates once again a truth of — and the central flaw in — Trump-era attempts by the Left to persuade conservatives to abandon Trump: ‘Saving democracy,’ conveniently, means yielding to the Left.”

• “To understand the U.S. economic success is to love Harris’ plan,” asserts Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. “That successful formula explains why Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic plans, building on that successful approach, is vastly preferable to Donald Trump’s formula (protectionism, massive tax cuts for the rich, undoing the Inflation Reduction Act, etc.). Plenty of economists agree.”

• Sam Walker writes for The New York Times, “What Football Can Teach Politics.” He lays out how much we could benefit for having a coach in leadership. “Think of the advantages of a coach in chief. The great coaches I know are obsessive about strategy, but they also know how to delegate. They use emotion to inspire people, but it’s almost never at the expense of projecting consistency and composure. They tend to over-communicate and they avoid trafficking in fear. They understand there are no style points in football — all that matters is the final score. And they know that anything can happen on the field, so you must be prepared to pivot and be willing to compromise, and you cannot be too precious about your principles. When you’re winning, you should take a step back and let the players own it.”