Election 2024 live updates: Trump, Kamala Harris hold final rallies on eve of Election Day

Nov 05, 2024

Regardless of who wins tomorrow’s election, a key fixture of America’s political landscape for nearly a decade is set to disappear: the Trump rally.

The Trump roadshow barreled into the end of its run today, with the former president set to close out his campaign with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Trump, who says 2024 will be his last campaign, has held — by his own count — more than 900 rallies since announcing his bid for the White House in 2015.

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Mayor John Giles walked the sunny streets of Mesa’s Eastmark neighborhood in hopes of securing a few last-minute votes for Harris. The suburb, which sits some 40 minutes east of Phoenix, was built out of an Air Force base and has skewed Republican in previous elections.

“People are either fish or fowl at this point. They’re one or the other,” he said of Harris and Trump voters.

But in a state where presidents have won the last two elections by razor thin margins, Giles anticipates an usual pattern could emerge if voters pick Trump for president, choose to protect access to abortion and send Ruben Gallego to the Senate to join fellow Democrat Mark Kelly.

“That’s kind of the picture of the Arizona voter,” Giles said shrugging. “That’s our reputation as being independent, right, and being a John McCain maverick.”

Eastmark resident Andre Miller said he was a Republican voter until Trump’s first term. He voted early for Harris this time.

“Civility has been lost and we need somebody to help restore that,” he said. “I have sons. I have a grand baby. And so the last thing I want is for them to see the moral standard bearer of our country be someone like the previous president.”

Beneath the surface of a tight presidential race and NBC News’ tied final national poll, the handful of voters who have wavered in recent weeks illustrated the lesser-of-two-evils thinking that could decide the 2024 election.

Harris is an “empty vessel,” one voter says. Others worry world leaders won’t respect Harris because she’s a woman. Another voter’s concern: It’s not clear what she stands for besides opposing Trump.

But then there are voters who say Trump lacks the character or demeanor a president should have. He’s “very rude” and “lies too much.” And some specifically panned the racist and demeaning rhetoric from Trump allies at last week’s rally at Madison Square Garden, criticizing them for alienating Americans instead of bringing them together.

That’s according to answers from 24 respondents in the newest national NBC News poll, conducted over the last few days, from voters who say they seriously considered voting for Harris or Trump in the last two or three weeks before picking the other option.

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The economy is the main issue for first time, Gen Z voters who spoke with NBC News at Trump's rally in Pittsburgh this afternoon.

Ryan Jones, 21, said he supports Trump’s proposal for no tax on tips or overtime.

“I’m a big fan of lowering taxes personally, and in high school I worked jobs that I earned money through tips. So that would have been able to help me save a lot more for college, and I think that would have helped me out a lot more in the long run,” he said.

Jones, a student at the University of Pittsburgh, says his friends are split on who to vote for — a lot of his classmates are not voting for Trump, but his hometown friends in Butler County are backing the former president.

Kaeli Bennett, 18, dreams of being a homeowner and says housing was more affordable under the Trump administration.

“In the future I want to be able to own a home. And when he was president, the prices were a lot lower, especially for home buyers. And that is a huge issue for me. I want to be able to own my own home, I want to be able to start a family at an affordable cost,” she said.

Matthew Lonergan, 19, said the difference in the economy under Trump versus Biden is “night and day.”

“[Biden and Harris] really didn’t do anything but hurt the country, and Trump did nothing but help the country,” he said.

Another reason Lonergan is voting for Trump is because he sees Trump as more aligned with his Catholic faith. “As a Catholic, Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior. Donald Trump supports Jesus, and that just goes with that,” he said.

Trump’s rally in Pittsburgh took place across the street from Duquesne University, a Catholic college.

Jenna Pindrock, 20, who is Catholic and describes herself as “pro-life,” says she has Catholic friends who were initially on the fence but then were turned off by Harris when she told anti-abortion protesters “you’re at the wrong rally.”

In his nearly two-hour speech in Pittsburgh tonight, Trump again depicted migrants as vicious criminals, saying he wanted to see Penn State wrestlers and UFC champions fight people migrating to the U.S.

"Ah, those Penn State guys, I wanted them to wrestle them migrants," Trump said as he talked about meeting the team at a recent campaign stop.

He then pivoted to UFC, saying he recently told the company's CEO, Dana White: "Dana, you got to set up your league of champions — unbelievable, best fighters in the world — and a migrant."

Trump then went back to the Penn State wrestlers, saying: "I tell you, I felt very comfortable with those big Penn State wrestlers. … I said to them, 'Fellas, you may be like the only guys in the country that could beat the hell out of the migrants.' That’s true. They’re the only ones that could beat the migrants in the fight. These are tough people. These are people have been in jails. They're killers. They're murderers. The level — the level of viciousness is unexcelled."

Trump wrapped his remarks just before 9:30 p.m. ET and is running substantially behind schedule before his final rally of the night in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

His closing pitch to supporters in Pittsburgh: "The only way we can blow it is if you blow it. I’ve given you the ball. I mean, you got to go and vote."

In her second-to-last rally of the campaign, Harris struck a bullish tone about her chances in tomorrow's election, departing from her typical underdog posture.

"The momentum is on our side," Harris told a crowd in Pittsburgh. "Make no mistake, we will win. We will win."

With the rusting hulk of industrial machinery lit up behind her, Harris whipped through a condensed version of her stump speech. She has had a packed schedule on Election Day eve, capped with a late-night rally in Philadelphia that her allies expect to be massive.

Harris has often told audiences that she is an underdog, but her campaign and Democrats more generally have grown less anxious and more confident in recent days.

Joe Rogan, who hosts one of the most popular podcasts worldwide, endorsed Trump tonight in a post on X that also praised billionaire Elon Musk, who has been campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania.

Rogan wrote that Musk "makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way," in a post that included a more than two-hour interview with Musk.

"For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump," Rogan added.

Trump responded at his rally tonight in Pittsburgh: "He’s not a person that does endorsements, but he did an endorsement, so I just want to thank Joe Rogan. That’s fantastic."

Rogan recorded a three-hour conversation with Trump for his podcast late last month, in which Trump defended himself as "actually the opposite of a dictator” after The New York Times published a series of interviews with former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly that included his comment that Trump meets the definition of a fascist.

The potential that Trump could prevail in the presidential race has contributed to sentiment in financial markets that his policies could stir both economic growth as well as inflation.

In the case that Trump defeats Harris, some see a scenario in which rising fiscal deficits, along with a potential global trade war, could mean higher inflation and surging bond yields, along with gains in the stock market.

Given that yields and prices move in the opposite direction, that would be bad for underlying fixed income value. Depending on how things trend, there’s even talk about the return of “bond vigilantes” — traders who essentially force the government’s hands by either eschewing government debt or selling it outright.

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Vance, who says his partnership with Trump has cost him friends, is wrapping up his campaign for vice president by asking voters not to let their political differences come between them.

“I really don’t like Kamala Harris and her policies, but most of the people who are voting for Kamala Harris are fundamentally decent people,” Vance, R-Ohio, said in an interview aboard his campaign plane today. “I just believe that.”

It’s a belief Vance has articulated at his rallies ahead of Election Day.

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Three female supporters gave speeches during the main part of Trump's rally in Pittsburgh today as he seeks to narrow his gender gap among women vs. Harris.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and conservative personality and former Fox News and NBC News host Megyn Kelly took the stage during Trump's address.

In her speech, Kelly said Trump "will protect" women and talked up his efforts to curb undocumented immigration and prevent trans women from participating in women's sports. She also mocked the idea that women were secretly voting for Harris because they didn't want their husbands to know they weren't backing Trump.

"President Trump gets it," Kelly said. "He will not look at our boys like they’re second-class citizens. And ladies out there who want a bit of girl power in this election, let me tell you something: How can you win when the sons and the husbands and the brothers and the dads you love are losing? It’s not a win."