NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - Monday, November 4, 2024

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Harris makes final blitz through battleground Pennsylvania; Trump makes final pitches in crucial Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan; More than 75 million cast ballots ahead of Election Day; and more on tonight’s broadcast.

Tonight, the final push on this election eve, just hours before the polls open in this historic race for the White House. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, their last blitz through the battleground states. The candidates holding dueling events in crucial Pennsylvania. The vice president crisscrossing the state and capping the night with a star-studded concert in Philadelphia. Ms. Harris hoping women and the battle over abortion rights can help propel her to victory. And the former president also holding rallies in North Carolina and Michigan and attacking Ms. Harris on the border and the economy. And the early vote, what can it tell us? With more than 78 million ballots already cast, plus the path to 270 electoral votes, what each candidate must do to win.

We'll run through the potential scenarios and counting the votes, how long could it take to project a winner? Our full political team coverage. Also tonight, the alarming new report, the alleged covert Russian plot to place incendiary devices on planes traveling to the U.S. and the potential connection to explosions at two shipping hubs. The new tornado threat and severe weather we're tracking after storms left a path of destruction across Oklahoma. This is NBC Nightly News Decision 2024. Live from election headquarters in New York, Here is Lester Holt. Good evening and welcome from our NBC News Election Center. Well, if the polling is right, it could not be any closer. On the eve of an

unprecedented election day, Vice President Harris and former President Trump are running neck and neck, and they are running hard in this last full day of campaigning, with Harris crisscrossing all important Pennsylvania and Trump also campaigning there in North Carolina and winding up in Michigan tonight. For a country divided, it's a moment of high anxiety and uncertainty, with more than 78 million people having already cast their ballots in early voting. Adding to that anxiety, it could take days for us to know who the next president will be. Given the closeness of this election, the fact that so many mail-in votes need to be counted, and the legal challenges that could come. Tonight, we are covering it all,

starting with Peter Alexander and the Harris campaign. Tonight, just hours till Election Day, Vice President Harris closing out her campaign in the pivotal battleground of Pennsylvania. Five separate stops beginning in President Biden's hometown, Scranton. I'm telling you guys, we're good. We're good. Later dropping by a Puerto Rican restaurant in Redding with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Harris finishing up her frenetic final day with rallies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Joined by celebrities like Katy Perry, Ricky Martin, and Lady Gaga It comes as the last NBC News poll before Election Day shows what remains a razor-tight race

With third-party candidates included, former President Trump leads Harris by one point within the margin of error Harris is hoping to capitalize on her strengths In our poll, leading Trump by 20 points on abortion rights and maintaining a 16-point advantage among women. It is a fight for freedom, like the fundamental freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body. The Harris campaign tonight touting its get-out vote efforts. This weekend, 90,000 volunteers knocking on 3 million doors in the battleground states alone. Let's get out the vote. Let's get out the vote. Let's get out the vote. Let's win. Among the challenges the vice president faces, two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong path. And our poll shows Trump has opened up an 18 point lead among men. Harris's

clearest path to victory, a sweep of the three blue wall states that President Biden carried four years ago. The Harris campaign tonight is projecting confidence, saying late deciders are breaking for the VP, noting a well-respected poll in Iowa where Trump won decisively in 2016 and 2020 shows Harris may be outperforming him, though within the margin of error. Republicans call it an outlier. Over the weekend, Harris making a surprise appearance on SNL. What do we always say?

Keep Kamala and carry on a lot. And voting by mail. I did mine. I'm going to put it in the mail. One notable shift in these closing hours after taking on Trump for weeks, slamming him as a fascist and a tyrant. Harris is now not mentioning him by name today, calling him the other guy, this whole era of this other guy, you know, but what it's done with all that talk that's been about trying to have us

point fingers at each other. And Peter, Vice President Harris wraps up her day with that late night event in Philadelphia. That's right, Lester. Tens of thousands of Harris supporters are already gathering here atop Harris' ally tonight, telling me they would rather be in her heels than in his shoes heading into tomorrow. Harris will return to Washington, D.C. overnight, where she will watch the returns come in. Lester. All right, Peter Alexander, thank you. Former President Trump winds up in Michigan tonight after final stops in battlegrounds

North Carolina and Pennsylvania, zeroing in on Vice President Harris over the economy and the border. Garrett Haig is covering the Trump campaign. Tonight, former President Trump on his final battleground blitz of his last presidential campaign from Pennsylvania, which both campaigns see as the pivotal tipping point state. Kamala broke it and I will fix it and fast. To North Carolina, a state he won twice that's now a battleground. I'd like to begin by asking a very simple question. Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Hammering home his message that he'll bring change at the border and on the economy.

Four years of Kamala have delivered nothing but economic hell for American workers. You know that. Her inflation disasters made life unaffordable. Trump's path back to the White House likely depends on holding North Carolina and winning at least one of the Democrats' so-called blue wall states, plus flipping Georgia, which President Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020. Trump's campaign confident about its early vote performance in many swing states. In the past, Republicans usually trailed in early voting and had to make it up with election day turnout. We have record-setting early voting and had to make it up with election day turnout. We have record-setting early voting numbers that nobody's ever seen before. Can you believe that?

Trump's team parsing early vote numbers in the battlegrounds, which they say shows rural turnout up and urban numbers down, and Harris underperforming Biden with key demographics, projecting confidence in their strategy of trying to turn out young men who rarely vote, like Scott Netherland, who didn't vote in 2020, but backs Trump now. I just see like Kamala and Tim Walz talking. I just feel like it's all just fake. And they've been in office. So I just like what's going to change if we vote them back in. But Trump also making headlines for off-message comments. After surviving an assassination attempt in July, he now has bulletproof glass on stage. Sunday saying anyone who might want to shoot him would have to fire through the reporters

covering him. And I have this piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don't mind that so much. His campaign saying his comment had, quote, nothing to do with the media being harmed and that Trump was, quote, actually looking out for their welfare. Garrett, one more event for former President Trump there in Pennsylvania. Then he's off to Michigan. That's right, Lester.

From here in Pittsburgh, the former president heads to Grand Rapids, the same city where he closed out his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Then it's a late flight back to Palm Beach. Tomorrow morning, he votes in Florida alongside his wife, Melania. Lester. Okay, Garrett, Hank, thanks very much. And with the candidates making their final pitches, a huge number of people have already voted in this election. Hallie Jackson is here. What do

we know about the early vote? Well, a lot of people are doing a lot of early voting, Lester. That's the big takeaway. And the big number right here, some 78 million early votes have been cast either in person or in the mail. This is a big number. It's not quite what we saw in 2020. But remember, that was the pandemic. But look at this. It outpaces 2012 and it outpaces 2016 as well. Look at the partisan breakdown. That's probably your next question. We're seeing Republicans cutting into the advantage that Democrats traditionally typically have on early voting. 41 percent registered Democrats, 39 percent registered Republicans. Caveat, we don't know specifically who they're filling out that ballot before,

but it's still a data point. And this is interesting here, the gender gap when it comes to early voting. Nationally, more women have early voted than men. And we're seeing a double-digit gap in these four key battlegrounds. Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Your grain of salt on that, our polling shows that more men say they're going to vote on election day than women. So you could see that gender gap number snap back tomorrow, Lester. All right, Hallie, thanks very much. Another number you're going to hear a lot of 270. That's the road that gets these candidates to the White

House. Tom Yamas is here. He's at the big board. You've been kind of walking through the combinations and we'll get each of them where they want to go. This is our road to 270 map, Lester. We're going to start election night where we left off in 2020. Remember, Joe Biden won six of the seven battleground states on election night. They're going to be marked gray. So for Kamala Harris, her easiest path to the White House is if she holds that blue wall. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, she gets to 270 electoral votes, but she has many other paths. And if the blue wall were to collapse, she has one more path to get to the White House. She wins Nevada, holds Arizona, holds Georgia and flips North Carolina. She gets to the White House. Now, for Donald Trump, it's a little different. Let's mark his states here and see where he goes. The easiest path for him, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. He

gets a 270 there. But if he were to lose Pennsylvania, he has to win somewhere else in that blue wall. He has to crack the blue wall. There's no path if he doesn't do it. If he wins Michigan and wins Wisconsin, he gets there. But if he can't pull off Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada do it. But if he only wins Wisconsin, Lester, he has to win in Arizona. He needs those 11 electoral votes. It's going to be a lot of excitement. All right, Tom, thanks very much. Thank you. And with this election so close, it's possible we will not know who the next president is tomorrow night, with the counting of mail-in votes only starting tomorrow in some states.

Here's Laura Jarrett. The moment the entire country has been waiting for. The presidential race so tight in 2020, the winner took days to call. The high number of mail-in ballots creating a unique challenge for election officials and this year may be the same. It takes time to count millions of votes. Pennsylvania's top election official Al Schmitz says he expects more than 30 percent of voters to cast their ballots by mail this time around. But state law prevents election officials from opening and processing those ballots until 7 a.m. on election day.

It leads to a perception that things are delayed in Pennsylvania, and they're not delayed at all. It's just the process. A similar law in Wisconsin bars pre-processing of mail-in ballots ahead of time, while in Arizona, verifying signatures on early ballots can cause delays. In Nevada, a different challenge. Ballots get counted up to four days after the election, so long as they're postmarked by November 5th. All potentially resulting in a days-long gap between when polls close and when the race is finally called. We've seen that as a real period of vulnerability

for people to try to undermine confidence in the results. We did win this election. Former President Trump seized on that period of uncertainty in 2020 to fuel a false narrative the election was stolen and has been trying to cast doubts on the results of this election. They cheat. That's the only way we're going to lose, because they cheat. And already, the lawsuits have started flying, nearly 200 and counting. In Georgia, officials had concerns over new rules passed by the pro-Trump state election board, including one mandating a hand count of all ballots after polls close.

There's absolutely no reason to pass new rules this close to an election. Those rules now blocked by a judge. For now, Republicans have focused their efforts on contesting the rules around mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, losing several lawsuits already, others still pending and left unresolved, providing a fertile ground, election lawyers say, for future fights in the weeks ahead. The nightmare scenario is mail-in ballots where the parties contest the signatures, the date, or other defects in the ballot. And therefore, we have a replay of what happened in 2000 in Florida with Bush versus Gore. Laura Jarrett, NBC News. We'll turn to another major story now, NBC News confirming a Wall

Street Journal report that Western intelligence agencies believe Russia is behind two recent attempts to smuggle explosives onto cargo planes and may be targeting planes bound for the U.S. Tom Costello is with us. Tom, this is quite concerning. What have you learned? It really is. The explosives went off in DHL cargo hubs in Germany and Britain. Had a bomb exploded while the plane was in the air,

the head of German domestic intelligence says the plane would likely have crashed. A Western security official tells NBC News it could be a Russian operation to undermine support for Ukraine and cargo flights to the U.S. and Canada could be targeted. Polish authorities have arrested four people and are looking for two more, all with alleged ties to Russia. DHL says it's aware of two recent incidents involving shipments in its network and is cooperating with authorities. Meanwhile, the TSA says it has increased air cargo screening, but Lester, government officials say there is no current active threat targeting U.S.-bound flights. Russia, by the way, has rejected allegations that it's orchestrating any sort of sabotage campaign in Europe, Lester. Okay, Tom Costello, thank you. In 60 seconds, the new threat of tornadoes after a dangerous outbreak. Plus, we'll go to Michigan to find

out what's on the minds of young voters who could make a difference and who wins that crucial state. Our series, What Matters, right after this. We're tracking severe storms on the move tonight. 16 million people at risk in the central U.S. Tornado watches are in effect from Texas to Missouri with the threat of damaging winds and large hail. It comes on the heels of multiple tornadoes across Oklahoma over the weekend that injured at least 11 people and damaged about 100 homes. Also tonight, the final polls out of Michigan show a toss-up race, historically young voters having turned out in big numbers. So Jacob Soboroff, in partnership with our affiliate WDIV, traveled there to find out what matters most to them. We headed to class at Oakland University

in Michigan because its student body is made up of some of the most watched voters in the state. Class hasn't started yet, but as usual, I'm late. How's it going, everybody? Of the nearly 16,000 students here, almost three quarters are from the all-important swing counties of Macomb and Oakland. Oakland County, raise your hand. Macomb County. Wow. And young people in Michigan voted at a higher rate than

anywhere in the 2022 midterms, 13 points higher than the national average. How many people are going to vote in this room? Almost everybody said they're going to vote. Any theories about why young people are voting at higher rates? One of the big issues for me is definitely reproductive rights. What is it that's getting you out to the polls? It's really just a sense of urgency that I've never felt before. The main thing that I see is just the disconnect with the ideas for the economy. I also support abortion rights. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily a Trump supporter, but that's who I'm voting for. What do you want them to know about what it's like to be a student at OU today? Just like the cost of everything, not only tuition, but just like day-to-day living.

Grew up in Oakland County. I've lived here my whole life. So I experienced the whole Oxford shooting thing. I appreciate Kamala's policy on gun buyback programs. First time voting for president. Yeah. After class, we continued our conversation with junior Lexi Manigan from Macomb County. Sounds like there's a lot of noise out there. Yeah. Some of it's getting through to you.

Yeah. But it's hard to sort through it all. It is. It really is. Because I'm hearing there's so many sources of information which you don't really know what to trust anymore. The information making its way to young voters here is what sent another OU student, Marcus Johnson, to viral fame after we met him following the vice presidential debate. You don't get to do what you want. You do what the president delegates you to do. A moment that resulted in a recent face-to-face meeting with Vice President Harris.

What'd she say to you? She was like, your voice is very important and we need people like you in elections like these. What would you say to people who won't have that experience and might even be considering, you know, not participating based on it? You don't need to look for the perfect candidate because that person doesn't exist. You find the candidate who's going to get you closest to the type of America you want to see. A school where being heard matters to students because of the power of their vote. Jacob Soboroff, NBC News, Rochester, Michigan. We'll take a break. Up next, we'll talk about

the states that could set the tone for election night when Kristen Welker, moderator of Meet the Press, joins me after this. Well, finally, on this election eve, let's bring in our own Kristen Welker. Kristen, you and I have covered a lot of elections. What stands out? What should we be looking for North Carolina, one of the first swing states where we'll see results. Polls close at 730. No Democrat has won there since 2008. If Harris wins it, she would significantly narrow the path for Trump. If Trump wins it, he would win a critical state for him. We'll also be watching for that historic gender gap. We've never seen it so large in our poll. We've also never seen a race pull this close in modern American history. We haven't seen an ex-president run for reelection in more than 100 years, and we haven't

seen a vice president run for election after an incumbent has dropped out since 1968, all making this extraordinary list. A lot of potential drama for the night. All right, Kristen, thanks very much. That is nightly news for this Monday. Coverage starts tomorrow night at 7 p.m. here on NBC and News Now and goes until the early hours. Thank you for watching. I'm Lester Holt. Please take care of yourself and each other. Good night.