State of the race: Five takeaways 17 days out from the US election

It’s been another whirlwind week in United States politics. And with just over two weeks left in the presidential race, the candidates are preparing to make their final appeals to voters.

What have Kamala Harris and Donald Trump — the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, respectively — been doing as the final countdown approaches?

Find out in our latest rundown of the week’s top political news.

The election at a glance

• How many days left?

There are 17 days until the November 5 presidential race.

• What’s the latest in the polls?

National averages have remained largely steady since last week, with Harris maintaining a razor-thin lead — well within the margin of error.

The poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, for instance, has Harris sitting at 48.3 percent as of October 17. Trump, meanwhile, was close behind at 46.3 percent.

Some polls of individual swing states, however, have shown Trump creeping higher. A poll this week from CBS News and YouGov, for instance, zeroed in on Arizona, where analysts noted a three-point lead for Trump over Harris.

An NPR analysis likewise saw the tides turning in Trump’s favour in battleground states, though the news outlet underscored how tight the race is. It also emphasised that polls rarely tell the whole story — and surprises doubtlessly loom over the horizon.

Vice President Kamala Harris high-fives people in the crowd after speaking at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 19 [Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo]

Harris campaign targets Trump’s age

Sunday will mark Harris’s 60th birthday.

But even as the Democratic nominee prepares to celebrate entering a new decade of life, her campaign has taken aim at her Republican rival’s advancing age.

Trump is 78 years old, and he would be the oldest person to be elected president if he is successful in November’s race.

At the start of the race, it was common for Trump to criticise an even older politician for his age and abilities: the presumptive Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden.

Biden, 81, had been slated to headline the Democratic ticket. But after a wobbly performance in the June presidential debate, concerns about his age reached a fever pitch, and Biden bowed out of the race.

Trump — who had long slammed Biden as “weak” and “sleepy” — now faces a significantly younger opponent in Harris. And Harris has flipped the script, using Trump’s age against him.

“I’ve been hearing reports that his team, at least, is saying he’s suffering from exhaustion,” Harris said on Friday. “If he’s exhausted being on the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?”

Her comments came on the heels of a string of cancelled Trump events — and her own glowing health report, released by the White House last week.

Former President Donald Trump defended recent remarks during a Fox News town hall with Harris Faulkner in Cumming, Georgia [Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo]

Trump renews threats to political rivals

Trump boasts a long history of threatening to imprison his political rivals. Even in 2016, during his first successful presidential bid, he was known to lead crowds in chants about his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton: “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

Just last month, Trump pledged to prosecute those he perceives as threats to this year’s election.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences,” he wrote on social media.

But the Republican leader took his rhetoric up a notch this past Sunday, in a Fox News appearance with host Maria Bartiromo. In his interview, he compared Democratic politicians with foreign adversaries.

“We have two enemies: We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries,” Trump said.

“The thing that’s tougher to handle is the lunatics that we have inside,” he continued, naming US Representative Adam Schiff as an example. “I call him the enemy from within.”

Schiff led Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020.

Later in the week, Trump doubled down on his comments at a Fox News town hall. “I’m not threatening anybody. They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations.”

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Atlanta on October 19 [Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo]

An interview on Fox News gets testy

Seeking to torpedo criticism that she avoids press scrutiny, Harris has continued her media blitz this week with an eyebrow-raising choice: an interview with the conservative-leaning Fox News.

The choice was, in part, a reflection of a larger campaign strategy to appeal to middle-ground voters, as well as to Republicans disillusioned with Trump.

But from its opening moments, Thursday’s interview with Fox News host Bret Baier was tense.

The journalist and the Democratic nominee struggled to be heard over one another.

“May I please finish responding, please?” Harris asked Baier at one point. “You have to let me finish. Please. I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising, and I’d like to finish.”

Baier also grilled Harris on the subject of immigration, a topic for which the administration of President Joe Biden has received bipartisan criticism.

“Bret, let’s just get to the point,” Harris responded at one point. “The point is that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired.”

Usher waves to supporters as he appears at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, for Kamala Harris on October 19 [Dustin Chambers/Reuters]

Democrats amp up the star power

Harris and Trump have spent much of October crisscrossing the seven swing states that will likely decide the presidential race.

But as she campaigned this past week, Harris unveiled a star-studded lineup to help her make her final pitch to voters.

On Saturday, the rapper and singer Lizzo opened for Harris in Detroit, Michigan, as she tried to drum up support for early voting.

And later that same day, the singer Usher took a break from his concert tour in Atlanta, Georgia, to give opening remarks at a rally there.

“It’s just 17 days away from a very important election, as we all know, and we have the opportunity to choose a new generation of leadership for our country,” Usher told the crowd, repeating a common refrain from the Harris campaign.

Republican running mate JD Vance speaks to supporters on October 16 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania [Matt Rourke/AP Photo]

JD Vance endorses 2020 election denialism

Throughout the campaign, Republican running mate JD Vance has danced around the topic of the 2020 election: He has refused to contradict Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud, but he has also avoided saying that Trump definitively lost the race.

That changed this past week, as Vance led a rally in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

At the Wednesday rally, Vance took questions, and he reacted strongly when pressed about the message he was sending by refusing to give a straight answer about the 2020 race.

“On the election of 2020, I’ve answered this question directly a million times: No. I think there were serious problems in 2020,” Vance said.

“So did Donald Trump lose the election? No, not by the words that I would use.”

Election denialism has been a persistent concern since the 2020 election, when Biden won over Trump.

Trump had refused to accept the result, calling the election “rigged” and “stolen”. His words helped motivate a group of supporters to storm the US Capitol in an apparent effort to stop the certification of the results.

In this year’s race, Trump has hedged when asked if he would accept another defeat. “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results,” he said in May.