from msnbc, decision 2020, election night. live from democracy plaza, here now are rachel maddow and brian williams. >> well, good evening, and this is it. almost. this is the final push. the breathless suspense, the crippling anxiety should be over in just a few days. in the meantime, both campaigns, both candidates, going all-out on this last sunday before election day. as the remainder of this race can now be measured in hours, not days. early voting has been nothing short of colossal and record-shattering. so far. 93 million americans have cast their ballots. and we expect that figure to get nudged over the 100 million mark when this weekend's final tallies are all in. and complete. brian williams here at our nbc news global headquarters in new york. coming to you from or newly

expanded studio facilities. as these times require. of course, we enter the homestretch of a presidential election that has tested the resilience of our democracy and the resilience of our people in ways not seen or required in modern history. in large part, of course, because we are in the midst of an uncontrolled pandemic. that the rate of half a million new cases per week now. the death toll now approaching 230,000 souls in our country. and i have it on good authority that somewhere in this cavernous studio complex is my friend, rachel maddow. rachel, come in. i don't even know if you can see me. can you see me waving out here? >> yes. look. there you are. i tweaked my prescription, but a week ago i would not have been able to see you. look at you. you're the size of an ant. >> i'm like, right next door. >> god bless you, brian. well, you know what, over at

this end of our supersized studio, i am joined at a, what is this, wary but respectful distance. by nicolle wallace and joy reid, of course. it is great to be here with you. our network's mvp, steve kornacki is at the board with the latest polling tonight. we're getting close to a time when polling is almost weird given it is basically a prediction of what will happen and that thing that will happen is already considerably under way. as brian mentioned, we are closing in on nearly 100 million american votes already cast. today, president trump held rallies in five states. he will do at least another five tomorrow. former vice president joe biden spent the day barnstorming pennsylvania including a souls to the polls event. we're used to reporting every four years, sometimes every two years, on souls to the polls. big early vote mobilizations mostly by african-american churches on the last sunday before election day. souls to the polls efforts hampered this year by the pandemic.

but also if we're being honest, by republican legislatures targeting it and trying to end sunday early voting anywhere they can. former vice president biden will be in ohio tomorrow. this weekend, he hit the trail with former president obama. they were in michigan together for their first joint event of the campaign. president obama will be back out there tomorrow. making biden campaign stops in georgia and in florida. in terms of where the campaigns think they are, where they need to direct their firepower, you should know, that senator kamala harris is in georgia today. she will be in pennsylvania tomorrow. but she was in texas all day friday. >> texas, indeed, one of several states where the number of early votes cast has already blown past the total number of votes cast in texas in all of 2016. texas also where a caravan of trump supporters surrounded the biden campaign bus outside austin yesterday.

forced it to go down a 20 mile an hour crawl on the interstate. they were apparently trying to stop the bus altogether. that incident is now the subject of an fbi investigation, all its own. texas also the center of a late breaking legal battle over voting locations. in harris county where because of the pandemic voters were allowed to drive up and drop their ballots, voting from their cars. republicans want to throw out nearly 127,000 ballots cast at those drive-through locations. the all-republican texas supreme court blocked the republicans' efforts to throw out the ballots in state court. republicans are now still at it. they kicked it up to federal court where a judge has set a hearing for tomorrow on election eve. one more reminder of the obstacle course that voters have faced this year. starting with the kneecapping of our postal service as millions of us have cast votes by mail.

and with that, let's introduce our team. with us tonight, of course, our msnbc political experts and analysts. of course, our team of correspondents who have fanned out across the battleground states of this country. but before we do anything else, let's check in with steve kornacki at the big board, and, steve, there is but one question on this sunday night, and that is where does this race stand? >> well, let's pick it up right there, brian. we have a brand-new nbc/"wall street journal" national poll two days before the election. joe biden nationally in our final poll with a 10-point advantage over donald trump, 52%-42%. that's ours. for context here, let's show you the average of all the national polls that are out there right now. you see that is a bit closer. about 7 1/2 points. on average, biden over trump in the national polling right now.

of course, as we saw in 2016, this is about the electoral college, not necessarily the popular vote. there's been talk certainly that trump could lose the popular vote by a significantly larger margin in 2020 and still find a path through the electoral college. so let's look at some of the key states here. first of all, these big three, michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin. these were trump's narrowest battleground wins in 2016. these are all democratic states going back to the 1980s that trump flipped for the first time in three decades, and these are also the three battleground states. two days before the election where joe biden has his largest leads. these are the polling averages. that's what you're looking at here for these three states. michigan, pennsylvania, and wisconsin. also, some other late polling to tell you about here from critical states coming out today. there's this from florida. abc/"washington post" poll. this a must-win state for the president. he leads in this poll, at least, by two points. also from iowa, a smaller state, but one that moved dramatically toward trump in 2016.

this showing late movement or at least suggesting late movement in iowa, a seven-point lead for trump. he has not done that well in any iowa polling we've seen this fall. that's a "des moines register" poll. let's just show you what this would mean when it comes to that battle for 270. just to give you a sense of this map two days before the election. if this polling we're seeing, just showing you, is on to something, let's say, for instance, iowa, if trump were two get iowa, that's a small gain for him in the electoral college there. demographically, though, you're talking about blue-collar rural white voters, midwest. how about ohio, that's another state that like iowa swung dramatically toward trump in 2016. if, and this is a big if, but if there is that late movement in iowa that polling is suggesting, could that be happening in ohio, too, enough to give that to the president? let's put that red right now to give you a sense of the scenarios then let's also say what if that late polling in florida is right, that

abc/"washington post" poll, and trump gets florida so, if what happens what are the implications for the electoral college map? again, the first place that you look are these three, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania. we just showed you the numbers there and the president has to win one of these states because if he doesn't, biden gets all three. biden goes over 270. so the first thing is, you look at these three states, trump's got to find a win. pennsylvania's the biggest. pennsylvania's the closest. the trump campaign talks a lot about attention. let's say trump gets it, it is essentially a must-win state for him. what else then? trump would also have to sweep the southeast. if he got florida, he still has to worry about north carolina and georgia. he has different demographic challenges in north carolina, in georgia, than he does in florida. it is not automatic that if donald trump wins florida he's going to get north carolina, he's going to get georgia. that won't automatically happen, but for trump to get to 270, he

has to make that happen. he has to get those states. he obviously has to get texas. and if he were to do that, that's a lot here, get pennsylvania, get these two winnable midwest states, sweep the south and the southeast, then you'd be talking about potentially a race coming down. would it be arizona? keep in mind, too, there is this congressional district in nebraska that democrats are very optimistic about. under this scenario, if biden were to get arizona, then even after not flipping any of these states in the south, that would still be enough for biden. or if trump were to get it in that scenario, trump might get over 270. you get a sense of the channel the president is running against here. the president is running against the odds in the midwest. has to win one of these states. has to sweep all of these states we just went through here then you get out to arizona, he's

been trailing in the polling in arizona, he'd have to have late momentum there as well. that is what it would take to get him over 270. >> steve kornacki, when you look at the polling, not just in terms of absolute values, but in terms of the quality of the various polls that are being done, i'm starting to think about this because that iowa poll in 2016 which also said at this time in 2016 that trump was up 7, it surprised people, he ended up winning iowa by 9. people saw that as a great indicator that wasn't being picked up on by other pollsters in the terms of the midwest. when you look at the polling that's out there, look at the map and how the campaigns are doing, is there a state that you're keeping an eye on that might be a source of surprise, that might be something where the polling necessarily shouldn't be expected to be predictive, or where you think there might be late shifts that wouldn't be picked up in the polling we've seen so far? >> yeah, there is one state, we just ran through this scenario where we say, hey, if a bunch of things all broke trump's way, he could make this sort of comedown to arizona and we mentioned that trump trails in the arizona polling so let's say he didn't get arizona. i will tell you there is one

state that went blue in 2016 that the trump folks have talked about for 2020 that i think got to keep an eye on on election night. that is the state of nevada. and i say that because this is a state where there's a trend here now going back a few elections in the republican direction. it's a state trump narrowly missed in in 2016. about 2 1/2 points. a state with a lot of -- you talk about trump's base, blue-collar, rural white voters, demographically, there's a lot of that in nevada. and i think, again, if you talk about, iowa and nevada are very different states, but if there's rural blue-collar white votes surging to trump at the end, that's a huge if, a huge if, if there is, keep an eye on nevada and electoral college implications of that potentially in a scenario like this could replace arizona for trump. i would keep an eye on nevada. >> fascinating. thank you. >> steve, thanks, i'm not sure we've done anything to allay anxiety which may be a pharmacological matter at this point.

not anything our coverage can offer. the president, as we said, about to hold his fourth rally of the day. this one in rome, georgia. just minutes from now. that is where we find nbc news correspondent priscilla thompson. also with us, ali velshi covering the biden campaign in philly tonight. ali, you start things off. >> reporter: all right. we are in city center, philadelphia, which is where i'm going to be all the way through the election. you can see a lot of police behind me. lot of national guard around me. that's for a couple reasons. this is one of those cities that has been preparing for unrest. not necessarily anticipating it but preparing for unrest. it was a city that saw a lot of unrest in the protests after george floyd. but as you know, we had a killing of a man in west philadelphia on monday. that has resulted in some unrest in the city as well. but as steve was saying, this thing's going to come down to pennsylvania. we are all going to be talking a lot on tuesday night and quite

possibly wednesday night, thursday night and friday night because there's some ballots in pennsylvania that are not going to be counted until friday. we got a story of two populations in this state. you got people in philadelphia, pittsburgh, the urban centers, they are going to vote overwhelmingly for joe biden. they always vote democratic. the issue is how many of those people will come out. will the strong biden supporters, will they eclipse the hillary clinton numbers in 2016? will this look more like the turnout for barack obama before that? will they eclipse the trump supporters, the blue-collar non-college-educated voters that steve was just talking about? so pennsylvania's full of that, right? we've got the cities, we've got the collar counties around philadelphia, the suburbs, where trump's been talking to white suburban women. these are going to go largely, they're going to break for joe biden. that's the expectation, they're going to be democratic. but donald trump has for the last couple of weeks been going

on about this fracking idea. he's misrepresented joe biden's position here. but in western pennsylvania, i was in luzern county yesterday, points west of that toward the western end of the state fracking is a really, really big deal. we've seen late breaking polling donald trump may be narrowing the gap there. both donald trump and joe biden have been in pennsylvania a lot. they're going to be. joe biden was just here today. listen to what he said. >> we have a president who's given up. i'll never give up, nor will america, will never wave the flag of surrender. we're going to beat this virus. we're going to get it under control. truth is, to beat the virus, we first got to beat donald trump. he's the virus. >> reporter: all right. this is a state where there's a lot of court cases about mail-in ballots. there is a ruling that says ballots that arrive, that are postmarked by election day and arrive by friday, can be counted on friday.

so if it is close here, remember, donald trump won here in 2016 by 44,000 votes. .7 of a percent. if it's close here, we might not have a final decision until friday. brian? >> ali velshi, center city, philadelphia. great place to be. even during an election year. ali, thank you very much. to priscilla thompson, rome, georgia, covering the president's long day's journey and tonight. priscilla? >> reporter: brian, you can tell a lot about a campaign based on where the candidate is spending their time. and the fact that donald trump is about to touch down in georgia this close to an election is certainly sending a message. donald trump has campaigned in this state three times since late september, and to put this into context, in 2016 after he became the republican nominee, donald trump did not campaign in this state a single time, and he still won it by five points. and so that is what we're looking at on the ground here in georgia.

a string of recent polls out of this state show a very tight race with joe biden either tied with the president or beating him. although, within the margin of error. this is a state that has not voted for a democrat for president since the early '90s. and i talked to some of the trump supporters who are here today who waited in line for hours in the cold to hear the president speak tonight. and i asked them what do you make of those poll numbers? and folks here tell me that there is a silent majority of trump supporters on the ground that are not being counted and reflected in those polls. and i should point out we're in northwest georgia. this is a conservative bastion. the picture looks far differently if you talk to voters in those suburbs outside of atlanta. brian? >> priscilla, thank you for that. always fascinated at campaign playlists this time of year, for those of you who recognize the unmistakable voice of michael stipe in the background, that is, indeed, the r.e.m. classic, "everybody hurts." interesting choice during an

uncontrolled pandemic. with that, rachel, over to you. >> also, i was just googling the lyrics while we were hearing >> they're dark. >> yes, it's dark. also, like, countdown three, two, one, to r.e.m. suing him from stopping him playing it. >> yep. >> anyway, i have no inside information on the subject. the two campaigns are each competing to win in all the same swing states, of course, but boy, howdy, are they approaching it differently. republican efforts this year to limit the counting of likely democratic ballots, to limit the counting of ballots broadly in the expectation that the smaller the vote is, the better republicans do, republicans' time-worn efforts to make it difficult to vote for all those same reasons. those perennial republican political, and legal strategies seem to have a new counterpart this year in the era of trump. which is, i struggle with exactly how to describe this, but i think the best phrase i can come up with is these

physical shows of force by trump supporters. which we have seen episodically over the late stages of the campaign but had a rush of them in this final weekend. our colleague, chris hayes, joins us to talk about what that's looked like around the country in the final hours of this campaign. chris. >> rachel, great to see you. at this point, it's fair to say the trump campaign has run out of people to persuade. 100 million votes banked. election day on tuesday. so there's not a lot of persuasion happening, right? so typically at this point in the campaign, both sides needs turnout. the trump campaign has another set of tactics they've employed along with the gop and rnc, which is intimidation, suppression and litigation. you have a president, for instance, celebrating this really harrowing, dangerous display brian mentioned earlier. it's a bunch of his supporters on a highway in texas who got in their cars, slowed down a biden campaign bus that was traveling through texas on the highway, sometimes to just 20 miles an hour. if you've been behind the car of someone doing that, you know that's really, really unnerving. the video of the incident we're

playing now shows one of the trump supporters colliding with another vehicle, attempting to sort of bump into it, it would appear, and that vehicle reportedly being driven by a biden campaign staffer. 911 was called by people inside the bus and tonight, the fbi has confirmed to nbc news it is investigating that incident. then last night the president tweets out a video of that incident adding "i love texas." immediately after the bus was surrounded, the biden campaign canceled several events in texas because of safety concerns. think about that for a second. that was not the last of those. today, another democratic event in georgia was canceled around rome, where the president is tonight. the floyd county democratic party writing on their site, "we have been informed that a large militia presence is expected in rome today due to trump's vision. additionally, we are not able to secure police presence for our event because of the airport rally." so we've already had a sort of remarkably smooth, i would say, early voting period in which you have a record 93 million

americans who cast their votes. we should note this, it's important people hear this as they're thinking about election day and their decisions, it's gone on largely without incident. there's been lines and been some headaches, for sure, and that should be the baseline expectation for everyone for the vast majority of election day. there is, however, this effort by the trump campaign to recruit poll watchers, but the incident on the texas highway, trump supporters trying to yell and scare people near polls, that is a real threat to the administration of free and fair elections and hopefully that will not be and has not been what the vast majority of americans have experienced as they vote. there is, of course, as you mentioned also one other effort by the trump campaign to influence the election. that, of course, a mask litigation effort which reaches new heights of absurdity every day. the most egregious, really jaw-dropping piece of legislation. anti-democratic lawsuit in texas where republicans as brian mentioned want to just throw out, just discord, light on

fire, the legally cast ballots of over 126,000 people in harris county. those votes were cast in drive-through voting facilities set up because the pandemic is raging through the country. the county said the drive-throughs were approved by the texas secretary of state's office and officials because we're in the middle of a pandemic. none of the voters did a single thing wrong. and we should note, they're republicans, too. 127,000 voters in harris county. republicans, independents, who knows. republicans, though, think the ballots skew democratic so they want them along with any legitimate republican votes in there just voided. luckily today the texas state supreme court swiftly rejected that effort. there's still a case before federal court which should not have much of a chance but we will see. but this is now the closing strategy of trump and the republican party and trump's been very forthright about the courts and litigation as a kind of desperate hail mary as the clock runs down. >> intimidation, suppression, and litigation, i feel like you and i for years have covered the litigation part of it, and a little bit of the suppression

part of it because we've been able to document, report on that over the course of our careers in broadcasting. the intimidation stuff kicking up in this way that seems to be sort of rolling down a hill feels like we're covering some other country. my friend, chris, thank you so much. i want to turn now to my colleagues, joy reid and nicolle wallace here with me in the studio. when we look at the lay of the land, numbers wise from steve kornacki, when we hear chris talk about how president trump is going about trying to win this election, you see how these two candidates are doing, nicolle, you were saying the president just tweeted about the fbi investigation. >> yes, while chris hayes was talking, at 8:18 p.m. eastern, trump tweeted that the people under investigation now by his own fbi are patriots who did nothing wrong. so, again, i think one of the -- >> so he's telling the fbi what to conclude -- >> correct. >> -- in that investigation. >> prejudging an investigation that's now been undertaken by the executive branch he leads. i think that what's so interesting, though, i mean, look, here's the -- here's the thing about being on

presidential campaigns by the sunday night. no one knows jack squat. and the reason it's so easy to get all your sources to call you back is because no one knows who knows something. so everybody calls you back. then someone calls you back when you're still on the phone with the other person that calls you back. they don't know anything. they want to know what the next person calling you -- pick him up and call me back after. no one knows anything. both campaigns have internal tracks. i have a sense from talking to -- >> say what internal tracks are. >> internal tracks are the overnight polls, they're like ratings for presidential campaigns. they're sort of -- they're really targeted and each campaign kind of knows where their vote is better than any news organization. >> and they're private. these are not publicly available. >> they're private. the trump folks, you know, who knows who does them. right? but four years ago, i had heard what their tracks were. they had the campaign doing very well in michigan, pennsylvania, and wisconsin. some of the places where they --

so their tracks have this outsized importance -- the important -- then the biden team, oddly, feels more optimistic about north carolina and georgia than they do florida. so i have a sense that both campaigns' overnight tracks see florida really tight. >> yeah. >> i'll say this, though, even the rosiest data coming to the trump campaign doesn't get trump to 270. so i think the reason you're seeing all these tactics, the reason you're seeing this reporting in axios that the president i think has now knocked down about court cases, is that even the rosiest sort of polling that the trump campaign does where they think they can find the rose better than anyone doesn't get him over. >> pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan, confidence that they had based on their tracking in 2016, do we know -- are your sources telling you anything about that for 2020? >> i don't think the -- look, i didn't see their overnight tracks. i do not think the trump campaign sees themselves ahead of joe biden right now in those three states.

>> and if they were confident, i think that tracks with, first of all, republicans that i talked to in florida feel better than democrats that i talked to in florida. i will say that. that even republicans who are not big fans of trump look at the fact that the turnout among pro-trump-leaning hispanics is higher than the turnout among biden-leaning hispanics. and that you're also seeing weak turnout, particularly, you know, in very heavily black precincts in south florida, places like miami-dade are underperforming right now. and so democrats that i talked to down there are saying, they're really now leaning into election day because there are -- >> they need to. -- polls out. i think jonathan martin has one out that talks about 30% of black voters in that state, but also really up to 40% overall of black voters not trusting the system, worried about the mail, and planning to vote on election day. >> and worried about early in-person voting, too. >> correct. >> they want to vote on the day. >> they want to vote on the day.

by the way, for african-american voters, voting on election day is actually a thing, like, a lot of voters, like my mom, there's a whole sort of magic to the get dressed up -- >> ritual. >> -- go take your kids. there was a ritual to vote on election day. african-american and latino voters tend to be late voters. they tend to vote on election day or souls to the polls sunday. it will be interesting to see what happened today because in florida this was souls to the polls sunday. i have a friend that was working souls to the polls. the warlordism you're seeing out of trump people tells me they don't feel good because if you're blocking new jersey highways -- >> yeah. >> -- and you're in texas trying to block people from getting down the street, that's not a winning move. that's a straight intimidation move. it's a bullying move. >> it's a desperate move. >> and it's desperate. and it's also -- this is also what i'm hearing from a lot -- it's pissing people off. particularly voters of color. it's motivating people to want to vote more. i definitely heard that out of a former elected official friend

in georgia that black voters in georgia see all of this and it's all john lewis style good trouble motivation. >> all right. we've got much more ahead here tonight. this is going to be a busy few hours here tonight. coming up right on the other side of the break, we've got a live report from north carolina where there's been some real drama over the last couple of days. stay with us. ♪

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in california, we're the only state where wealthy trust fund heirs get their own tax loophole. these tax cheats avoid millions in taxes on vacation homes and coastal mansions depriving our schools. prop 19 closes this unfair loophole that's been exploited by an elite few and helps our schools, firefighters, and seniors. vote 'yes' on prop 19. tell them [record scratch] the party's over. it's very important that everyone be able to vote and without any hindrance, without any intimidation, without any obstacles. and we want to preserve everyone's right to be able to be heard through their vote this election. >> kamala harris in north carolina late today where early voting ended late today.

donald trump was also in north carolina today. he held his third rally of the day in hickory. over 4 million north carolinians have voted early. either by mail or in person. in graham, north carolina, yesterday, in alamance county a peaceful march and rally to get out the vote led to a standoff and confrontation with local police. officials say organizers did not have a permit to block roadways. failed to heed a five-minute dispersal order. police then unleashed pepper spray while telling the crowd to leave the area. and they did so on adults and children. nbc news reporting at least eight people were arrested. trymaine lee is with us right now with more tonight from raleigh, north carolina. trymaine, since joy was the first to invoke john lewis, i'm tempted to say the more things change, the more they remain the same.

and like pepper spray, imagery is really powerful stuff. especially right now. >> reporter: that's right, when you see those scenes, it's that kind of old-school voter intimidation and harassment. but this is a state with a long history of voter suppression and voter intimidation. let's not forget in recent years the supreme court said that the state had acted with surgical precision aimed at disenfranchising black voters. so while in this state they're enjoying record levels of early voting, 95% of votes cast of all 2016. black folks who mail in their ballots are four times more likely to have those ballots rejected than whites. right? for more context in terms of not just suppression but voter turnout also, in 2016 donald trump won this state by 173,000 votes. right? but 170,000 black voters who voted in 2012 did not show up for 2016. and so what we see, the incident in graham, right, that kind of physical old-school voter intimidation.

then you have the shaving off of a few ballots here and some intimidation there and we see all across the state this effort to get black folks off of the sidelines and back in the game. they're met with hurdle after hurdle. none of this is new. you talk about, joy mentioned that good trouble, black voters i've talked to all across the country who said in 2016 they felt they didn't have a dog in the fight, didn't like hillary clinton, you know, they didn't want to choose between two evils as they said. they said after four years of winking and nodding and white supremacists, all the violence, donald trump being donald trump, it's time for a change. these techniques, these tactics we've seen time and again, that old playbook, seems to be invigorating so many voters here on the ground. >> as you said, sadly, none of this is new. our friend trymaine lee down in raleigh tonight, thanks. >> as democrats learned in 2008 and 2012 when they won and 2016 when they did not win, one of the most important factors in the outcome of a presidential election in this country is voter turnout among

african-americans, specifically. let's go back to steve kornacki now, steve, what do we know now about where african-american voter turnout stands so far this year? it's a year like no other in terms of all the early vote, all the vote-by-mail. what can we tell from the numbers that we do have? >> yeah, it is tough to tell right now because i think a lot of this is to be determined. you mentioned souls to the polls today and election day. we can certainly show you, you're talking about north carolina with trymaine. here's a stat. barack obama, of course, carried the state in 2008. narrowly missed in 2012. then hillary clinton lost in 2016. the black voter turnout rate in 2012 when barack obama nearly won north carolina was 75%. when hillary clinton lost by 3 1/2 points, it fell to 66%. so that's one thing in north carolina for joe biden to have a chance here, they want to get back up. democrats do, to that 75% level. then where else can the black vote potentially make a huge difference for democrats on election day? three states in particular. georgia, we're talking about the polls being very close in georgia. the atlanta metro area.

there is a fast growing, increasingly diverse population in that area where democrats have been getting bigger and bigger margins. it was almost enough for stacey abrams two years ago. joe biden hopes it's enough for him. the other two states here, wisconsin and michigan. again, the margins here statewide, it was 11,000 votes in the entire state of michigan in 2016. that was donald trump's winning margin. democrats think they can do a lot better in detroit, in particular. especially with black voters. and in wisconsin the black voter turnout rate fell between '12 and '16, 2012 and 2016, by double digits. and, again, the winning margin for trump in wisconsin was just 23,000 votes. if you can get democrats back to that turnout level that they got in 2012, 2008, that, alone, could flip wisconsin. >> steve, joy was saying anecdotally what she's hearing from people in florida is that they're worried an the democratic side about black voter turnout in florida,

specifically in south florida. i've been hearing that anecdotally as well. is that -- is there support for that in the numbers we do have? >> there is, although, again, i caution with all the early voting data, there is the question here of how much is -- florida especially, you talk about souls to the polls, potentially changing the numbers you are going to see in the early voting. again, the question of same day, folks who turn out on election day who are not accounted for in the data yet versus what we're seeing in the early vote. >> steve kornacki. thank you very much. let's bring into the conversation now the reverend al sharpton, host of "politicsnation" on msnbc, founder of the national action network. rev, good to see you, thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> we're talking about the all-important african-american vote and talking about as steve was doing circling individual states on the map, looking at individual parts of the states where the black voter turnout is going to be determinative of that state and likely of the election. part of me is inspired and excited and moved by that and part of me feels like that's a bull's-eye in terms of this sort

of intimidation that we're seeing, the suppression efforts that we're seeing, the litigation we're already seeing threatened by the president today. if -- i feel like black voters have had such -- have had to go through it. have had to go through the wars for voting and for them to be critical up against an opponent, most of them are going to vote for trump's opponent, for them to be up against it with a campaign who's planning on contesting it this way, it just feels -- feels like a lot of dry tinder to me. >> i think that the real challenge is that we vote late and we don't trust mailing. we don't really do a lot of early voting, particularly in some of the states that we're talking about. and i think that if we underestimate the passion that a lot of blacks feel, in terms of what has happened this year with george floyd and breonna taylor and others, now we're reminded with wallace being killed just

last week, a mentally challenged shooting to death in pennsylvania which is critical, i think that there are all the elements there for a big turnout. i think joe biden and kamala harris were smart. they released today the photo of them meeting with george floyd's family and attorney crump and i before the funeral, showing he's been involved in these issues, contrasting donald trump who's running law and order. so i believe if they are not the real efforts of suppression that we can see a large vote come out and they have to prepare the voters, though, that they're going to try to put impediments in your way and you must be more determined, you must not leave the polls. that's their challenge. and not have the distractions. i mean, rachel, when you see them go get rappers who never stood up for any issue at all, it's all right to be a rapper. many rappers have been socially involved. the rappers that donald trump rolled out hasn't stood up for

trayvon or george floyd. they all of a sudden discover politics with donald trump. so that's not going to work. we may be many things, stupid is not one of them. but i think that you got to prepare people if they're going to try impediments like we saw in north carolina. >> rev, i want to dig into that a little bit more. i mean, you know, even in my neighborhood, i live in the suburbs of d.c. it's a very bideny neighborhood, heavily black, heavily southeast asian, and white, it's very mixed, but it's heavily black. there were trump caravans two blocks from my house. there's no reason to bring a trump caravan to that area. there's no trump voters hardly there. it felt like intimidation. we're seeing what happened in north carolina where police pepper sprayed little kids that were kneeling in front of the courthouse. the aggression by police against voters who were mixing in a vote to the polls but also another case of police brutality and obviously what happened in philly with walter wallace. i wonder if you think that the dynamic of intimidation, if the dynamic of intimidation, as

you're hearing, is motivating? i'm hearing fears that these marches and what people are seeing might actually hurt biden with white voters who see that on tv and go, oh, you know, that's going to send me toward trump, and i'm also hearing, you know, anxiety about that. i'm also hearing oath people who are angry when they see it and much more determined to vote. what are you hearing? >> i talked to people who work with national action network in north carolina and, of course, philly today because of wallace, and i'm hearing that a lot of people are angry that maybe we're not angry and passionate. and it's driving them to come out. i've always said to politicians that blacks vote in big numbers when they're proud, i.e., barack obama, or they're angry, and both of them drive big turnouts. well, we have some pride in kamala harris, but we have a lot of anger, and i think what has happened with north carolina happening, it triggers back in our mind 8 minutes, 41 seconds,

george floyd. yeah, we need to go vote about it. and i'll only say to people that the looting and the violence is what helps trump. everybody that throws a brick is pulling a lever for trump because he can then play on law and order. when you're tear gassing or pepper spraying nonviolent protesters, you're not helping trump at all. i think you're energizing a lot of blacks to come out and vote and vote against him. >> reverend al sharpton, host of "politicsnation" on msnbc. founder of the national action network. rev, it's great to have you here with us, my friend. >> thank you. >> thank you. we'll say seeing tish james do an interview this weekend on msnbc, the new york state attorney general, my parents, avid msnbc viewers that came over to see me and susan do some halloween stuff on saturday, they said, this latisha james, do you know what she said? i said, she says a lot of great stuff. said, nope. she said, if you are in line and somebody's trying to intimidate you or get you out of that line

or wear you down, you stay there with dignity and defiance. >> yeah. >> my mother must have said "dignity and defiance" 17 times over the course of the night. my mother is a canadian emigre who lives in california. she's not the person who's the bull's-eye for this stuff. but everybody in the country is worried about it. >> you know what i'm most haunted by, everything we sat here together and covered, the two conventions, the bizarre-o debates, barack obama's event in philadelphia that was not supposed to have any press coverage, we were the pool. it was available to everyone. it was a teeny tiny event. >> yeah. >> african-american men. he spoke as a community organizer. we dipped into it. i was so haunted by it. he's begging them to vote, not give up on the country. it was reminiscent of doc rivers after the brutality and violence this summer. to have a window into the hellscape is still believing enough in our politics to participate at all and then to go out and try to participate

and be harassed and be intimidated and be brutalized in your neighborhood is a scar and a scab on this country right now in real time. >> you have to remember there's a lot of stories about the rappers coming out for trump and the fear you're going to have, you know, sort of a wave of black male voters going toward donald trump. we just need to keep -- be realistic here. the vast majority of black men who vote and come out to vote are going to vote for joe biden. there is a small percentage of african-american men, of latino men, there are latino men in the proud boys. there are men for whom the patriarchy has an attraction. i think it was bree newsome said not every man of color wants to get rid of the patriarchy, some just want a piece of it. there are men of color who voted against hillary clinton, did not like the idea of having a woman president. did not like, you know, still had the same memes about her

that white men had. and there are black working-class men who identify even with some of the anti-immigrant positions there. so there are going to be -- just let's be realistic here. donald trump has no shot at getting a significant share of black male voters. i'm going to defend black men on this. the vast majority. there are going to be a few in the neighborhood. i can tell you, i don't know a single black man who's going to vote for trump and if they did who would tell us about it. they will not be at the cookout. they can't be in the car and get a plate at the cookout in the car if they vote for him. they know that. even if they vote for him, they're not going to tell their mamas. promise. >> all right. there is one state whose name we repeat like a creepy incantation come election day. we have a live report from florida. florida. florida. in just a moment. stay with us. gillette proglide and proglide gel. five blades and a pivoting flexball designed to get virtually every hair on the first stroke,

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the unfair money bail system. he, accused of rape. while he, accused of stealing $5. the stanford rapist could afford bail; got out the same day. the senior citizen could not; forced to wait in jail nearly a year. voting yes on prop 25 ends this failed system, replacing it with one based on public safety. because the size of your wallet shouldn't determine whether or not you're in jail. vote yes on prop 25 to end money bail. in california, we're the only state where wealthy trust fund heirs get their own tax loophole.

these tax cheats avoid millions in taxes on vacation homes and coastal mansions depriving our schools. prop 19 closes this unfair loophole that's been exploited by an elite few and helps our schools, firefighters, and seniors. vote 'yes' on prop 19. tell them [record scratch] the party's over. welcome back. rachel was talking about florida before the break. both trump and biden have been focused on florida during this final stretch of the campaign, "new york times"/siena college poll out today shows biden leading thump by three points in florida. that's within the margin of error. other polls are not being so generous to biden and have it the other way, in fact. tomorrow, president obama returns to south florida to campaign for joe biden.

with us for more tonight, our veteran nbc news correspondent kerry sanders who's been talking to voters down in florida. hey, kerry. >> reporter: hey, brian. well, the early voting in florida is now over. the only way anybody can vote before election day is if they do mail-in ballots and probably dropping them off because at this point using the mail is not a good thing. florida, of course, is a prize. 29 electoral votes. and the voting group that gets the most attention are the senior vote here in the state. take a look at this. i think you'd expect to see this in florida. there they are, trump supporters. there was a lot of support among the senior vote in 2016 that pushed president trump into office. now take a look at this. this was the surprise. seeing folks out there, seniors, also parading but for biden. that had not happened in this area. this is in the villages, sort of ground zero for donald trump. we had a chance to talk to some

of the voters there, in fact some of the voters who supported donald trump in 2016. who's registered as a republican? >> i'm a lifetime republican. >> i'm a registered independent and i've been an independent for ten years. >> show of hands. who voted for trump in the last election? who is voting for trump in this upcoming election? nobody. why? >> to put it sim pply, i want o democracy back. >> i can't vote for a man i can't trust. >> i'm not voting for mr. trump because i feel that he is a liar. he perpetuates hate. his whole platform is divide and conquer, and i gave him a chance, and i feel that we need somebody else. >> reporter: the florida voters have turned out in record numbers to vote. 62% of registered voters in florida have already voted, and

that was before today's numbers, which they're still calculating. but in that critical group of 65 years or older, 71% of that group have already voted. and of course when we're looking at the breakdown of those older voters in florida, as you zero in here and take a look at that npa, no party affiliation, 18%. so while we did hear those republicans, independents, say that they're switching their allegiances, that no party affiliation is likely, brian, to be the real vote that determines who takes florida. >> one of the many reasons tuesday night is going to be so interesting. kerry sanders down in tampa. kerry, thanks. >> joining us now is marc caputo, reporter with politico, and alicia menendez, host of "american voices" on msnbc. marc, let me start with you. i think florida is the original injury. the fact that conversation has shifted to pennsylvania, it strikes me that may be

misguided. florida seems like it's a very tight race now. what is sort of the ground truth in florida. >> the ground truth is despite the polls showing biden up by three or trump up by two, it looks like it's going to be a very tight race. one advantage florida does have over pennsylvania is we've had a number of cliff-hanger elections going back 20 years to that bush v. gore race in 2000. and since then we've developed a system here where we're able to cast votes early by absentee boug ballot, and those votes can be contin tabulated on election day. so by election day, we're going to have a real good idea of 75% of the ballots have been tasked. by 8:00 p.m. eastern, we're going to know maybe three quarters, 70% of the florida vote at that time. we could have an early call, but there's one exception. we have a history of raizor thi

election margins. this could end up if recount territory. because the state resembles so many part of the nation, it may give a include to how other states might break. >> talk to me about miami-dade. i'm hearing a lot of alarm from friends in south florida about votes not getting in, about shenanigans in terms of the mail, and that miami-dade and broward are deeply underperforming. so that's my question to you real quick. >> i don't think broward is really underperforming for democrats but miami-dade certainly is. when you look at the turnaround average for democrats in the state, this morning it was 63%. but in miami-dade it was lower than that. also even though there are more democrats than republicans, republicans are staying close to democrats in total early ballots cast because republicans had such a high turnout rate relatively speaking and democrats had such a low rate. when you're talking about those ballot shenanigans, house state democratic leader keoni mcgee

had filmed a bunch or ballots or someone had sent him a video of ballots sitting around in a mail facility. the postal service is allegedly investiga investigating. the supervisor of elections wants to make sure all the ballots get delivered. >> really quickly, alicia, explain to us because florida is different from states out west where it's a very mexican-american, central american based vote. in cuba, it's venezuelan based, cuban based. please explain why that tends to be so helpful to republicans. >> right, and don't forget the puerto ricans. this is just not going to be the same type of race as 2016. hillary clinton enjoyed tremendous support from the hispanic community here. it's likely for democrats going to be much closer to 2012 when you had barack obama getting about 60% of the latino vote here in this state. he still carried the state. so that's what democrats are looking at. why? what happened?

well, 2016 there were cuban -- cuban-american republican voters who were skeptical of donald trump. a lot of those voters, joy, have come home. in addition, the president has been camped out here for the last four years. he has made inroads with venezuelans, overtures to colombians, to nicaraguans. all of that coming together on the margins to create a much more dynamic race. you add to that disinformation that we've seen in spanish language, and it is a complicated picture. >> as they say, we'll be talking between now and then. marc caputo, political reporter with politico, and our own alicia menendez, thanks to you both. as we like to say on television, we're just getting started. the second hour of our live coverage starts at the top of the hour after this break. (mom vo) we fit a lot of life into our subaru forester. (dad) it's good to be back. (mom) it sure is. (mom vo) over the years, we trusted it to carry and protect the things that were most important to us. (mom) good boy. (mom vo) we always knew we had a lot of life ahead of us.

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welcome back. it is less than 36 hours until election day polls open on tuesday. this really is the final push in the 2020 election. breathe, everybody. push, breathe. i'm rachel maddow joined here in our new york studio by joy reid, nicolle wallace and our friend brian williams is around the corner here because our studio is big now. president trump is holding a rally in georgia at this hour. i believe it's his fourth of five rallies in as many states today. he is due to hold still another rally within the next couple of hours in florida. president trump tomorrow will be in north carolina and pennsylvania and wisconsin and michigan. joe biden was in pennsylvania today, and interestingly, he was expected to spend all day in

pennsylvania tomorrow too. both biden and harris expected to do multiple stops in pennsylvania tomorrow. but the biden campaign then added one last-minute trip to a different state, to ohio. he will be in cleveland, ohio, tomorrow as well on top of all those trips to pennsylvania. >> interesting little change to the schedule, and that kind of last-minute change, like biden adding an unplanned stop in ohio tomorrow, that reveals how the campaigns are meeting up at the end of the day, how they see the shape of the race in the final hours, and that's all we have left after all. but what is clear, it is that in this election, like every other, it's going to come down to a handful of very close battleground states. nbc news/"wall street journal" poll out today finds biden with a ten-point lead nationally. as we always counsel people, however, these are state elections. one of the people who conducted that survey, republican pollster

bill mcinturff says, quote, this election is probably the most competitive ten-point race i've seen. so where else to go but steve kornacki at the big board to explain exactly what that competition looks like writ large. steve? >> yeah, brian. it's an interesting way of putting it because let's take a look here at our road to 270. again, the battleground states that you see sort of highlighted, they're all states that donald trump won in 2016. they're all states that trump is in trouble in to some degree right now, and they're all states -- we've taken you through some of the polling on this. the polling is close whether you're talking about texas, arizona, florida, georgia, north carolina, ohio. biden perhaps ahead a little bit more here, significantly more in the midwest. biden is either ahead or close in every single one of the states you see here, so it raises a possibility what if biden just wins them all? what if he wins texas by half a point, arizona by two, iowa by a

point? what if it all breaks joe biden's way? this is what that would look like. and if you've got national polling at ten point, nine points, eight points, somewhere in that range, it is possible. it doesn't have to be a landslide in every state. it's possible the states all just break to biden, and that's what that looks like. that is the outer edge of the range here of electoral college possibilities. you can work your way in from there. let's say it doesn't all break for biden. let's say trump is able to hang on to states like iowa, like ohio. this would be sort of a 2008 situation. remember barack obama's eight-point national victory over john mccain. this might be a version of that where biden's able to get a florida, a north carolina, an arizona, take those three midwest states. again, there wouldn't be much of a difference in the national popular vote between that first landslide i showed you and a biden electoral college victory that looks like this, nor, by the way, would there be necessarily a huge national

popular vote difference between this and, say, something like this. this would be a very narrow joe biden victory. this would be biden getting wisconsin and michigan. this would be the big surprise of election night. this would be trump getting pennsylvania, where he trails by about four or five points right now. otherwise, it would be trump shoring up those southeast states and then biden getting arizona. arizona, democrats very optimistic given what happened in 2018. and, again, democrats getting that congressional district in omaha. why do we put so much emphasis on that? trump only won it by three. it's got a lot of college-educated voters, white-collar professionals. it's the demographic that has really been moving strongly to democrat in the trump era. the polling has been favorable to democrats. this is a scenario in the electoral college biden is just squeaking it out. in the national popular vote he could be significantly ahead in

a scenario like this. that's i think what mcinturff is getting at when he says that. nationally, biden ahead significantly, that could end up to a biden landslide frankly. but it wouldn't take much movement in a lot of these states, two, three-point movement in a lot of these states to move those electoral college numbers around pretty substantially. >> steve kornacki, thank you very much. we want to now bring in nbc news correspondent dasha burns who is in grand rapids, michigan, with the latest on the legal battle over whether there should be the open carrying of firearms at the polls in that state because that's where we're at as a country. dasha, what have you got? >> reporter: rachel, in these final hours, guns in the polls very much in the spotlight in this open carry state. we are waiting on a last-minute decision from michigan's supreme court. the secretary of state issued a ban on open carry at the polls, but that was recently struck down by two lower courts. of course this is a major

concern to many voters as they prepare to head to the polls on tuesday. a recent poll found that 73% of michiganders do not want to see guns in voting areas and fueling some of those fears are some of these headlines out of michigan from the alleged plot on governor whitmer by militia members to the scenes i saw last weekend here as i covered dueling rallies where groups on the left and on the right both came heavily armed. scenes like that raising stakes, raising concerns. but, rachel, at the end of the day, the folks who are going to be on the front lines of this, they are the local clerks, the precinct chairs, the election workers. i've been talking to those folks, and they tell me they're being put in a tough decision, still waiting on an answer to this important question that will impact what election day looks like for them. take a listen to what they had to say on this issue. >> it puts us right down to the wire because i can't -- i don't know how it's going to all play out. bottom line is there could be people that come in regardless just to see what they can get

away with. >> my biggest concern really is that our voters are concerned. i worry about them being intimidated into staying home like you said with voter intimidation. >> reporter: and fanning the flames of this, rachel, the president's repeated calls for his supporters to go and watch the polls closely and his repeated attacks on the governor of this state that he very much needs to win. and of course this is of particular concern to voters of color. a local group called justice for black lives is planning to have a poll buddy program where they have volunteers escorting voters to the polls who need that extra support. one voter i spoke with, greg davis, plans to bring a group of 30 voters together to their local precinct to vote in solidarity. rachel. >> dasha, thank you for that reporting. that's fascinating. the fact that we live in a country where you need to have a poll buddy system because people very well may be terrified by their fellow voters turning up with guns to try to intimidate them from ever turning out, i

mean other countries would write reports about this, right, as some sort of something we would never want to emulate in our country. there's one midwestern bellwether county that gets a lot of attention every four years. it happens to have weird predictive powers. it's indiana's vigo county. it's a small rural county, home to a large student population on indiana's western border. vigo county has the distinction of having sided with the winning presidential candidate in all 16 presidential elections dating back to 1956. it's officially uncanny. the town's roughly 100,000 residents voted for barack obama twice in 2008 and 2012. the county then switched to trump by a 15-point margin four years ago. for what it's worth, emerson college recently did a poll of vigo county, indiana, for this

year, and what they came up with was that it was a tie, 48-48. joining us now is someone who knows a lot about indiana and its politics. he has also been out campaigning for the biden campaign today, specifically in michigan. he is the former mayor of south bend, former presidential candidate mayor pete buttigieg. mr. mayor, thank you so much for joining us. >> sure thing. thanks for having me. >> how does vigo county go this year? >> you know, i think we'll get it, but it is awful close. i've campaigned in vigo county back in 2010 when i was running for state treasurer. didn't win the county, and i didn't win the state. but the remarkable thing right now is that, you know, joe biden is ahead by so much nationally. but of course it only counts if it comes through in these states that are largely game of inches. we've got an election to get through these next 48 hours, but afterwards we've got to ask ourselves some serious questions about our democracy, about how that can be true.

i think it's time for us to look at what it means for our representative republic to be a little more representative. >> mr. mayor, when you have been out traveling around the country talking to voters on behalf of the biden/harris campaign, first of all, we very much enjoyed all of your appearances on fox news. but i know you've been doing a lot of national media, local media, but also just talking to people. if there was a thing that you could go back in time now, if you could earn the biden/harris campaign an extra week where they could sort of restitch some of the seams and go over -- redouble their efforts in some areas or pump up some work that they have only been able to half do thus far, what are those places that you'd go back and urge them to do even more? >> well, again, you know, i think this campaign is ahead for a reason. they've stuck to the issues that really matter most and are affecting people. i think what none of us could have guessed when this campaign began for joe biden or when i was running for this nomination

is that covid would come and in some ways change everything, but in many ways just accentuate what we'd already seen from racial injustice to the crisis of not enough americans having health care. i'm a big believer that you can't talk enough about the economy. it drives me nuts that even now donald trump gets quite a bit or takes quite a bit of credit for the obama/biden recovery, and i think that, you know, to his credit, joe biden and kamala harris, they've been talking a lot about this. but i would always want us to be talking about it even more because we can't let them get away with claiming to some kind of economic miracle. look, they inherited economic growth, slowed it down a little bit. it was actually a manufacturing recession, and i'm talking about pre-covid. post-covid, on track to be the worst jobs president since herbert hoover, and we should be driving that home along with the vitally important message that i think joe biden is very effectively delivering that

really is what i think helps bring a lot of people over the line, which is, look, whether you're progressive or moderate, independent, or even a republican who likes to think for yourself, we just need to come together and can't go on with this chaos. a nation divided the way donald trump has divided us will not be able to resolve any of our issues, health care, climate, racial justice, you name it. >> i too, mayor pete, am a fan of your fox appearances, and they're not -- they're purposeful, and the purpose is to drive this message you're delivering right here. and our colleague, alicia menendez, talked about disinformation that has seemed into the minds of a lot of florida voters, especially in the hispanic community. i wonder if you have sort of -- if you come back like an explorer and explain to the biden campaign, here's what has sunk in. i mean there are viewers over there that actually believe joe biden is either a socialist or under the influence of socialists and will become one if elected. how do you in these closing hours, when all you've got is maybe one hit on a cable

challenchant channel, how do you dispel that in your very expert skilled way? what do you say? >> i think the most important thing is to remind people that we've had decades to get to know joe biden, and when you're looking in the eyes of joe biden, you are not looking in the eyes of some kind of crazy radical. this is somebody who has made clear what he believes and with whom the american people agree on issue after issue from the fact that the wealthy and corporations need to pay their fair share to the idea of expanding, not taking away health care. now, let's remember that, you know, even the word "socialism," which i think has very little power over people my age or younger, but if you grew up at the knee of a parent who fled something that is not at all what we would recognize as, let's say, european socialism but something that called itself socialism and was horribly repressive in latin america,

then that word still has an awful lot of power. we've just got to make it clear that this is the recycling of i scare tactic that the right has used against all democratic candidates, moderate, progressive, and otherwise for decades. and of course all those horrible things they say about us never come true. >> yeah. hey, mayor pete, you know, a lot of people forget that, you know, the obama/biden ticket actually won indiana in 2008. they won a lot of states that people didn't expect a black candidate to be able to win, but biden was on that ticket too. can you talk a little bit about if biden is able to prevail, what will we look back and say that he did right in terms specifically of white voters because it does feel like we're seeing biden be able to reproduce what obama did, which was to win the highest share of white voters, i think, since jimmy carter. and that's a combination of, you know, white working class voters but especially college educated

white voters. what is the difference? if he wins, what will he have done right, particularly in your region in the midwest? >> i think a lot of it is tonal. a lot of it is this idea that is strong among a lot of people i know in indiana who say, look, i vote for the person. and maybe it turns out they usually vote republican, but they'll vote for a person who they believe has their best interests at heart. that just sort of comes across with joe biden. he's been very clear on policy, what he's going to do about health care, taxes, the economy, covid, racial justice, you name it. but we don't get into these policy rabbit holes because he spends a lot of his energy talking about things like the soul of the nation, the idea that the presidency is not just about policymaking although that's hugely important. it's not just about management although we know we need more comment management of things like the crisis than we get out of this white house. but it's about even more than that. it's about what you can do out of that highest office in the land to call people to their highest values. and i think he understands that.

the other thing i think he understands and serves him well is that the working class is multiracial. so his ability to connect with white working class voters, talking about things like his experiences growing up in scranton does not come at the expense of his credibility with black voters, which after all is a huge part of how he won the democratic nomination. and thinking about how he has unified those messages in his campaign, i think pre-figures how his presidency will be positioned to do what obviously will be an urgent order of business, which is unifying the nation as we continue to face this reckoning over racial injustice. >> former mayor of south bend, indiana, former 2020 democratic presidential candidate pete buttigieg. it's great to have you here, mr. mayor. thank you so much for taking time. >> same here. thanks for having me. >> all right. it is not just the race at the top of the ticket with the potential to change the landscape of this country and indeed the globe. there's also really important senate races all over the

country and a whole bunch of them are locked in a statistical dead heat. the senate absolutely could flip to the democrats, or it couldn't, which will have a very big impact on what the next president is able to do no matter who it is. we've got expert help on the way in terms of control of the senate. stay with us. look limu! someone out there needs help customizing their car insurance with liberty mutual, so they only pay for what they need. false alarm. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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we have to get joni ernst elected. she's fantastic. she's so good. joni, come up. joni is fantastic and a special woman, and she loves your state, and she loves our country. >> senator joni ernst, one of 23 republicans fighting to keep their senate seats as the party tries to hold on to its majority in that chamber and while the democrats bear down on their effort to make mitch mcconnell the next minority leader. steve kornacki remains at the big board for us. more on the battle for the control of the u.s. senate. hey, steve. >> hey, brian. let's take a look here. so we're getting 53-47 right now. if biden gets elected, democrats obviously would love to have a democratic senate. they would need a net gain of three. if they get to 50-50 with a president biden, vice president kamala harris would break a tie in the senate. democrats would effectively have control. so they need a net gain of three

if biden wins. let's take a look here. the first thing to remember here is functionally this is probably a net gain of four. there's a democratic incumbent, doug jones, running for a full term in alabama. remember some extraordinary circumstances got jones this seat back in a special election in 2017. tommy tuberville, his republican opponent, has been leading in the polls there. if that holds up, if tuberville gets that seat, then effectively democrats actually need a net gain of four plus biden's win to get them senate control. so let's take a look here. they need a net gain of four probably. where are they trying to get it? here are the ripest targets for democrats right now. there are five republican incumbents right now where if you look at the polling average in their races, they trail to some degree. very close here obviously at one to nine for cory gardner in colorado. democrats needing a net gain of four. they're feeling very good about colorado. they're feeling very good about arizona.

we mentioned they like biden's chances in the state but also trump has been running significantly ahead in arizona of his ticket mate, martha mcsally. she's been lagging trump's number consistently in arizona as well. so that's why democrats feel good about that one. maine they expect to win at the presidential level. susan collins you see trailing in the polling we have there. plus maine has instant runoff voting for the senate this year for the first time, and there's some indications in the polling that if susan collins isn't over 50% on the initial vote, she may have trouble getting there in an instant runoff. so you could kind of draw a line there. democrats, i think, are feeling a lot better about these three and maybe a little more nervous about the tillis race in north carolina. there's been a personal scandal involving the democratic candidate there. there's the question of, hey, if trump is able to pull north carolina out, it's a big if, but if he is, will he carry tillis on his coattails? then take a look at this race in georgia. we see david perdue trails by a

point. georgia is a runoff state. the polling is very close here. this is jon ossoff, the democrat running against perdue. if neither gets to 50 -- and that's possible because there's a libertarian right now getting a few points in georgia, and this happens in georgia a fair amount. the libertarian will get three or four points. neither major party candidate gets 50. then they have a runoff, and the runoff is not till january. so democrats needing a net gain of four. here's three they're feeling very good about. here's two big question marks. if they don't hit either one of these, where else would they look? these are some other options. joni ernst in iowa. she actually now leads in the polling average in her state. that des moines register poll this weekend put her ahead. montana, could steve bullock beat steve daines? trump expected to carry the state but montana has a history of electing democrats to statewide office. there's a prospect for democrats there. lindsey graham's seat, certainly a lot of money behind jaime harrison. and then the other georgia seat.

this is kelly loeffler, the appointed incumbent there. doug collins, republican congressman. there's a bunch of candidates here. it's almost certain to go to a runoff, and so that is the other possibility here. let's say democrats got these three. again, they need a net gain of four. let's say they missed in north carolina. let's say they missed in these three. but these two went to runoffs. not impossible. you could have two runoff senate elections. january 5th would be the date in georgia to decide control of the senate, two months after the november election. >> do we have to move to georgia if that happens? i mean literally us as a group, and how do we arrange that with like our families and bubbles and stuff? >> five winnebagos. >> oh, my gosh, that's so fun. >> i've been waiting for my w winnebago covid opportunity. >> i'm now close to being a partisan because i sort of want

that so bad. steve kornacki, thank you very much. for more on how tuesday's election is shaping up to change the united states senate, or not, maybe it will be january's elections, let's bring into the conversation lawrence o'donnell, the host of "the last word" here on msnbc. lawrence is going to help us with senate races all night long on election night as well as former senator, current msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill. senator mccaskill, lawrence, thank you both so much for being there. will you move to georgia with us in january, and how many winnebagos should we order? >> we'll all share. i think georgia sounds fine. we just need to have a big enough -- let's say rv. >> okay. >> rv, guys. i'm from an rv state. it's not winnebago. it's rv. >> sorry. i was doing kleenex versus tissue. i'm sorry. i did not mean to offend. let me ask this to both of you. lawrence, i'll ask you to jump

in first. in 2016, there was not a single state that voted for a different party for senate and the president. so every senate race that year where the republican won happened in a state that trump won. every state that the democrat won happened in a state that clinton won. this year there are close races in places like south carolina and kansas and montana where really nobody is expecting biden to win at the presidential level, but how much hope should democrats have for keeping those races close or winnable even if they don't carry the top of the ticket? >> well, i think there are some races this time that have some more individual components to them. if you look at the way jon ossoff has gone after the corruption of the incumbent senator, that's a very particular issue, and he's gone -- he's gone at it relentlessly. and so it is conceivable to me that a candidate like that in a situation like that, the democrat senate candidate could

win. democratic presidential candidate might not. we're going to see on the east coast, maine, north carolina, south carolina, two georgia races. we're going to get an east coast picture relatively early in this process, and i don't even know what early means anymore. i don't know whether that means wednesday morning or thursday. we may get a feel for that sooner than we get a feel for what's happening, say, in arizona and in colorado, which look like pretty solid situations for the democratic candidates. and what's been happening in georgia lately, i have to say, has me more focused on it than it has in the past, especially rafael war nock's surge. he came from nowhere. he's now way out as a front-runner, and he's not just ahead of the two republican candidates because they're splitting the vote. his number is now higher than both of the republican candidates combined. there are 20 candidates in the race that he's in, and so

everyone has assumed that one has to go to a runoff. but it's now in a situation where the surge for the democratic candidate, warnock, has been so stunning that i would not be surprised to see him pull it off on election night. by the way, officially nothing can surprise me on election night because i'm prepared for everything to go in every direction. >> senator, are you looking at any of these individual senate races to depart from the prevailing winds in these states? >> okay. here's the deal. i have been reading so much data, so many cross tabs that i really could almost throw up at this point. i am consuming massive amounts of data, and here is what i believe is going to happen. i believe north carolina is going to be a very strong state for us tuesday night. if you look at the surge, we've spent a lot of time talking about miami-dade and the lagging black voters in that area. there is a huge surge of younger

voters, first-time voters, and black voters in both georgia and north carolina. and i think those two states are going to be incredibly important for the senate races for some of the reasons that lawrence just outlined. but let's remember one thing that we're doing here. if somebody would have told me a year ago, i knew how unpopular mitch mcconnell was. i mean he's the most unpopular politician in the country. democrats want to beat him almost as badly in terms of being the leader of the senate as they do trump. but look how this map has expanded. we have gone from four seats that were potentially going to flip. there are like a dozen seats that are actually in the realm of possibility. it is amazing this map has expanded, and a lot of is -- let's give credit where credit is due. chuck schumer recruited some really strong candidates. there's some really strong candidates whether you're talking about bullock in montana or you're talking about reverend

warnock in georgia, or whether you're talking about that really strong fighter pilot down in texas. i think we've got some candidates that really could surprise people on tuesday. >> to that point, i was thinking about this the other day, that there are very few senate races, if any, where i can imagine the democrats having done better in terms of lining up their chosen candidate to run the best possible, most competitive race. red states, blue states, and everywhere in between. former senator claire mccaskill, lawrence o'donnell, thank you for being here. eat your wheaties. we've got a long week ahead of us. >> -- alongside trump. one was his impeachment, which was so obviously corrupt. republican senators came out and said they knew he had abused power. but because the senate was in republican control, there was nothing they could do about it. and then the confirmation, the ram-through of amy coney barrett. i think the senate is on

people's minds. >> mcconnell adjourning the senate without doing any covid relief. he's like, no, no, no. we're going to steal this supreme court seat and not work on covid at all. >> running small businesses out of business forever. >> we were talking about black voters earlier. we didn't talk about the mike espy race in mississippi, which if i had to default the democratic senate campaign committee and the senate minority leader for anything, it's really not leaning in enough to some of these southern races that are seen as unwinnable because of where they are. i think the doug jones race deserved more investment to be blunt. i don't think that the campaign committee invested enough. this is a man who won an improbable race in alabama, which has had a democratic governor not that long ago. there are already democratic governors in north carolina, louisiana, and kentucky and virginia. southern states elect democrats statewide all the time. so not invests in some of these races, i think the espy race deserved from investment. he's polling actually really

well against a lady who said she'd be front line at a lynching. there are a lot of black candidates like jaime harrison who is -- in the beginning, it was not like they were throwing money at him either. i think there were a lot of cases where democrats are not looking further enough into the future. the south is in play. it's in play for governors. louisiana, these states, if you can elect a democratic governor, if kentucky can elect a democratic governor and if louisiana can do it, any of these states can elect a democratic senate if you invest. i think the democratic party has to really have a sit-down with itself and think about where they spend their money. half of african-americans live in the south, which means that any state in the south is easier technically to win than michigan because michigan has like 12%. the only reason kentucky isn't as competitive is it's only 7% african-american. all those other southern states are 25%, 26%, 30% black. spend some money, democrats. >> the lincoln project got involved in that espy race. >> absolutely. >> jaime harrison has been

selling this argument as the chair of the south carolina democratic party for a very long time, and now he's living it. all right. two days before election day, and the legal fights have already begun. in one bright blue dot in a traditionally red state, nearly 127,000 votes hang in the balance as republicans try to have them thrown out. some expert legal advice on that and more to come. stay with us. i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now, there's skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved... ...90% clearer skin at 4 months... ...after just 2 doses. skyrizi may increase your risk of infections... ...and lower your ability to fight them. before treatment your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection... ...or symptoms such as fevers,... ...sweats, chills, muscle aches or coughs... ...or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. i feel free to bare my skin. visit skyrizi.com. maria had to do everything for me. she had these awful blisters on her back. i don't want shingles when i'm your age.

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welcome back. just hours ago the texas supreme court rejected that republican-led effort to toss out almost 127,000 votes cast from drive-through lanes that the state had approved in harris county, texas, the home of houston and its suburbs, during early voting. harris county, as we said, includes the city of houston. it's generally seen as a democratic stronghold. but as chris hayes mentioned earlier, this is texas. these are bound to include a lot of republican vote. the court fight isn't over. a federal judge will now hold an emergency hearing tomorrow morning on election day eve to hearing arguments on a similar challenge filed by this same group of republicans. now what we're going to do tonight is bring in ari melber.

he's going to be in this role for us on election night. he is our chief legal correspondent obviously. he's obviously the host of "the beat" on this network. ari, so many questions on texas. what's the challenge to the ballots? what are they alleging is wrong with 127,000, as far as we know, legally cast ballots? and we've learned there are federal judges and there are federal judges. have they been assigned a federal judge in this case tomorrow? >> yes, they have, brian. it's judge haynen, who's a very conservative judge, a george w. bush appointee. this is the federal challenge, and as you and chris hayes have reported, the republicans already lost the state challenge before a texas state supreme court where every judge is a republican, and they completely rejected this. they're going to federal court tomorrow. the argument they're making is that somehow all of these ballots -- it's about one out of ten voters in harris county -- should be tossed simply because this was a drive-through

location and they are objecting. they're arguing that somehow setting up these drive-through locations, part of pandemic voting, is wrong. the county is pushing back hard and saying you don't punish thousands of voters and don't let them vote even if the county made some kind of legal mistake. i did want to draw attention as well to a couple of other live cases that could affect the voting basically in district court in washington, d.c., a win for mail voting. judge sullivan there ruling late tonight, a sign of the interest here, a sunday night ruling that requires expedited delivery, fast delivery for ballots that are in the mail basically in the next two days. and as of tomorrow morning, under court order, election and basically mail officials at usps have to be briefed on all of this. the other state i want to turn to briefly, brian, is nevada, where you actually have two different republican lawsuits and they're basically all about the mail vote. they're trying to argue there should be a stricter enforcement

of the signature provisions. this is in clark county. so the pattern here you see votes from texas, nevada, is targeting these democratic areas, trying to make it stricter or harder to vote. and the trump campaign is demanding that the courts release images of every voter's signature. that would be unusual. for poll workers, they want a sweeping request for the names, the party i.d., even the work schedules of every poll worker. you take it all together, and you have these efforts to try to make not only voting potentially harder but pick places where if the entire race turns on one of these states, there's arguments ready to go trying to toss out some of the votes and take that up to a supreme court that has a lot of trump appointees on it right now. >> i will say this. ideally having our chief legal correspondent on the beat of voter suppression would be a lonely job, and you wouldn't get on the air much on election night. precisely the opposite is the fear, that you're going to have way too much to cover on this front. it's the times we're living in.

ari melber, we'll see you tuesday night if not before. thank you very much. today it was axios reporting that trump himself plans to declare himself the winner of the election if it looks like he's ahead on election night. speaking to reporters a short time ago, trump denied that. but he gave a big hint about what he does plan to do once the election is over. >> that was a false report. we'll look at what happens. i think it's a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. i think it's a terrible thing when people or states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over. and i think it's terrible when we can't know the results of an election the night of the election. we're going to go in the night of, as soon as that election's over, we're going in with our lawyers. >> it's kind of a campaign

promise. with us tonight, former obama campaign manager david plouffe, former republican national committee chair michael steele. gentlemen, it's great to have you both. michael, i'm going to begin with you because of the man we just heard from. in the event that donald trump is not awarded a second term on election night, who are the profiles in courage remaining in your party who are going to have a talk, who are going to try to keep him in keeping with the peaceful transfer rules that we have governed our country with for over 200 years? >> hey, brian. i would assume some -- some delegation, if you will, if you want to call them that, of u.s. senators primarily, possibly mitch mcconnell and, you know, john cornyn and others in the leadership. you may see someone like a lynn

cheney out of the house, who is a very well respected and regarded member of the leadership there in the house and i think will play a bigger role in how this unfolds for the party going forward. so i look for her to maybe have some -- what she says in the waking hours of that, i think, will be very, very important. other than that, there is no one really, and i suspect trump will probably beat them back or try to beat them back as much as possible to create as much distance between him and them to give himself the runway to say narratively what he wants to get out to his supporters. and that is a major problem. you know, he's talking about this was a false story reported by axios today. it wasn't a false story. he's just pissed that it got

leaked. he's upset because we now know, which a lot of us had already figured out what his plan was going to be, was to go out and to tag this election before the votes were counted. he's been telegraphing this, and in some cases speaking to it directly over the last couple of months. so we'll look to see which republicans stand up who are currently elected in leadership in the house and senate to see whether or not they stand in the moment to stand him down. >> so, david plouffe, we've got that going for us going into election night with the proviso that you always know more than you can say on broadcasts like this one, i'm curious, david, a, where do you see this race as of right now tonight? and, b, are you seeing any misconceptions that are out there being reported on that you'd like to correct? >> well, first of all, brian, i think what trump's trying to do here is suppress the vote, in

philadelphia in particular, but other places to raise questions. like will your vote count because trump's going to challenge it. so we have to encourage everybody to power through, and that's my biggest concern. listen, every race i've run, you're always nervous until actually the polls close because your support in polls is not votes. we've never voted during a pandemic, so that remains the challenge is can democrats get the turnout on election day they need. they've had a very strong early vote period in most places. listen, brian, the reality of this race is joe biden's position in this race, over the last 75 years, the only two times democratic presidential candidates have been in stronger position is lbj in '64 and clinton in '96 in his re-election. he ended up winning that by about eight points. there's polls that have biden better than that. for joe biden to lose this race, which could happen, the polls would have to be off dramatically, the worst miss of all time, much worse than we saw in 1948 with dewy and truman. and there would have to be such a disparity in turnout.

but that's what trump's up to here, i think, is to try and do everything he can. i mean he sent out a tweet not too long ago basically celebrating the domestic terrorists in texas who tried to run the biden/harris bus off the road. we've never seen an american president act like this, but i think it's all for a purpose, which is to try and raise questions to suppress the vote. but again joe biden's position in this race could not be more strong. we haven't seen it really in a generation. >> gentlemen, thank you for coming on, for hanging out with us, and for your candor. michael steele, david plouffe, two friends of this network. coming up for us, a swing through a few traditionally red states that the dems are hoping might be within their grasp this year. stay with us for that. life doesn't stop for a cold. [man] honey... [woman] honey that's why there's new dayquil severe honey. it's maximum strength cold and flu medicine

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51 minutes after the hour. welcome back. there are two states in play this election night that were out of reach of the democrats last time around in 2016 -- texas and arizona. both in the american southwest. historically republican, yes, but now trending democratic with a large latino population in both, and both states are seeing a record early voter turnout due

to the uncontrolled pandemic that controls so much of our coverage. we have garrett haake in texas, vaughn hillyard in arizona to cover this for us. garrett, aside from the fact that your cowboys went into halftime in the lead, which i know is a big deal in your house, tell us about the democrats' effort to turn that big red state a darker shade. >> reporter: brian, record turnout here undersells it. 9.5 million votes cast in texas. 10% of the votes cast anywhere in the country up till now have been cast in texas. and texas is usually one of the bottom five or six states in turnout. that has broken the model for these campaigns. they do not know what the turnout picture here looks like, and it cracks open the possibilities for democrats. the biden campaign has invested relatively little in this state. they've sent their vp nominee and the wife of the candidate to the state, but they're not even spending significant money on tv here. the chance to win in texas is driven by population growth, not

just, you know, immigration the way we think of it, from immigration from states like california as the state blows up, the chances for democrats improve. nobody knows what's going to happen here come tuesday night. >> and, vaughn, speaking of states potentially changing colors, tell us about arizona. >> reporter: you know, this state, brian, here back in 2016, donald trump won independents. he won suburban voters. he won college-educated voters. here in 2020, he's losing each of these demos. i was talking to a longtime republican consultant here in the state tonight. he told me, quote, i learned a long time ago to trust the data so that i'm not fooled by my heart or my eyes. the reality is that the data is not on donald trump's side, martha mcsally's side. the republicans of sauarizona's side. when you're looking further at these numbers, the reality is these numbers are stayed at this place ever since march. there's been little fluctuations but they've remained consistent. that is why this campaign has

had to shift its resources and its attention to the more rural parts of the state. another republican telling me they've never seen a candidate try to win statewide here by winning the rural vote. but when you're bleeding this much support in the suburbs, you have to do it. whether it's enough is the question, brian. >> both of our correspondents in their home states tonight. nbc news political reporter vaughn hillyard, nbc news correspondent garrett haake, in phoenix and in houston respectively. thank you, gentlemen. rachel. >> for more now, paulo ramos, and maria theresa kumar. this is such an important dynamic in this race and is driving so much of the uncertainty as to what's happening, paola, let me ask you just bluntly why is texas potentially in play this year? what are latinos doing in texas that they have not done in previous elections? >> rachel, it's the trump effect, right?

in 2016, you saw that 40% of latinos only showed up to vote, right? what's happened since then? trump. every single year of this administration, latinos have had a reason to vote. in 2020, latinos are at the heart of covid-19. in 2019, latinos saw the largest massive against our community in hiss. in 2018, the anti-latino hate crimes in the entire country reached a peak, which was highest in the last ten years. 2017, latinos saw that families were being separated from the border. in 2016, donald trump starts this campaign criticizing us. so when you see all of these different puzzles together, that is why latinos are about to vote. because they're at the center of the story. >> maria teresa, let me put that to you as well. what do you see as driving the rise in turnout that we are seeing from latinos this year. it's not even everywhere. we're seeing it in different places, different types of latino communities in different states, but we are seeing a

rise. >> so, rachel, if you look at it collectively and as a pattern, you see arizona, north carolina, georgia, texas. the common denominator is that all of them have had not just trump, but they've had many trumps. every single one of them had had egregious different types of legislation that basically tried to create anti-immigration laws. and you have an aging in of a population. texas is home to 25% of all young latino eligible voters. that's powerful when you know that all of a sudden you have a president and you have a governor who is against your family. >> thank you both very much. it's going to be an intense few days. coming up in just moments, steve kornacki is hosting a full hour of pre-election day coverage. that starts in just a couple of minutes. >> and we will all be back with you tuesday evening. our coverage begins -- are you ready for it -- 6:00 p.m.

eastern time. we go all night. you know the rest. stay with us. ♪ greetings mortal! your journey requires liberty mutual. they customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. liberty power! wow. that will save me lots of money. you're insured! this game's boring. let's get tacos. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty.

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