thank you, fayetteville, and north carolina, thank you very much. tomorrow we are going to win this state, and we are going to win four more years. >> it's time for donald trump to pack his bags and go home. we're done! we're done with the chaos. we're done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility. we've got a whole lot of work to

do. >> 2020, 24 hours to go. if it's monday it's election eve. when the ramons "i want to be sedat sedated" runs through our heads, or at least my head. at this hour the candidates are making the final push in the battlegrounds they see as the most crucial in the state. trump has finished speaking to supporters in north carolina, biden has wrapped up a rally in ohio. you are looking live at atlanta, georgia, where president obama is expected to speak at a rally for biden. we've got a whole lot of developments to dive into as this country braces for an election unlike anything they've ever seen before, as virus cases are surging with a president who says he may not accept the results. we've also got new nbc news maris battleground polls hot off the presses right now. battleground arizona we have a tie among likely voters. in pennsylvania we've got biden

up by five points. the poll has a 4.5 margin of error. our new nbc wall street journal poll, national numbers which was in the field yesterday has biden up five overall in the 12 competitive battlegrounds from the last two cycles. that would be a sizable seven-point swing in the democrats' favor compared to the 2016 results. trump won the 12 battlegrounds 49-47. but folks with those margins, these races could all be tight. instead of florida, florida, florida, this election could come down to scranton scranton scranton, i'll explain at the board in a moment. in the final days of this race, the president is holding packed rallies. virus cases are spiking nationally and dr. fauci is delivering a blunt assessment we're in for a world of hurt. the president and the white house have decided to go on the attack on fauci and questioning his motives. in fact, chants of fire fauci broke out at the president's rally late last night.

>> you turn on the news, covid, covid, covid, covid, covid. we like to talk about covid, and then here's what happens november 4th, you won't hear too much about it. you won't hear too much about it. >> fire fauci, fire fauci, fire fauci, fire fauci! >> don't tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election. i appreciate the -- i appreciate it. he's been wrong, he's a nice man, though. >> let's just say this is an unconventional closing message for sure. arguably so is the president's decision to vocally defend a group of supporters in texas that were captured on video

harassing a biden harris campaign bus, preparing to try to slow it down or possibly drive the bus off the road. the fbi is investigating the incident at his rally in michigan yesterday and in tweets this morning, the president said his supporters did nothing wrong, and then of course the fbi should be looking at the left. further west in the keystone state in pittsburgh is mike memoli where he's following bidenment car biden. carol lee let me start with this decision to go after fauci. you're not going to be able to see this, but anthony fauci is the most popular public servant in america, elected official or whatever. he's got a positive rate, a net positive rating with all three parties. it's narrow among republicans. we've been asking this question for the last four years. do you consider yourself a trump supporter before a republican or a republican before a trump

supporter. among those who say they're trump supporters first they don't like fauci. they have a 14 positive rating of him and a 30% negative. among the 40% of republicans, it's 44 positive, 13% negative. carol lee, this is the ultimate base only strategy. anthony fauci is popular with a whole lot of the electorate, just not the very core trump base the president already has. it's a weird strategy. >> reporter: and with the president. i think parking lot of dr. fauci's problem has been just those polling numbers you've shown chuck. he is seen as the country as somebody who's more reliable than the president. this argument, this fight the president's been having with dr. fauci has been brewing for months. it's not a surprise that the president would now be thinking about potentially firing him after the election. it is interesting, as you note,

that he's making this a theme of his campaign, the closing argument, particularly as we're in the middle of a rise in coronavirus cases across the country, but if you look at what dr. fauci came out and said in "the washington post" a few days ago, that was kind of the final straw for the president and for a lot of the people who work for him, just in the sense that they felt that that coming just before the election, what he said about us being unprepared for this pandemic was a little bit of a bridge too far. and so you saw the white house come out with a very blistering on the record statement pushing back on dr. fauci, and now you see the president taking it to this next level, but dr. fauci's never been popular with members of the president's base, key supporters or with the president. >> it was the president's campaign that used drchl. fauci words and images without his permission. who triggered who here is an

open question. carol, let me pivot to some of the chilling remarks we've heard from the president regarding if he's ahead on election night, if he's decided he's ahead, he's sending in the lawyers. we heard jason miller indicating something like that. we've seen statements from the campaign that claims that any ballots counted after election night might somehow be the equivalent of democrats trying to steal the election. this is some really dangerous rhetoric that the trump campaign is using right now, and it is rhetoric that sounds like they think they're going to lose, but they think they might have a moment where it looks like they're ahead and they think they could discredit the election returns. >> reporter: yeah, certainly it looks that way, chuck. it's something that we've heard from the president pretty steadily just in terms of that the election could potentially be riddled with fraud. there's no evidence of that, obviously, as we know. part of what he's made a key point in his closing argument is this idea that they are trying to take something from the president's supporters, the they

being, you know, the media, the democrats, the supreme court. he in north carolina right now really just went after the supreme court saying that what they did put the country in danger. so this is all part of a buildup to election night and sounds like in anticipation of him not doing so well, we just don't know exactly where it's going and what he means that he's going to have his lawyers at the ready. >> he's sowing some seeds that could become very dangerous. very surprised that some people that work for him are going down that road. we shall see if they act this way over the next couple of days. carol lee in scranton as we await the president at that stop. let's go to mike memoli, and mike, before i begin, speaking of fauci, the former vice president while in cleveland earlier today responded to the fire fauci business. let me play that soundbite. >> trump said he was going to fire dr. fauci. isn't that wonderful? i got a better idea.

elect me and i'm going to hire dr. fauci. the first step to beating the virus is beating donald trump. >> so mike memoli, if the biden campaign could have planted a narrative turn last night with the president's remarks firing fauci would have been it. it's a head scratcher, that's for sure. >> reporter: yeah, that was one of the first things joe biden said when he stopped in cleveland there. clearly they've always felt that the pandemic is the number one issue facing voters that they're going to make their final decision on. to hear that from the president last night, at a time when frankly the bedwetting was continuing on the democratic side, 2016 looms so large in the minds of democrats. even as they look at these polls and see positive signs across the board in early voting as well, here and there for the most part some turnout issues in south florida, though, the exception, that was a moment that really just let joe biden

go back to where he thinks this election should be. and i also want to talk about what we're seeing in terms of the conversation you're having with carol about rhetoric about what to see on election night. the biden campaign is doing something very interesting right now. on the day before an election, the day of an election, we as reporters get background briefings from both campaigns about what they're looking for: the biden campaign is doing a briefing with their election protection folks, one of their top lawyers on social media, across their social platforms. yes, for reporters but for the general public. they want to have as open as possible a discussion of what they expect to see on election night. they want the public to be fully informed, and we should also note that biden is going to speak to the nation on election night. they've said that already, that means he's going to look for an opportunity if we don't have an early indication, which no one really seems to think is going to come any earlier than well after midnight, chuck, to assure the country that all the votes will be counted. if there is a concern at this point in biden world, let's talk

about pennsylvania specifically. it's what happens when you don't have the same kind of -- >> i think what the biden campaign wants is us not having to wait for wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania, and that ultimately is an unknown there and a conversation i'm going to have next. mike memoli, carol lee, thank you both. one day out, let's take a look at where this race stands and what it means to the path to 270 for both donald trump and joe biden. joining me is charlie cook, the editor and publisher of the cook report and an msnbc political analyst. the monday before an election -- and i know you're used to this, too, it is one of those times when everybody thinks they've got some nugget that is going to a ha, i finally found the nugget that will explain this election, and really it is one of those times where i just want to stick my head in the sand and tune everything out. what's your sense of where the

race is right this second? >> i think we're at nine, ten points overall. i think that we're going to find out -- i think there's a really good chance we're going to find out early in the evening when you see texas in 2016, i know ap called it at 9:00 and florida at 10:50, ohio at 9:36, but texas and florida are enough that the president even if later -- later on in the evening, even if he were to pick off pennsylvania, these two would work. so i think this thing was maybe settled before we get to michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, and i would just watch texas and florida or some combination of ohio, north carolina, georgia are all states that are going to be really, you know, early and a lot of vote and a lot of fast vote. >> i'm going to walk through a scenario here and i'll talk it through. i don't know how much you can see of it on the monitor, but

essentially of how on one hand joe biden has plenty of paths, but it is -- it's increasingly looking like he desperately needs to make sure he wins one state in the sun belt. let me go through some things. let's go ahead and give biden minnesota. we're going to go ahead and give the president iowa and ohio for thousan now. those aren't givens. we're going to give wisconsin to biden. that starts to leave you with the sun belt plus pennsylvania. the good news for biden is he just nieeeds one. arizona would do it. maybe evangelical white women keep trump a float there and he wins it. there's texas. i've talked to some democrats who think turnout of latinos at the border is not coming in the way they wanted it. then there's georgia. it could be -- this is the one i think democrats are the most bullish on. even if that holds, north carolina could do it. even if that holds, florida can do it. this is the problem, charlie is it if he doesn't get a single

sun belt, then we're all sitting here waiting on pennsylvania and pennsylvania becomes the be all, end all. it does seem to think while he has all these paths for the stability of the country, biden needs a sun belt state, fair? >> i can't tell from your map, where do you have nebraska and maine. >> nebraska we'll go ahead and give to biden and maine 2 to trur trump in this scenario. >> between texas, arizona, georgia, north carolina, florida, if biden came up with none of those, i would be very, very, very surprised. very surprised, and texas, somebody was referring to the texas suburbs as a super fund sites for republicans. it's really that toxic, and these suburbs are on fire in ha sun belt group, arizona, texas, georgia, north carolina, florida. a lot of suburban vote there.

>> well, it's been interesting, and i don't know what you're hearing on turnout, particularly among -- i guess the irony to all of this could be what is it that biden would be the key to a biden victory? is it an uptick in turnout among black and brown voters in the sun belt, or is it because seniors in these northern mid western states gave up on trump? what do you think is going to end up after the fact we think was most crucial? >> i think seniors starting to give -- finally give up on president trump in florida, and you notice when you saw that movement since the summer in florida, that was key. but the other thing is, there is no question that the president is overperforming a little with latino, and african-american latino men specifically, but is that enough to offset the erosion he's had among white college suburban women? i don't think it's -- i'm going with the white college suburban

women. i think that's going to be the driving force followed by seniors. >> four years ago you guys saw conflicting information. you saw these district level polls that were giving a hint that, hey, something was up in trump's favor. here's a phenomenon i've noticed and i'm curious what you make of it. the national polls and the house district polls seem to be in alignment. it's the state polls that seem to be the outlier among those three sets. what do you make of it? >> i think a lot of these state polls are ones of let's just say dubious quality, either method logical logically or slanted one way or the other. i have my good housekeeping seal of approval polls and go with those. and i don't see any erosion. i don't see any movement, and the fact that joe biden is right side up in terms of favorable, unfavorable, compared to where hillary clinton was which was

double-digit upside down, yeah, i mean, i don't -- i think we're seeing a lot of really bad state polls that are incorporated in these averages that send false signals. >> i am very concerned about that. in fact, there's a whole bunch of them that seem to -- i think some of these polls are designed just to screw with the averages at times in order to sort of mess with the narrative. i am curious here, if -- if there is a surprise, and there is a mistake in the polls, do you think it's more likely to be we've underestimated biden or underestimated trump this time? >> i think if there's -- you know, people seem to forget that poll error can go either way. if there is an undercounted group, i think it's going to be college educated suburban women. i think if they -- all the groups are going to go up. >> yep. >> but i suspect that they're going to go up at a higher level, higher rate than other groups and that that's -- that will work to biden's benefit, so i think it's more likely that

the polls are understating where biden is than overstating. >> charlie cook, i'm going to leave it there. as always, sir, enjoy the next 24 hours, and then we've got four years to digest what's going to happen tomorrow night. >> take care. >> thank you, my friend r. one day more, it's the other side that is at the top of my election prep play list just barely edging out the ramons from the number one spot. tomorrow we'll discover what the voters have in store, but how the votes are counted and when that count will be finished are big question marks, especially in the battleground states. i'm requesting to talk wigoing secretary of state about her state's plans and how we expect that count to go. that's next. go that's next.

welcome back. as twoeas told you earlier prest trump's final stop tonight will be in michigan. that will take place after 2.8 million michiganers have already voted. while election workers will not

be allowed to start counting those ballots until tomorrow, in some jurisdictions they were able to begin processing those mail-in ballots this morning. thanks to a state law that was processed last month. as for how long this is going to take to tabulate, i'm joined by jocelyn benson, she's michigan's secretary of state. madame, secretary of state, we have been a little over three hours, jurisdictions have been able to process some of these ballots. this is where i'd like to get some clarification. is there no chance these ballots that are processed will be in the count tuesday night? are we not going to see them in the count until wednesday, or will they be in the count tuesday night? >> they may very well be in the count tuesday night. we're going to have an update much closer to when our polls close in michigan at that point, but we're committed to at least releasing results to the in-person voting and absentee voting as they come in. it may take a full 80 hours until every vote is counted in

our jurisdictions. we'll be updating the public as we go along. the preprocessing happening today in 51 of our 1,500 jurisdictions may lead to some earlier results being announced, but we have to wait and see before we know for sure. >> i was just going to say, what's realistic, we're talking 10 or 20% or, you know, maybe it's a huge chunk. maybe it's half or more of the early vote. >> a lot of it depends on what ballots come in tomorrow because that's going to, you know, affect the entire total of absentee ballots. right now 2.8 million as you mentioned ballots have come in, another 400,000 at least are outstanding. if all of those come in tomorrow by 8:00 p.m. on election day, which we hope, then that is going to mean it's going to take even longer to tabulate and process all of those ballots. so we're going to know, again, much more by the end of tomorrow as to what people can expect, and we'll be making an announcement shortly after our polls close in michigan's central time. of course we've got four counties on central time. polls will close at 8:00 p.m.

after that point we'll be able to say and more specifically say what is going to be announced on tuesday, what's going to take a little bit more time, but we know across the state, our workers are planning to be as efficient as possible. we understand the scrutiny we're under, but we're also going to prioritize accuracy and security above all else. >> two voter scenarios i want to paint for you right now. voter scenario number one is i applied for a mail-in ballot, i haven't gotten it yet. scenario two is i have my ballot, i'm not dropping it in the mail. i'm really nervous about that. i'm going to bring it to my polling place. is that -- can you do all that is my question. >> first, we want everyone who has a question like that or something sla r similar go to michigan.gov/vote or contact your local or city clerk. if you have a ballot and you've not yet returned it, we want you to get it in by 8:00 p.m. tomorrow either at your local

drop box or at your local clerk's office. if you have mailed in your ballot, and it has not yet been marked as received in our statewide tracking system at michigan.gov/vote. you can either today by 4:00, you've got a few hours left. go to your clerk's office and get a ballot and fill it out and return it to make sure that you have a vote in and your previous ballot will be invalidated, or tomorrow you could go to your local polling place and fill out a form spoiling your original ballot and vote right there. >> so i have a feeling a lot of people are going to take this advice. there's a lot of nervousness about the mail. unfortunately we've seen the unreliability rates are ticking up, particularly in some important communities for different constituency groups, so the provisional ballots, when do they start getting counted, and how does that -- and is there anything unique about the process in michigan that you think we should be aware of? >> professional ballots have six

days to be cured. then we want to minimize the number of provisional ballots that are voted in person tomorrow, and again, that's another update we'll be able to provide once the polls close. what we're focused on as well is we've got about 400,000 outstanding ballots, which out of 3.3 million, that's actually quite good. the attorney's vis general's vi to confirm that ballots in them are being moved, if they're in the mail, they get in by 8:00 p.m. on election day, and then we're advising voters as i mentioned before to track your ballot with some contingency plans in place if you're nervous. we're going to continue to update the public on everything they need to know until 8:00 p.m. when the polls close, and then we'll shift to talking about tabulation and how that process is going so everyone knows everything we know. >> this postmark issue is so confusing depending on the state. i mailed my ballot, it's going to arrive now wednesday but it's been postmarked maybe today because i mailed it today. it's going to be postmarked

today, but you may not get it until wednesday. what happens to that ballot? >> it will not count. ballots have to be received by 8:00 p.m. on election day in that local jurisdiction in order to count. so track your ballot at michigan.gov/vote. if it is not marked as received tomorrow, as we talked about earlier, go to your local precin precinct. you can confirm at that point whether it's been received or not. if it has not been received, you can vote right there. >> is that part of the law that you guys will change? i mean, the postmark seems very arbitrary, if it's good enough for the irs. >> yeah. >> yes. i mean, you know there's been litigation about this not just in michigan, but in other states. and so it is something we want to look into after election day. it's something we tried to get updated prior to, but as you know, our legislature did not make a lot of the changes we needed to make. >> correct. you didn't -- it wasn't necessarily the most cooperative partnership, and i'll leave it at that. >> here we are. >> yeah, we're committed to making sure every vote counts and providing all the resources

and contingency suggestions to voters that they need to get their ballots in by 8:00 on election day, and notably, we have invested in a multimillion dollars education campaign over the past several months to clearly consistently say 8:00 p.m. on election day and never waiver despite litigation. >> jocelyn benson, the secretary of state for the state of michigan, good luck. all eyes are watching you guys. >> oh, we're ready to go. >> our fingers are crossed. thank you very much. >> thank you. up ahead, what kind of legal challenges should we be expecting in the coming days? fights over past marks, signatures, all of that. the question of violence and intimidation at the polls, that's next. tomorrow continue to stay with the networks of nbc news. we have complete election day coverage in any flavor you might like. i'll be streaming live on nbc news now, and i'll join lester, savannah, andrea and your local station beginning at 7:00 p.m. we've got plans to go for days if necessary. here on msnbc, it's nicolle

wallace who will start this election coverage at 4:00 p.m. afternoon, followed by chris hayes, and brian, rachel, joy and nicole, and they too plan to be on the air for days if necessary. we'll be right back. we'll be right back. [ thunder rumbles ]

[ engine rumbling ] ♪ [ beeping ] [ engine revs ] ♪ uh, you know there's a 30-minute limit, right? tell that to the rain.

[ beeping ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. 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. i think it's a terrible decision by the supreme court, a terrible decision. now, i don't know if that's going to be changed because we're going to go in the night of, as soon as that election's over, we're going in with our lawyers. >> welcome back. on the way to a rally to north carolina last night, president trump made it clear that he's already -- that he's ready to take this election to the courts, and he's already plankton on plankton -- planning on it. the supreme court let a ruling to stand that allows ballots postmarked by election day be accepted three days after polls closed. in kbmichigan, for instance, th don't allow that. even in a normal election year, without a pandemic, ballots have always continued to be counted in the days following the election, including the year donald trump won the presidency.

joining me is election law nate persly, he's one of the directors of the healthy election project and an msnbc analyst. nate, do you have an idea of what the president is up to? it's pretty clear that they said and jason miller seemed to reinforce it, if they're leading on election night, whatever that definition is in their heads, then they are going to somehow declare victory and then try to -- you think they're trying to stop counting the day after the election, i'm trying to understand where they're headed. do you know the strategy you think they're pursuing here. >> i'm not sure what the strategy is. it's clear that, you know, everyone knows that the absentee wl ballots are going to be favoring vice president biden. if you're trying to prevent those ballots from being counted, then the way to do that is to try to shut off the counting after the polls close. but in some ways it can't possibly mean that, just to give you a sense, you know, one of the groups of people who's most

likely to have their ballots come in after their election day are soldiers abroad. and some military ballots have always come in after election day, and so i doubt anybody would want to try to disenfranchise those folks. >> i hope you had a chance to listen to my conversation with jocelyn benson the secretary of state there in michigan because it sort of gets at what i think is the anxiety that some people have around this election, particularly the issue if you are relying on the postal service to mail your ballot and the fact that the postmark is meaningless in some states, but meaningful in other states. i mean, this really, i think, pokes a big large hole in the big- one of the major flaws in our system right now. >> well, different states have different rules, not just with respect to postal marks, but with respect to all kinds of issues regarding both in-person voting and mail voting. so i think that the message had gone out pretty early that you had to get your ballot in on time. i think that you're actually

going to see as a percent of the ballots that get disqualified that there's going to be a much lower percent of ballots disqualified this year. 95 million ballots have now been received, tells you that whatever the problems at the postal service, the other obstacles, it hasn't had the effect that people thought it might and people are getting their ballots in. >> i appreciate your optimism. one of the things that i think we're going to have a pile of tomorrow are provisional ballots. probably more than we've had in some time when you're dealing with a turnout like this, it's understandab understandable. that's going to take days, you heard six days to cure ballots, and that's a weird word. i'm sure some people are wondering what that means, but essentially to basically find out if this person is a legal voter and has only voted once. how complicated and litigation based could that become?

>> well, look, if it does come down to provisional ballots in any given state, that is cause for litigation, but i want to sort of reinforce the point that provisional ballots are actually a good thing. they're an insurance scheme that we have in our system since bush versus gore in 2000. the reason that we have provisional ballots is to make sure no one gets turned away from the polls. with the help america vote act that was passed in 2003, we basically as a country made clear that if there's some dispute about a voter's legitimacy in terms of voting that they will have the entitlement to craft a provisional ballot and the legality will be decided later. you are right, if there are hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots in any given place, it could be cause for concern, but even in 2016 as well as in other previous elections, most of those provisional ballots do end up counting. >> what is keeping you up right now? what is the thing that you think we're not paying enough

attention to that we should be? >> well, the thing that worries me is that isolated instances of dysfunction on election day are going to get blown out of proportion. you've heard the president sort of talk about some of these isolated instances before, found ballots in the creek and that kind of thing. we're going to have over 150, maybe 160 million ballots cast, and there will be problems on election day. there always are, but we shouldn't assume that some isolated problem is a symbol of larger dysfunction, ask that's what i'm worried about on social media and legacy media that some of these isolated instances are going to feed the flames of lack of legitimacy for the election itself. >> you point out on social media, i think here in mainstream media there are some safeguards we can put in. social media, boy, i just hope folks don't use it tomorrow. i hate to say that. i would stay off of it. i think there's going to be a lot of misinformation, particularly about voting stuff. like i said on sunday, i'm glad to have you here.

i worry the more we see you, the more nervous people become because it means something went wrong. but we shall find out. thanks very much. >> thank you. up next, we head to georgia, once reliably red, now a key battleground state and a place where we're expecting to see former president obama campaign for biden at any moment. but we didn't stop there. we made a cloud flexible enough to adapt to any size business. no matter what it does, or how it changes. and we kept going. so you only pay for what you use. because at dell technologies, we stop...at nothing. ♪

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georgia is getting a lot more attention this year than it has in recent presidential elections. it's been talked about on the periphery of the battleground. this year it may actually be there. kamala harris was there yesterday, biden himself was in the state last week, and president trump has been there three times in the final two weeks of his campaign. this year both campaigns think georgia is within their reach, and it's not only the presidency on the line, georgia has not one, but two senate seats up for grabs as well. priscilla thompson is with canvassers in atlanta on their final day of getting out the vote in georgia, and priscilla, what's been interesting about the georgia turnout, while i hear hand wringing about african-american turnout in philadelphia, in detroit, in milwaukee and in miami-dade, you don't hear about it in georgia, and this is what has republicans very nervous. >> reporter: right, exactly, and this is what some of these groups are hoping to contend with here. we're with the new georgia project, they're out knocking on doors in black and brown communities looking to turn

those voters out. and i want to read a little bit of the literature they're leaving. it says black voters are the most powerful voters in georgia. 55,000 more votes for stacy abrams would have made her the first black woman governor in america, and so what you hear there is there are folks who are still very upset about the way that race went. many people saying that voter suppression may have been at play in stacey abrams loss, and they want to make sure black voters turn out in high numbers here. they make up 30% of the electorate here in georgia, a huge slice, and we saw those voters break for president obama about 98% to 2. that number ticked down whenever hillary clinton ran in 2016. but when stacey abrams ran it ticked back up, and that is what folks are hoping to see this time around. i should point out, just as we have been with these canvassers today, there was a woman who stopped them in the street and said i requested my absentee ballot a month ago and still

have not received it. i have an expired i.d. i'm not going to be able to vote on election day if i don't have that absentee ballot. she was very upset trying to figure out what she could do to make sure her voice was heard. organizations like the new georgia project, like stacey abrams organization fair fight have been on the ground here for years registering hundreds of thousands of new black voters who were energized to vote and hoping to really have an impact on this election here in georgia. chuck. >> i'm curious, one of the -- doing the canvassing in the midst of the virus, what kind of reception have the canvassers got? >> right. there are certainly folks who have come out of their doors to chat with the canvassers, and they're wearing their masks, the canvassers are. they're putting literature on the doors and then stuffing six feet back in -- folks are energized in this election, particularly in the neighborhoods that we have been in, and so folks are very open

to having a conversation. like i mentioned, the woman stopped in the middle of the road to talk to these people about how she could make sure that her vote got counted this year. >> priscilla thompson on the ground for us in georgia. priscilla, thanks very much. up next, it's the final cou countdown, and yes, that's on my play list, too. we're going to break down what to expect from campaign experts on both sides of the aisle, so keep it here. t here

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up ten points in our final nbc news wall street journal poll, but that lead gets smaller when you just concentrate on the 12 battleground states. biden has a five-point lead over president trump. yesterday in that president tru. yesterday it was six. i am joined now by folks that know a little something about campaigns. stephanie cutter who was a campaign manager for president obama. stephanie, let me start with you. what are you telling your hand wringers or the bedwetters or whatever we want to refer to them on the democratic side of the isle. >> i'm telling you that them

that we've had a record number of early voting. and the people voting early are largely people voting for joe biden. that process has been incredibly smooth. 90 million people with very little incidents of things going wrong or voter intimidation. it has been running very smoothly so far. we have to let this play out. we're closing on a very strong note. normally at this point in the race as we all know you're shrinking the states you're counting on. pulling advertising. doubling down on states you need to win. biden is expanding the map. people are interested in hearing what people are saying in those

states. these are expansion states. you know, trump has a very narrow path to get to 270. joe biden has more than a couple ways to get there. >> in fairness, four years ago, i think a lot of people thought that hillary clinton had multiple paths, trump had a very narrow path, and he found the path that not even everyone thought was there at the time. is there anything that makes you feel like you're missing something? >> i would say the president is closing relatively strong in the states where he needs to close. pennsylvania, oregon, arizona, he had a good poll out of iowa which is a little bit of an outlou

outlayer. you know i think that in much the same way that he needed to draw that inside straight four years ago i don't think that dynamic has changed. if you're a trump supporter today i think the idea is if he was able to do it four years ago maybe he can do it again. there are a limited number of path ways for the president, no question about it. but there are path ways to be sure. but the trump campaign has been sending the president and surrogates to various states. it is a mobilization game. who can get their voters out better? the early vote has broken for the democrats and now it is a question of the election day turnout and can it swamp some of that early vote in the states that the president needs. i think that will be the question. but you know obviously the president needs the final days knowing he has a lot of work to do, but it doesn't mean there are not pathways for him and it certainly doesn't mean that he

is out of this entirely. i think tomorrow night will be very interesting, chuck. >> the pollsters. ♪s that in the questionnaire order that they may have sent a signal to people that voted already that they didn't need to answer the ballot test. it was a weird, ununiform -- it was an interesting theory that maybe there was a question order issue, trump's numbers didn't get better, it just suddenly the biden number went to don't know. there is some question that our pollsters had about the way they handled asking the first question which is how are you going about your vote, mail in, in-person, or we'll see. stephanie cutter, the turn out issue in the sun belt states, it feels like there is jazz and something else. they are coming together in seeing suburban and african-american turnout.

there is question marks in north carolina, florida, and how nervous are you about that? >> none of those states are a must-win for biden. it would be amazing to win those to show the democratic -- >> don't you need one? don't you need one? >> need one as an insurance policy, sure. but it is not the only pathway for joe biden to get there as we all know. george is very promising. there are senate races there. the in your opinions are coming together. but i think that north carolina, you know, is also coming together for joe biden. and, you know, we'll see north carolina fairly early tomorrow night. you know all of the states, georgia, florida, north carolina, arizona, they will be among the first to report. and we'll see if this is a sign of something bigger happening or

is it a mixed result. but we will be able to see the direction of this race pretty early tomorrow night based on those states. >> what kind of pressure do you think other americans will feel if the president -- he basically pushes the envelope here, right? discounting ballots that get counted after day one. all of those things. do you expect the elected republicans that have gotten themselves in elections before to count, are they going to stick by him? >> i hope they don't echo some of the things that he said today, and i hope they reaffirm that the process is working well. we're seeing things across a number of states where there have been mail in early votes. it is happening with a good amount of regularity. and it is affirming the process.

this has been a big question. how much do they go to the president versus trying to chart their own path. because we're looking at the precipice of the end, we'll be looking ahead a little more. >> stephanie, thank you both for making us smart and thank you both for being with us later this hour. tomorrow is election day, in case you have not heard. and also i'll see you tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. eastern. msnbc coverage continues with katy tur after this break. cont katy tur after this break. it's gentle on her skin, and dermatologist recommended. new tide pods plus downy free. safe for sensitive skin with eczema and psoriasis.

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to reform our racist criminal justice system that's shameful to us all. good afternoon, i'm katy tur. after two years of campaigning, we are only hours from the final day of the election. nearly 100 million early votes