If you had any doubt about where UAW members stand on the presidential election, read “UAW members support Harris over Trump by 22 points in swing states – poll” by William Sainato at The Guardian. An excerpt: “United Auto Workers (UAW) members in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada support the presidential candidate Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by 22 points, according to a poll conducted by the union….UAW members in Michigan – the center of the US auto industry – support Harris over Trump by 20 percentage points, with 54% supporting Harris over 34% supporting Trump, the poll found. The union claimed in 2020 that UAW members accounted for 84% of Joe Biden’s margin of victory in Michigan….The poll also found that support among non-college-educated men – a key demographic where Harris has been lagging – gave Harris a 14-point margin over Trump” In addition other the polling, “The union is also running door-knocking operations in battleground states to turn out the vote for Harris. According to the union, the poll has engaged with 293,000 active and retired union members and their families in election battleground states….The union also noted union members who reported being contacted by the UAW about the election had increased their support for Harris over Trump by 29 points.”

Louis Jacobson shares an update on “The State Legislatures: Several Key Battleground Chambers Remain Toss-ups” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Jacobson provides a state by state breakdown for the key swing states and observes: “In our second and most likely final pre-election handicapping of state legislature control of the 2024 cycle, we find 13 chambers that are competitive—either Leans Republican, Toss-up, or Leans Democratic. That’s slightly fewer than the 15 on election eve two years ago, and only a handful of chambers are shifting ratings today compared to June….— Right now, the Republicans are playing defense in more chambers than the Democrats are, but only modestly. The GOP currently holds 7 of the competitive chambers, while the Democrats hold 5 of the competitive chambers. One other chamber, the Alaska Senate, is controlled by a cross-partisan alliance…..— Among the competitive chambers, 7 are rated Toss-up. This category includes 4 Republican-held chambers (the Alaska House, the Arizona Senate, the Arizona House, and the New Hampshire House) and 3 Democratic-held chambers (the Michigan House, the Minnesota House, and the Pennsylvania House)….— Four presidential battleground states this year have at least one competitive chamber—Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—and how the presidential race shakes out in each of those states could have a significant impact on who takes control of those states’ legislative chambers.”

In “Learning to trust Trump’s generals: There’s a reason why his military men now call him a fascist,’ Heather Digby Parton explains at Salon: “The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg chronicled Trump’s odd antipathy toward the military during his first term, the details of which were further confirmed by Susan Glasser of the New Yorker and Peter Baker of the New York Times in their book “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” as well as the New York Times’ Michael Schmidt’s book “Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.” They all relied on former US Army general and Trump chief of staff John Kelly as a primary source for such anecdotes as Trump’s contemptuous references to service members as “suckers and losers” and his frequent demands to use the military unconstitutionally….Kelly isn’t the only former general saying this. Just a week or so ago, Bob Woodward reported in his new book “War“ that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, described Donald Trump as “fascist to the core” calling him “the most dangerous person to this country.” Woodward told The Bulwark podcast that former Defense Secretary and Retired Gen. James Mattis agreed with this assessment….It’s good that these former high-ranking military leaders are saying all this. But they really need to go on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” or cut an ad so that people who aren’t reading the Atlantic and the New York Times (or Salon, for that matter) will know about it. There’s no reason for them not to do it at this point. If they fear retribution from Trump, I’m afraid that ship sailed. You can bet they are already on his list. If they simply don’t want to be in the line of fire, it’s a sad comment on the military ethos for which they claim to be speaking.”

It’s time for election junkies to plan their strategy for watching the returns on TV. “When you hear the term bellwether, you might think about states in the presidential election that always vote with the White House winner,” AP’s Maya Sweedler writes in “Where are the voters who could decide the presidential election?,” “The true meaning of a bellwether is an indicator of a trend. And for that, you need to be thinking about counties….In a closely contested presidential election, as many expect 2024 to be, the results in a few bellwether counties in the key battleground states are likely to decide the outcome, just as they did in the past two general elections….Across the seven main battleground states in 2024, there are 10 counties — out of more than 500 — that voted for Trump in 2016 then flipped to Biden in 2020. Most are small and home to relatively few voters, with Arizona’s Maricopa a notable exception. So it’s not likely they’ll swing an entire state all by themselves….What these counties probably will do is provide an early indication of which candidate is performing best among the swing voters likely to decide a closely contested race. It doesn’t take much for a flip. For example, the difference in Wisconsin, in both 2016 and 2020. was only about 20,000 votes….North Carolina’s two Trump-Biden counties – New Hanover on the Atlantic Coast and Nash, northeast of Raleigh – are likely to be the first among the 10 to finish counting their vote on election night. Polls close next in Michigan’s Kent, Saginaw and Leelanau counties and Pennsylvania’s Erie and Northampton counties, followed by Wisconsin’s Sauk and Door. Maricopa is the closer.”