Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump's focus is also back on the "blue wall" as he'll be campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin today.

The "blue wall" refers to states that the Democrats have won in presidential elections from 1992 to 2012. Trump won three such states - Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan - in the 2016 election.

The former president will first speak in the city of Warren in Michigan, where he is likely to talk about inflation and criticise the Biden-Harris administration’s electric car initiatives. Warren is in Macomb County, an area that Trump won by eight points in 2020.

He then plans to hold a rally in Milwaukee at the Fiserv Forum.

Trump has won and lost both states in presidential races. A double victory this year would significantly narrow Harris’s potential path to victory.

Today, Kamala Harris is heading to Wisconsin for two events – one in Outagamie County and another in Milwaukee.

The event in Milwaukee will feature rapper Cardi B, who boasts a following of over 200 million across various social media platforms.

Wisconsin is a crucial state for Harris at this stage of the race, as she aims to keep attention on her message rather than the ongoing controversy over President Joe Biden’s comments, in which he appeared to refer to Trump supporters as "garbage" - Biden later said it was directed at a comic who made a controversial joke at a Trump rally.

Although Wisconsin has the second lowest number of electoral votes among the battleground states, it remains fiercely contested. Trump won Wisconsin by nearly 23,000 votes in 2016, while Biden secured it by 20,682 votes in 2020.

• A quick guide to Wisconsin

About 240 million people are eligible to vote in the US election, but only a relatively small number of them are likely to decide who becomes the next president.

Experts believe there are only a handful of so-called "swing" states that could plausibly be won by either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump.

The BBC's North America Editor Sarah Smith explains why swing states are important in this year's election.

Jordan Kenny
Newsbeat politics reporter in Pennsylvania

It’s been a long drive from our last stop in North Carolina to where we are today in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We’re focussing on the economy for now and stopping to refuel, it’s everyday things like breakfast where Americans are noticing the rising cost of living. Speak to anyone around here about food and there’s a good chance they’ll mention the price going up.

While that’s not just in Pennsylvania, analysts reckon prices are rising faster here than any other state – and that’s front and centre of the election issues with the young voters I’ve been speaking with since we arrived.

With the most electoral college votes up for grabs, you don’t need me to remind you how significant their votes are for both candidates.

Traditionally, young voters in cities like Philadelphia are more likely to vote Democrat but most people we’ve met aren’t optimistic either Trump or Harris can help them with the cost of living.

Jordan Kenny
Newsbeat politics reporter in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is the next stop on Newsbeat’s swing states tour and we’re talking about the economy with friends Journey and Jordan - something they find a bit scarier than the Halloween costumes they’re wearing.

“Our generation has only known the climate crisis and prices spiking,” says Journey, adding she’s noticed a “big spike” in the cost of everyday items like food and clothes.

If in the UK we used Freddos as an informal inflation gauge, for Jordan the US equivalent is fast-food chain Dunkin’ Donuts.

“I just went to Dunkin’ Donuts the other day and my order was $5 something and maybe two-three years ago it was $3 something,” the first-time voter says.

They both say they’re voting for Kamala Harris, citing her stance on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion as well as the economy.

Ione Wells
Reporting from Michigan

Image source, Getty Images

I’m spending the day in Dearborn, Michigan, today where local officials tell me Trump is expected to visit ahead of a rally in Macomb later today.

Dearborn is the largest Arab majority city in the US, and a lot of the community are unhappy with the Democrats handling of the conflict in Gaza and Lebanon.

People here proactively offer their views on this. Just yesterday, a woman stopped me in the street - seeing we were journalists - to say how upset many like her were to have seen friends and family killed in the conflict and to know “our taxpayer dollars” have gone to Israel.

How to vote in this election has split the community - with some still voting Democrat, some voting for Trump, some voting for a third party candidate and some choosing not to vote at all.

Neither candidate has campaigned here yet, so the fact Donald Trump feels confident enough to is significant in itself. Especially given some of his past comments and actions regarding Muslims, including the so-called "Muslim ban" he signed when president.

• For context: The former president's administration enacted strict restrictions on travellers from seven mainly Muslim countries in 2017, sparking legal confusion and mass protests at airports after it went into effect with only a few hours' notice. At the time, Trump said the move was not about targeting Muslims but about "keeping our country safe."

Employers added 12,000 jobs last month, much lower than the 223,000 created in September, according to the US Labor Department.

This figure, partly due to hurricanes and strikes disrupting the economy, is much lower than economists expected. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls would rise by 113,000.

But while hiring slowed, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%.

This is the last figure to be released before 5 November and is being closely watched as it gives an indication about the strength of the US economy.

The Labor Department says healthcare and government roles continued their rising trend last month, but fewer new manufacturing jobs were added due to strike activity.

The 2024 presidential election could hinge on the state of Pennsylvania, with polls currently indicating that the crucial swing state is locked in a dead heat.

On the next stage of the pop-up podcast studio, Justin and Marianna travel to Philadelphia to speak to three first-time Democratic voters who are planning to vote for Kamala Harris.

Sitting down in a family home, they chat to them about their reaction to Joe Biden’s intervention in the campaign, whether they’d consider voting for a third party in the campaign and what they believe Harris needs to do between now and 5 November.

• Listen to the latest Americast here on BBC Sounds

More than 66 million people across the US have cast an early ballot - either in person or by post - as of yesterday, according to the University of Florida's voter tracker., external

The tracker also shows that 38.4% of the voters are registered Democrats and 36.2% are registered Republicans.

These figures only apply to 26 states with public party registration information, covering just under half of the total of early votes. Party registration data does not precisely predict a voter's choice.

While most US states allow early voting, it's important to note that officials are not allowed to begin counting ballots until election day on 5 November.

Different groups of voters have also historically cast their ballots at different times and in varied ways, so it's important not to over-interpret the party registration numbers.

National polls currently show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by one percentage point - 48% to 47%.

There's good reason to be cautious about polls as they've underestimated support for Trump in the last two elections - with the national polling error in 2020 being the highest in 40 years, according to a post-mortem by polling experts.

National polling also doesn't tell the full story, given the electoral college system means only a handful of battleground states - who look poised to go either way in this election - are likely to decide the outcome.

Trump holds a slight lead in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

In the two other states - Michigan and Wisconsin - Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but the polls have tightened significantly.

It's important view polls as indicators of public sentiment, instead of a precise way to predict election results.

It's also important to remember that the individual polls used to create these averages have a margin of error of around three to four percentage points, so either candidate could be doing better or worse than the numbers currently suggest.

For a full write-up of the latest election data - click here for our poll tracker.

Image source, Alamy

Throughout an election campaign, US voters are bombarded with images of the two candidates - speaking from podiums, greeting rally crowds and stepping down aircraft stairs. Here's a different visual perspective of who they are and where they've come from.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are pictured above both aged three, likely long before they even knew what the White House was.

Decades apart, Democratic presidential nominee Harris spent her early years in Oakland, California and Republican nominee Trump was raised in the New York borough of Queens.

Harris and her sister Maya were primarily brought up by their Indian mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher and social activist.

Trump's father Fred Trump was the son of German immigrants and his mother Mary Anne MacLeod Trump was born in Scotland. They enrolled him in the New York Military Academy at age 13.

See more pictures charting the lives of Harris and Trump in this piece curated by Phil Coomes.

Image source, Reuters

Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has responded to comments made about her by Donald Trump calling him a "petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant".

Trump had been disparaging about former vice-president Dick Cheney and his daughter at an event in Arizona yesterday. Both are ardent Trump critics and have endorsed Kamala Harris.

Trump said: "I don’t blame [Dick Cheney] for sticking with his daughter, but [Liz Cheney] is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She's a radical war hawk.

"Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her... Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.

"You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh, gee, we’ll, let's send, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy’. But she's a stupid person."

In her post on X, Liz Cheney retorted: "This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death."

Across the entire US there are a total of 538 electoral college votes up for grabs and the winner will be the candidate that gets 270 or more.

In all but two states, the presidential candidate with the most individual votes from the residents there wins all the state’s electoral college votes.

If both candidates win all the states that history - and the polls - suggest are almost certain to vote for them, it will leave Kamala Harris 44 votes short of victory and Donald Trump looking for 51 more votes to become president.

The swing states hold 93 votes between them.

Both candidates will need to win several swing states to get them over the line; Harris needs at least three and Trump needs at least four.

There are many different swing state combinations that could take either past 270 - but some are more likely than others.

• Read more here about how both candidates might get across the line - and what happens if neither of them does

If you're just joining us, here's what you need to know:

• Kamala Harris held a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada - where she spoke about her plans to raise the minimum wage, adding she would "fight for working people"
• She said her opponent does not "respect the freedom... or the intelligence of women to make a decision about their own lives"
• Jennifer Lopez also appeared at the rally, where Harris was making her pitch to potentially crucial Latino voters in the state
• Meanwhile, Donald Trump made a campaign stop in Arizona, where he was interviewed by broadcaster Tucker Carlson
• During the interview, he ruled out a possible future cabinet role for Elon Musk but indicated RFK Jr would get a job
• Trump also doubled down on his claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, saying "some bad, bad things" prevented him from winning
• Harris will be holding rallies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin today and also campaigning in several other places in the midwestern state
• Trump will also campaign in Milwaukee and he's set to first appear in Michigan to give some remarks

Stay with us as we bring you the latest.

Investigating Musk's far-fetched claim about Democrats importing voterspublished at 10:41 Greenwich Mean Time 1 November

10:41 GMT 1 November

By Jake Horton

Since endorsing Donald Trump for president in July, Elon Musk - the owner of X - has posted about the US election hundreds of times, attracting more than four billion views.

BBC Verify, working with data firm Node XL, analysed all of his posts since then - over 8,000 - and searched for key words to track the election issues he has been posting about most to his 200 million followers.

Immigration and voting emerge as key themes, with Musk engaging with misinformation online about "illegal aliens" voting in this election.

He has also claimed repeatedly that Democrats have been "importing" immigrants who will vote for them in future elections.

But voting and immigration experts we have spoken to have challenged this, pointing out that it is illegal for them to vote in federal elections and that even if some might qualify for citizenship eventually, the process would take many years.

• Read more of BBC Verify's investigation looking into Musk's claims

Christal Hayes
Reporting from Phoenix

These ladies skipped work yesterday to see Kamala Harris speak in Phoenix, Arizona.

They told me abortion and border issues are their primary concerns.

Symmone Worthy, a small-business owner here in Arizona, said it was time for a female president.

“America is sick right now,” she said. “We need to be mothered.”

The group noted how important border policies were to them. I asked why Trump’s pitch to clamp down on the border - the issue he mentions the most on the campaign trail - hasn’t appealed to them.

“We’ve seen how Trump handled it,” Kathleen Buckley said, citing issues like separating migrant children from their parents and putting migrants in cages. “It wasn’t humane. It’s not who we are.”

She noted the need for law and order on the border, and for everyone to be respectful of the processes to become a legal citizen. Buckley added she believes Harris is the person for the job.

“She’s a prosecutor. She knows the law and will ensure it’s upheld.”

Image source, Reuters

Both presidential candidates have been criss-crossing the US trying to gather as much support as possible in the final days of campaigning.

In Pennsylvania, one of the seven swing states which look key to deciding the winner, every vote counts - but mechanic Dave Spithaler his mind is already made up.

"What I see in him, he stands with me, a blue-collar, working American that has to go to work every day, believes in border security and believes in a strong economy," Spithaler says.

He adds that he believes Trump is "his own man and can't be bought" and that he "stands for regular Americans".

With just four days to the election there is no let up in the battle to secure votes in the crucial swing states.

Harris and Trump are both holding rallies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin later - with Harris also campaigning in several other places in the midwestern state

Trump will first be in Michigan to give some remarks, the state where his running mate JD Vance and his Democrat vice presidential nominee Tim Walz will also be campaigning today.

Walz is going to be in three different cities in Michigan to drum up support, while Vance will head to North Carolina for a rally later on.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is heading to Philadelphia to speak about the Democratic Party's longstanding support for labour unions - a voting bloc that Trump has also set his sights on.

For technical reasons we've had to move our US election coverage to this live page.

We'll bring you a roundup of what happened yesterday on the campaign trail shortly, as well as catch you up on the last few posts that went into our earlier coverage.

Thanks for joining us.