In just one month about 150mn Americans will vote for Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump to be US president. Both say the election is the most important in the country’s history.

But the winner of the popular vote does not necessarily win the White House. The US’s unique Electoral College system means that slates of electors from the states decide the winner. But most states vote reliably Democratic or Republican. Only a few are prone to switching — the so-called swing states.

This year, there are seven swing states — and each features a razor-edge race inside 1.5 points, according to Financial Times poll tracking. Together they account for just 93 of the Electoral College’s 538 votes and 18 per cent of the population. But they are the target of all Trump’s and Harris’s campaign money and energy.

Within that subset of states is another important sliver of voters: the undecideds. An Ipsos poll released this week said that this group accounts for only 3 per cent of likely voters in the battleground states — a tiny number reflecting America’s deep polarisation. Winning a majority of these people who haven’t yet made up their minds could decide the election, giving them huge potential power.

Who are these undecided voters? Some are male union voters who once gravitated to left-wing Bernie Sanders but now lean to Trump; or suburban conservatives turned off by the Maga rhetoric. Others are Latinos wavering on Harris because of the US’s high cost of living, or young voters who were put off by President Joe Biden’s age but are now in play for Harris. Many are women — of all political stripes, but especially conservatives — motivated by restrictions imposed on abortion in recent years, a central campaign issue for Harris.

But the two campaigns are also trying to win another broader segment of the public: people disengaged from the political process. This century, turnout in US presidential elections among eligible voters has averaged between 54 per cent in 2000 and 67 per cent in 2020, leaving a big pool to draw from. Both sides are firing up their turnout machines in the swing states, though Trump’s campaign is winning a registration race in most battlegrounds.

Pennsylvania

The most critical state in the so-called blue wall, a reference to the states that Democrats — the blue party — won in presidential elections from 1992 to 2012 and again in 2020. Trump cracked the wall in 2016. Each now has a popular Democratic governor.

Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) stretches from Philadelphia near the eastern seaboard to the industrial city of Pittsburgh in the west. It is the most populous battleground, most frequently polled, and the biggest prize of the whole election.

Harris and Trump have visited Pennsylvania frequently and spent far more on ads there than anywhere else: $187mn and $146mn, respectively. Trump was injured in July in an assassination attempt near Butler, in the rural west.

Harris’s success will depend on turning out Democratic voters in the largest cities and making gains in wealthier suburbs while limiting her losses to Trump in rural, conservative areas. Republicans have been winning the voter-registration battle in recent weeks.

Both campaigns have courted blue-collar voters in a state where manufacturing and energy production are big employers. Harris and Trump sided with the steelworkers’ union in opposing the takeover of Pittsburgh-based US Steel by a Japanese company. Harris has disavowed her previous opposition to fracking, the drilling technique crucial to Pennsylvania’s huge shale gas industry. But Trump has pummelled her on the issue.

Michigan

Michigan (15 electoral votes), home to Detroit and the hub of the US car industry, went to Biden by less than 3 points in 2020. Democrats performed strongly there in the 2022 midterm elections, when governor Gretchen Whitmer was re-elected and voters overwhelmingly backed a measure to protect abortion rights.

But Michigan has also emerged as a hub of resistance to the Biden administration’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza, where the huge Palestinian death toll has angered Michigan’s relatively numerous Arab-American voters and progressives in college towns such as Ann Arbor. Harris might need to make up for defections from her party.

Blue-collar workers are also a focus of both campaigns in Michigan. While Harris touts her support for a new electric vehicle industry and the federal support for manufacturing, Trump has attacked Democrats for jeopardising Michigan jobs to fight climate change. Affluent suburbs surrounding Detroit and Grand Rapids will be pivotal.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) is an especially heated blue wall battleground with high political engagement and fierce ideological divisions: in 2020, it had highest voter turnout of any swing state.

The Republican party chose Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, for its convention to nominate Trump, and Harris flew into Milwaukee during the Democratic convention in Chicago to hold her own rally. The electorate in Wisconsin is disproportionately white compared with other battleground states, but a strong tradition of union organising could benefit Harris. She will also need to secure strong support in the capital, Madison, among state employees and University of Wisconsin students.

Both campaigns will also focus on the traditionally Republican Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha county, where Biden in 2020 improved on Hillary Clinton’s vote in 2016, and in crucial Demoratic-leaning cities near the border with Minnesota.

One factor in Wisconsin’s farmland areas will be attitudes to Trump’s planned tariffs. The state’s farmers were hit hard by Republican trade policies during his term in the White House.

Georgia

Biden was the first Democrat to win Georgia (16 electoral votes) since Bill Clinton in 1992. His party followed up by winning two pivotal Senate races in 2021, giving Democrats control of the chamber.

Democrats have gained from growing support in Atlanta’s once-Republican suburbs and strong get-out-the-vote operations in the city itself, as well as Savannah and Augusta. Democratic US Senator Raphael Warnock, the pastor at the Atlanta church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr used to preach, has become a pivotal motivator for the Democratic base.

But the rest of Georgia remains overwhelmingly conservative. Trump has also made inroads with Georgia’s Black population, especially on the economy. He has a tense relationship with Republican governor Brian Kemp, who refused to help him overturn the 2020 election result, although Kemp has now endorsed Trump.

North Carolina

Barack Obama won the presidential vote in North Carolina (16 electoral votes) in 2008, but no Democrat has since.

Polls show that Harris is running as strongly in North Carolina as in Georgia, propelled by her strength in the so-called Research Triangle university cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill as well Charlotte and Greensboro, the other big metropolitan areas.

The Republican campaign has been rocked by a scandal involving Mark Robinson, who Trump has praised and endorsed in the run to be North Carolina’s governor. On a pornographic message board Robinson referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and supported reinstating slavery, along with many other graphic comments, according to a CNN report.

Beyond that, a big wild card in the battle for North Carolina is whether the devastation in the western part of the state due to Hurricane Helene will affect voting patterns or turnout.

Arizona

If either Harris or Trump sweep the “blue wall” and the south-eastern battlegrounds, the election will be over by the time the focus turns west. But if the result is split east of the Mississippi River, two states with fast-growing populations and a big share of Hispanic voters could settle the race.

Biden brought once reliably conservative Arizona (11 electoral votes) into the Democratic fold in 2020.

But as the only battleground state bordering Mexico, Arizona is on the frontline of a fight over immigration — among the election’s biggest issues. Trump has consistently attacked Harris for presiding over a surge of immigration, and promised mass deportations of undocumented people if he wins.

Harris, who visited a border town in Arizona late last month, has criticised Trump for blocking a bipartisan compromise in Congress this year that would have toughened immigration policy, just so he could campaign on the issue.

Democrats have succeeded in recent years in capturing votes from mainstream Republicans disenchanted with Trump. But Republicans have been gaining ground among Latinos. The fate of Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, is likely to be crucial to the state’s result.

Democrats also hope that a measure on the ballot in November to include the right to an abortion in the state constitution will drive turnout for Harris. Currently, state law allows abortions up to 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Nevada

Nevada (six electoral votes), home to gambling meccas Las Vegas and Reno, has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 2004.

But it is vulnerable for Harris, partly because of the gains Trump is making among Hispanic voters, and because the state’s economy has been particularly tough on middle- and lower-income households.

Inflation in the region has outpaced the nationwide rate in recent years, while the unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent is the highest of any US state, undermining Harris’s economic pitch.

Democrats’ successes in Nevada stem from a successful turnout operation around Las Vegas mobilised by the Culinary Workers Union. If it works again, it could help Harris offset some other weaknesses in Nevada. But with just a month left before election day, the result in Nevada — and the presidential race itself — is as uncertain as a Caesars Palace crapshoot.

Additional data visualisation by Jana Tauschinski

A SINGLE mum-of-two has been forced to move house three times in one month and fears her kids aren’t safe.

Harlie Swann, 29, has been living in temporary housing for 13 years, along with her kids; Frankie, 8, and Finnlie, 2.

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The Croydon resident was first moved into temporary accommodation after having Frankie at 21.

Harlie told MyLondon they lived there for seven years but after Frankie’s ADHD diagnosis, the home was no longer suitable.

Finnlie also has complex learning difficulties and Harlie fears “constantly moving around” is taking its toll on them all.

The family are due to move into a property in Lambeth this week marking the third time in a month Croydon Council have ripped their stability away from them.

Harlie said the constant moves come down to discovering each home is unsafe – for anyone to live in, let alone children.

In a previous home in West Norwood, the family were exposed to sewage spurting up the sink, persistent mould, and damp.

Due to the extent of the problem, environmental health assessors had to get involved.

Luckily the next house and latest home was deemed “fine on the paperwork”, Harlie explained.

However, when they moved in they discovered a major leak problem and improper fire-safe windows.

According to Harlie, the council said “don’t unpack we’ll find you somewhere else, then they found me this place in Streatham this Monday (September 30).

“It’s an absolute nightmare,” she said.

A neighbour even told Harlie that the previous tenants put up with the same problems yet the council still deemed it safe to move into.

Harlie, who experienced being homeless as a teenager said: “I saw things that no 16-year-old should have seen by living in these horrible places, and around a lot of concerning people.”

One night, she even slept in a police cell because she was so young.

She continued: “I feel like I’ve gone through so much but still, nobody is willing to give me and my kids somewhere stable and safe to live.”

Harlie’s eldest, Frankie, who has regular ADHD therapy needs extra care right now as he cannot attend school.

She said: “He needs that permanent stability.

“I go to Child and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS) three times a week with him, he is in intense therapy.

“There’s a shortage of ADHD medication at the moment, which means he’s not taking his medication.

“The school have said they can’t have him there any more because he had an issue with the teachers.

“Because of this I’m having him stay with me at home, but this is all going on at home and they’re expecting me to deal with all of this.

“It’s too much.”

Temporary accommodation or interim accommodation is organised by the council and exists for people who are at risk of becoming homeless.

People will live there until a permanent home can be found.

Harlie said: “They can make me move out in 24 hours because it’s classed as interim emergency accommodations.

“It’s not even temporary accommodation, it’s the lowest of the low basically.

“If they then decide I’m moving you again I will have to pack up all my stuff again.

“I’m in a constant state of not knowing what the hell I’m meant to be doing.”

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Harlie feels she is experiencing “one problem after another” and the family “need to be in a set routine”.

She continued: “The kids also get a lack of attention as well, because my time feels like it’s constantly filled with emails to the council.”

Harlie feels the council don’t truly understand the trauma her family are experiencing.

She said: “I have so many letters from the GP, CAMHS, the school and social workers.

“Nothing like that seems to make a dent with them, nothing seems to help with me getting a more permanent place to stay.

“I don’t care where they place me, they could place me anywhere.

“However, because I’ve got them it makes it that much bit harder, especially with all of their requirements.”

In an attempt to secure a forever home, for the past nine years Harlie has bid for council housing via the local bidding system.

Each time she has been left empty handed.

She said: “I don’t understand why I haven’t been given that yet.

“I know everybody’s circumstances are different but it hurts.”

Harlie is also a trained teaching assistant and has qualified as a parent group leader for local children’s centres but due to Frankie’s needs and her housing situation, she’s had to put her career on hold.

She told MyLondon that having to move so much is putting pressure on her financially.

Having to pay for three moving vans in two weeks has left her with “no money left”, she said.

She hopes her new home will give the family the stability they need but fears it could result in yet another disappointment.

Harlie said: “I’m a good tenant, I’ve always looked after my properties.

“There just must be a mark against my name, because I constantly feel like I’m at the bottom of the pile.”

Croydon Council have been approached for a comment.

Several migrants including a child have died while attempting to cross the English Channel.

At least four migrants died in two separate incidents, according to local newspaper La Voix du Nord.

They include a child who was “trampled to death” on a boat, according to the French Interior Ministry.

“Today several people died trying to cross the Channel,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau wrote on social media.

“A child was trampled to death in a boat. A terrible incident that must make us all aware of the tragedy that is unfolding.

“The people smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands and our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who are getting rich by organising these crossings of death.”

More details are expected at a press conference in Calais later.

The AFP news agency reports that a migrant boat heading towards Britain called for assistance on Saturday morning and rescuers picked up 14 people on board, including the child.

An injured migrant on the boat was airlifted to a hospital in Boulogne, France, and the remaining passengers on the boat continued their journey, it reported.

Officials said the child was found in the boat.

The fatal incident comes after the Home Office confirmed that 395 migrants arrived in the UK crossed the English Channel on Friday in the first arrivals in five days.

The latest arrivals, who had travelled in seven boats, bring the total for the year to 25,639.

This compares to 25,330 by the same date last year and 33,611 in 2022.

Some of those arriving on Friday were pictured wearing life jackets as they were brought to shore at Dover on a Border Force vessel.

The arrivals came on the same day as the UK and other G7 nations agreed an anti-smuggling action plan designed to boost co-operation on the issue following talks in Italy.

The Home Office said this includes joint investigations and intelligence-sharing in a bid to target criminal smuggling routes.

The action plan also details “working collaboratively” with social media companies to monitor the internet and different platforms to prevent them being used to enable migrant smuggling and people trafficking.

This includes calling on social media companies “to do more to respond to online content that advertises migrant smuggling services”.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.

“As we have seen with so many recent devastating tragedies in the Channel, the people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay. We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.

“We are making progress, bolstering our personnel numbers in the UK and abroad. Our new Border Security Command will strengthen our global partnerships and enhance our efforts to investigate, arrest and prosecute these evil criminals.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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Investors seeking returns from the buoyant American market are turning to European stocks which have significant US exposure but are trading at a discount to their transatlantic counterparts, equity investors say.

Groups such as UK defence group BAE Systems, France’s Schneider Electric and pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk are among the big European names that have risen sharply this year as investors hunt for cheaper, similar versions of top-performing US companies.

BAE has risen 17 per cent, Schneider is up 29 per cent and Novo Nordisk has gained 11 per cent.

“The fact you’re able to get these businesses at a lower valuation is being overlooked,” said Dev Chakrabarti, chief investment officer for concentrated global growth at AllianceBernstein, which holds positions in several Europe-based companies with large US exposure, including SAP.

“That’s a pricing inefficiency that we continue to exploit, and we do expect to get paid on that inefficiency,” Chakrabarti added.

Friday’s strong US jobs data strengthened investors’ expectations that America will pull off a so-called soft landing, in which inflation falls rapidly but it maintains robust growth and strong employment. However, sentiment for the outlook in Europe has been more negative, where business activity has slowed as inflation has fallen.

Dozens of large European companies generate the bulk of their sales in the US. Novo Nordisk, which makes the best-selling Ozempic and Wegovy weight-loss drugs, earns close to 60 per cent of its revenues from the US, while the market is nearly 50 per cent of defence giant BAE Systems’ turnover.

However Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, Europe’s largest company by market capitalisation, has trailed US competitor Eli Lilly, whose shares have soared 51 per cent this year.

Some investors argue this makes the European group the more attractive investment, as it trades at a price-to earnings ratio to December 2025 of 27 times, compared with 39 times for its US rival, according to data from FactSet.

Steven Smith, an equity investment director at Capital Group, said he saw opportunities in European pharmaceutical and semiconductor businesses, with these multinationals trading at discounts against their American peers.

“Where there’s a European and US equivalent, the former is trading at a valuation discount and we would say that’s an opportunity,” Smith added.

Phil Macartney, a European equities fund manager at Jupiter Asset Management, said it was picking companies such as data provider Experian, power group Schneider Electric and software maker SAP, which have both US exposure and were likely to benefit from further interest rate cuts. “The earnings power has remained with them,” he said.

Louise Dudley, a portfolio manager at Federated Hermes, said that pairing European companies’ improved governance — including workforce conditions and robust plans for the transition to net zero — with US exposure was one further advantage.

“A European-based company that meets these standards but has exposure to the US market as a growth driver is an attractive company,” Dudley added.

In July Goldman Sachs urged clients to build positions in about 45 European businesses with large US exposure to leverage higher growth, as the 12 month forward price-to-earnings ratio on its basket of selected stocks was at the time trading at its lowest level since the global financial crisis.

Sharon Bell, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said: “European companies have always been very global. This isn’t unusual . . . what’s changed is the US has gone on a much bigger premium.”

The bank has since changed its rating to “no active recommendation” as stocks have risen. Even so, the basket — which includes Novo Nordisk, BAE Systems and Stellantis — remains below its longtime average.

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Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro plans to issue the national budget by decree after lawmakers refused his proposed spending increases, his finance minister said — a move unprecedented since the current constitution was enacted more than three decades ago.

His government, the first from the left in Colombia’s modern history, had sought a 523tn peso ($126bn) budget for 2025, but a congressional committee rejected that last month and demanded lower spending. Some lawmakers accused Petro of seeking to bolster support with giveaways ahead of 2026 elections.

Petro and finance minister Ricardo Bonilla said in response that they would push the package through by decree, a manoeuvre permitted by Colombia’s constitution but not used since it was adopted in 1991.

“The rule is clear that if congress is unable to make a decision — and there was no debate — then the government can pass it by decree,” Bonilla told the Financial Times.

“The norm states that the budget is a government initiative and therefore it is the government that has all the power to make decisions,” he said. “But there is nothing extraordinary about that, nor is it true when people say that this is some kind of fiscal dictatorship.”

The government has until October 20 to secure next year’s budget through congress, which Bonilla said was impossible. Instead, the government will issue a budget decree between October 21 and December 30.

Any decree would probably be challenged in the constitutional court, Bonilla admitted. “There’s every possibility that [the decree] will be challenged and the court will have to decide, but the court has ruled [in favour of] decree power in the past and I don’t think it will change its opinion,” he said.

Petro, who in his youth belonged to an urban guerrilla group, took office in 2022 promising to overhaul the country’s orthodox economic model, which has been underpinned by public-private partnerships.

His pension reform was passed in June, but he has been widely frustrated by lawmakers rejecting proposals to expand the state’s role in the health system and tighten labour laws.

Petro has often painted policy setbacks as a “soft coup” by shady elites and opposition politicians, and has floated the possibility of drafting a new constitution.

His critics argue his threats over the budget indicate a desire to resist the country’s system of checks and balances. Mauricio Cárdenas, finance minister from 2012 to 2018, said Petro was emulating Mexico’s former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who used budgeted cash transfers to consolidate support.

“The government understands that one of the strategies that can be used to increase its support is by providing more cash transfers,” Cárdenas said, adding that Petro’s inability to work with congress represented a “failure”. “It shows weakness and that Petro is not willing to compromise.”

Bonilla said that while “every budget has political components”, opposition claims that the government wanted to influence the 2026 election “are without any sense”.

Petro has also bristled against the central bank, last week making an unusual call on its board to issue money to victims of Colombia’s decades-long, ongoing civil war.

Petro’s approval ratings have hovered around 35 per cent for months.

The budget dispute comes as Colombia’s economy struggles to regain momentum. Growth is forecast at a sluggish 1.7 per cent this year, and while inflation fell to an annual 6.1 per cent in August, it remains well above the government’s year-end target of 3 per cent. 

The peso has lost 9.76 per cent of its value against the dollar since June, while the central bank’s easing cycle is likely to keep pressure on the currency. 

The country’s fiscal deficit is expected to reach 5.6 per cent of GDP at the end of this year, while the government in June announced a 20tn pesos ($4.7bn) spending cut to comply with the fiscal rule, a policy overseen by an independent committee that is designed to prevent public finances from deteriorating.

The government has said it will push a tax reform through congress to raise $2.89bn for its proposed 2025 budget increase, in part by raising taxes on betting. If the budget were to be decreed but thrown out by the constitutional court, that would leave the government with a smaller 503tn pesos ($118.8bn) budget approved.

Political risk is hurting investor confidence, said Andrés Pardo, head of Latin America strategy at XP Investments.

“On one hand the budget issue sends negative signals to the markets over this inconsistent, erratic and unrealistic management of public finances,” Pardo said. “And on the other hand, the government is perpetuating a populist narrative of discrediting institutions.”

Bonilla blamed congress for the budget impasse. “This time, the problem is that congress did not want to negotiate,” he said.