Ohio Sen. JD Vance dismissed polling that shows Vice President Kamala Harris has taken the lead nationally and in key battleground states, arguing that the same polls were inaccurate in 2016 and 2020.

‘The polls tend to radically overstate Democrats, we certainly saw that during the summer of 2020 and summer of 2016 and, of course, a lot of those polls were wrong when it came to Election Day,’ Vance said during an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

The comments came after Fox News’ Shannon Bream told Vance about a recent New York Times poll that showed Harris ahead of former President Trump in Arizona and North Carolina at the same time as she has narrowed Trump’s lead ‘significantly’ in Georgia and Nevada.

‘What we have certainly seen is that Kamala Harris got a bit of a sugar high a couple of weeks ago, but what we’ve actually seen from our own internal data is that Kamala Harris has already leveled off,’ Vance said. ‘If you talk to insiders in the Kamala Harris campaign, they’re very worried about where they are because the American people just don’t buy the idea that Kamala Harris, who has been vice president for three and a half years, is somehow going to tackle the inflation crisis in a way tomorrow that she hasn’t for the past 1,300 days.’

Confronted with an ABC News/Washington Post poll that showed Harris with a 4-5 point lead over Trump nationally, Vance argued that the same poll has been off during past elections.

‘I think there are a lot of polls that actually show her stagnating and leveling off,’ Vance said. ‘ABC/Washington Post was a wildly inaccurate polster in the summer of 2020.’

According to the Real Clear Politics polling average, Harris took the national lead over Trump for the first time on Aug. 5 and has since grown that lead to 1.4 points.

The polling average also shows Harris with slim leads in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, while Trump holds slim leads in Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, is currently tied, the Real Clear Politics polling average shows.

Nevertheless, Vance argued that the Trump campaign cannot worry about polls and instead has to continue to work to get their message out.

‘If you see the numbers that we’re seeing, and you actually talk to the American people, I feel extremely confident we’re going to be in the right place come November,’ Vance said. ‘We can’t worry about polls, we have to run through the finish line, and encourage everybody to get out there and vote.’

There are 79 days until Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 5.

But if Americans vote like they did in the last two election cycles, most of them will have already cast a ballot before the big day.

Early voting starts as soon as Sept. 6 for eligible voters, with seven battleground states sending out ballots to at least some voters the same month.

It makes the next few months less a countdown to Election Day, and more the beginning of ‘election season.’

States have long allowed at least some Americans to vote early, like members of the military or people with illnesses. 

In some states, almost every voter casts a ballot by mail.

Many states expanded eligibility in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic made it riskier to vote in-person.

That year, the Fox News Voter Analysis found that 71% of voters cast their ballots before Election Day, with 30% voting early in-person and 41% voting by mail.

Early voting remained popular in the midterms, with 57% of voters casting a ballot before Election Day.

Elections officials stress that voting early is safe and secure. Recounts, investigations and lawsuits filed after the 2020 election did not reveal evidence of widespread fraud or corruption. 

The difference between ‘early in-person’ and ‘mail’ or ‘absentee’ voting.

There are a few ways to vote before Election Day.

The first is , where a voter casts a regular ballot in-person at a voting center before Election Day.

The second is , where the process and eligibility varies by state.

Eight states vote mostly by mail, including California, Colorado, Nevada and Utah. Registered voters receive ballots and send them back.

Most states allow any registered voter to request a mail ballot and send it back. This is also called mail voting, or sometimes absentee voting. Depending on the state, voters can return their ballot by mail, at a drop box, and/or at an office or facility that accepts mail ballots.

In 14 states, voters must have an excuse to vote by mail, ranging from illness, age, work hours or if a voter is out of their home county on Election Day.

States process and tabulate ballots at different times. Some states don’t begin counting ballots until election night, which delays the release of results.

Voting begins on Sept. 6 in North Carolina, with seven more battleground states starting that month

This list of early voting dates is for guidance only. For comprehensive and up-to-date information on voter eligibility, processes and deadlines, go to Vote.gov and your state’s elections website.

The first voters to be sent absentee ballots will be in North Carolina, which begins mailing out ballots for eligible voters on Sept. 6.

Seven more battleground states open up early voting the same month, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada.

September deadlines

In-person early voting in bold.

Sept. 6

North Carolina – Absentee ballots sent to voters

Sept. 16

Pennsylvania – Mail-in ballots sent to voters

Sept. 17

Georgia – Absentee ballots sent to military & overseas

Sept. 19

Wisconsin – Absentee ballots sent

Sept. 20

Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Wyoming – Absentee ballots sent to military & overseas
Minnesota, South Dakota – In-person absentee voting begins
Virginia – In-person early voting begins
Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia – Absentee ballots sent

Sept. 21

Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington – Absentee ballots sent to military & overseas
Indiana, New Mexico – Absentee ballots sent
Maryland, New Jersey – Mail-in ballots sent

Sept. 23

Mississippi – In-person absentee voting begins & absentee ballots sent
Oregon, Vermont – Absentee ballots sent

Sept. 26

Illinois – In-person early voting begins 
Michigan – Absentee ballots sent
Florida, Nevada – Mail-in ballots sent
North Dakota – Absentee & mail-in ballots sent

Sept. 30

Nebraska – Mail-in ballots sent

Oct. 4

Connecticut – Absentee ballots sent

Oct. 6

Michigan – In-person early voting begins 
Maine – In-person absentee voting begins & mail ballots sent
California – In-person absentee voting begins & mail ballots sent
Montana – In-person absentee voting begins
Nebraska – In-person early voting begins 
Georgia – Absentee ballots sent
Massachusetts – Mail-in ballots sent

Oct. 8

California – Ballot drop-offs open
New Mexico, Ohio – In-person absentee voting begins
Indiana – In-person early voting begins
Wyoming – In-person absentee voting begins & absentee ballots sent

Oct. 9

Arizona – In-person early voting begins & mail ballots sent

Oct. 11

Colorado – Mail-in ballots sent
Arkansas, Alaska – Absentee ballots sent

Oct. 15

Georgia – In-person early voting begins
Utah – Mail-in ballots sent

Oct. 16

Rhode Island, Kansas, Tennessee – In-person early voting begins
Iowa – In-person absentee voting begins
Oregon, Nevada – Mail-in ballots sent

Oct. 17

North Carolina – In-person early voting begins 

Oct. 18

Washington, Louisiana – In-person early voting begins
Hawaii – Mail-in ballots sent

Oct. 19

Nevada, Massachusetts – In-person early voting begins 
Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas – In-person early voting begins 
Colorado – Ballot drop-offs open

Oct. 22

Hawaii, Utah – In-person early voting begins 
Missouri, Wisconsin – In-person absentee voting begins

Oct. 23

West Virginia – In-person early voting begins

Oct. 24

Maryland – In-person early voting begins

Oct. 25

Delaware – In-person early voting begins

Oct. 26

Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, New York – In-person early voting begins 

Oct. 30

Oklahoma – In-person early voting begins 

Oct. 31

Kentucky – In-person absentee voting begins

It’s the Democrats’ race to lose. 

That’s the view of liberal activist and filmmaker Michael Moore who has warned Democrats not to fumble their chances of beating former President Trump in November’s presidential election now that Vice President Kamala Harris heads the ticket.

The outspoken and influential Moore told the Guardian that the party is riding on a wave of optimism following President Biden’s decision to bow out of the race after succumbing to unwavering pressure from powerful left-wing voices, including Moore.

‘This isn’t just a sugar-high or what [recovering] heroin addicts call a pink cloud,’ Moore told the U.K. publication. ‘It was so depressing for so many weeks and then it was instantly not depressing. I am hopeful now but it’s ours to blow – and we have a history of blowing it.’

Moore has been here before. He warned Democrats of Trump beating Hillary Clinton in his 2016 movie ‘in Trumpland’ where he said Trump’s message appealed to disenfranchised voters in Michigan and other battleground states. 

In 2020, he took to X and said that enthusiasm for Trump was ‘off the charts’ and pleaded with Democrats to come together to defeat the incumbent. 

Moore says he’s happy Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and that he’s confident Harris can inflict serious damage on Trump when they debate next month.

‘Once anybody gets under that thin skin anything can happen,’ Moore says. ‘On live TV? Trump could explode, start talking like a 12-year-old, though no offense to 12-year-olds, or get up and leave.’

‘I understand why people are nervous it might be a sugar high but Harris and Walz are people of substance. They’re being slow and cautious enough to get it together. It’s just been a couple of weeks. They are going to have to tell us what they’re going to do and hopefully come up with the right thing. And there will be mistakes.’

Moore hailed Harris’ decision not to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to congress last month, signaling a change of direction while urging her to cater to the party’s anti-Israel base.

‘Young people hate war and they’re totally against Biden and his support of the war.’ 

He says Harris needs to tap into ‘affordable housing, student debt, peace and the dying planet.’

Moore says the way to beat Trump is to continue doing ‘weird and cringe until the debate and then nail him.’ 

‘But nail him with irony, satire and a simple way to point out the beyond weird absolute idiocy and insanity of what these two men are talking about. Reach them on a commonsense level so it doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican.’

Democrats have been labeling the Trump-Vance ticket as ‘weird’ as part of a new line of criticism, while the Harris-Walz campaign have been criticized for their cringeworthy and scripted online videos. 

Last month, Moore joined many on the Left in calling for Biden to drop out of the race and allow Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place.

‘May I ask you, Mr. President, for one more brave and bold action?’ Moore wrote in a Substack article days before Biden withdrew. Weeks earlier, he accused the Democratic Party of committing ‘elder abuse’ by continuing to push President Biden to stay in the race.

‘She will have three and a half months (as they say, ‘an eternity in politics’) to show the American people her smarts, her strengths, her heart,’ he continued. ‘She is fierce, and compassionate, and unstoppable. She will have the power to issue significant executive orders that can provide help to the middle class, protect the environment, restore basic women’s rights.’ 

Resounding calls for Vice President Kamala Harris to conduct press interviews are mounting after the Democratic presidential nominee unveiled her economic plan days before heading to her party’s national convention in Chicago.

Tim Murtaugh, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told Fox News Digital Harris is running the ‘most deceitful campaign in history’ as she ‘hides from the American people.’

Murtaugh added that Harris is following President Biden’s lead in avoiding the media.

‘While she hides from the American people like Joe Biden always does, she’s pretending to hold the opposite position on everything she’s ever stood for as a San Francisco liberal,’ the Republican nominee’s adviser said.

Harris has gone 27 days without giving a formal interview or holding a press conference since Biden dropped out of the race and she quickly rose to take his spot. 

CNN’s Jim Acosta pressed a Harris campaign spokesperson Wednesday on why she had avoided doing a press conference.

Harris communications director Michael Tyler said she and her running mate, Tim Walz, had been ‘busy’ traveling across the country and conducting campaign rallies.

Tyler assured Acosta that Harris would be sitting down for an interview by the end of the month. 

‘Kamalanomics’

On Wednesday, Harris announced that, as president, she would institute a federal price-fixing plan ‘on food and groceries’ in an attempt to stop ‘big corporations’ from taking advantage of consumers.

Harris has framed her economic road map, dubbed by social media pundits as ‘Kamalanomics,’ as an ‘opportunity economy’ plan. Her price control plan includes expanded down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers and providing a $6,000 child tax credit for first-time parents.

Murtaugh told Fox News Digital Harris is choosing not to say that her economic policy supports higher taxes for Americans.

‘On taxes, she’s promised to eliminate the Trump tax cuts, and she voted against the package when it expanded the child tax credit,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter what she says today. When she had the choice, she supported higher taxes.

‘No wonder her handlers don’t want her to talk. Every time she does, she causes problems for herself.’

Since Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz joined the Harris ticket as her running mate, Trump gave press conferences at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and Bedminster, New Jersey, and was part of a lengthy sit-down with tech billionaire and supporter Elon Musk. 

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has spoken to reporters multiple times in that period and has appeared on a series of shows.

In the late 1970s, ‘Saturday Night Live’ ran a sketch with Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor in which the black and white comedians engaged in a word association game that consisted of them hurling racial slurs at each other, culminating in the racial slur. 

It was hilarious and something that would never be broadcast today. But what can be broadcast today was the bizarre ‘white guy taco’ comedy skit that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz released this week.

In the clearly scripted and cringworthy clip, Harris asks Walz if, as a white guy, his tacos consist of mayonnaise and tuna. Then folksy old Tim chuckles and says something about how black pepper is the hottest thing he, as a white guy, eats. 

Setting aside the fact that white people eat spicy foods like buffalo wings at a rate that boggles the mind, this bit exposes the hypocrisy of the progressive left’s view of race.

It is obvious to everyone that the Harris-Walz campaign would not release a video in which he jokes about Kamala eating fried chicken. This is because in the 1980s and 1990s new rules emerged under which races were not to be treated equally but differently, depending on their perceived place in the hierarchy of power.

This change meant that Chevy Chase could no longer use the N word for a joke, but Richard Pryor could still use ‘cracker.’ This is a double standard that many people have grown uncomfortable with, and we are seeing a lot of it from the Harris campaign.

In both the white women and white dude Zoom calls that were held in support of Kamala, the clear message was that white people are to blame for Donald Trump, and everything else they think is wrong with the country, and now white people must accept that guilt, and graciously hand power over to wiser people of color.

Just as in the case of cultural appropriation, where white culture is the only one that belongs to everyone, making white people the only group that can be the butt of derogatory jokes, or told their skin color makes them guilty of something, centers whiteness in exactly the way the left pretends to reject.

In a very real way, progressives are creating the white supremacy they say they oppose by making white people the only ones strong enough to handle a joke or to see their cultural traditions adopted by others. 

Now, the Left will argue that Harris was ‘punching up,’ with her tuna and mayo joke, and that Walz would be ‘punching down’ if he joked about Black or Indian food. But that is a perverse and un-American way to think about human beings. Nobody is above or below anyone else because of their skin color.

The silly sketch from the Democratic ticket isn’t horrible racism that requires a march on Washington, but the Harris campaign picked that specific joke and it’s not an isolated incident. Walz as the self-deprecating white guy, sitcom dad is clearly a theme they are pushing.

More and more Americans, especially those four generations removed from the successes of the civil rights movement, are not comfortable with this racial double standard, and for that reason alone we should knock it off.

From the 1950s through the 1980’s, comedy was an essential tool in overcoming racism in America, but it worked precisely because, as with Chase and Pryor, everyone was subject to the jokes. That was equality.

The Harris campaign, much more so than the Biden campaign, is seeking to treat Americans not as equal and unique individuals, but as members of their racial group, with separate Zoom calls and rules about jokes. 

It is well past time for Americans to reject this kind of thinking and return to the very simple and easy way of treating everyone the same way regardless of their race. Sadly, that is not something Harris and her campaign seem to want. Instead, they want us focused time and again on skin color.

For now, the Tim Walz white guy minstrel show goes on, but it is not funny, it is not helpful to anyone, and it is a show that deserves to be canceled. 

JD Vance hit the campaign trail in Milwaukee on Friday, debuting his family’s four-legged-friend as he hits the road as former President Trump’s vice presidential pick.

Atlas, a German shepherd, energetically bounded up the stairs of a Trump campaign plane despite the rainy weather.

‘Atlas had a great time on the campaign trail today, and unlike Kamala, enjoyed meeting the press on the plane!’ said Taylor Van Kirk, Vance spokeswoman, in an exclusive comment to Fox News Digital.

Vance’s wife Usha also joined her husband and their dog in Milwaukee while campaigning on Friday.

Vance poked fun at his pooch in a post attached to a video on X, which now has over 10k likes.

‘Can’t really tell in this video, but he was *not happy* about the wet metal stairs. He’s doing good on the plane though,’ said Vance.

‘We’ve had two GSDs, and both of them do this thing where they find the one person who doesn’t like dogs and they suck up to them.’

Atlas’ eventful day didn’t end with his boarding of the Trump plane. The flight made an emergency landing back in Milwaukee soon afterward.

Actress Jane Fonda and other climate change activists gathered Friday to tout the Harris-Walz campaign as ‘a proud climate ticket.’

Climate Voters for Harris kicked off a virtual call Friday, two years since the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, to discuss ‘the historic accomplishments of the IRA. We’ll hear messaging guidance and the best ways for Climate Voters to get involved in the campaign.’

The call was hosted by Sweta Chakraborty, a behavioral scientist, who said there was ‘palpable’ excitement about Harris being the Democratic nominee.

The call also included celebrity appearances from Fonda and TV personality Bill Nye.

Fonda encouraged people to ‘vote with climate in their hearts,’ claiming the Harris-Walz ticket is ‘our only hope.’

‘Sitting it out, voting for a third-party candidate, this is voting for the orange man,’ she told listeners on the call.

Other speakers included former Secretary of State John Kerry; Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.; and Democratic Washington state Gov. James Inslee.

Inslee said, ‘Kamala Harris really gets this’ issue, sharing a story of being at the White House and the vice president telling him ‘how excited she was’ about climate issues.

Jake Schwartz, interim Climate Voters director for the campaign, said, ‘Harris-Walz is a proud climate ticket.’ 

Some speakers took aim at the Trump-Vance ticket, claiming they ‘cater to polluters’ and want to ‘roll back America’s freedoms.’

Harris is a longtime supporter of climate change, once claiming in a recently resurfaced clip that young people are not buying homes or having kids because of ‘climate anxiety.’

Claims made this week by the head of Russia’s technology development for its Defense Ministry suggesting that Moscow is ‘ahead’ when it comes to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race that erupted amid the war in Ukraine are being shot down by one top expert.

Speaking from a Military-Technical Forum held in Moscow this week, Gen. Vasily Elistratov, head of the Kremlin’s AI development, claimed on Wednesday that Russia is ‘ahead of our foreign partners’ despite ‘attempts to isolate us at the technical level.’

Russia’s more than two-year-long invasion of Ukraine has driven an AI race as Kyiv, Moscow and NATO nations rush to advance their AI capabilities for wartime applications. 

But while the war has brought renewed focus to AI-integrated defense systems, particularly when it comes to the development of autonomous weapons systems, Russian President Vladimir Putin has long made developing AI a top priority.

In 2017, five years prior to the largest war Europe has seen since World War II, Putin declared, ‘Whoever leads in AI will rule the world,’ and by 2022, Russia had grown its AI market by 18 percent in that year alone, according to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

Moscow doubled down on its AI efforts last year and allocated some $54 million of its federal 2024 budget for AI investment – though that is just a fraction of the $1.8 billion that the U.S. has allocated for AI in its 2024 and 2025 defense budgets.

Despite Moscow’s efforts, former DIA intelligence officer and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ Rebekah Koffler, told Fox News Digital, ‘It is highly unlikely that Russia is ahead of the U.S. in AI development.’

Koffler explained that from the beginning, the U.S. and Russia have taken different approaches when it comes to AI, and while Washington focused its efforts of technological advancement, Moscow also focused on how it could use AI for psychological warfare. 

‘When you have a cyberattack, not only can it disrupt your computer, it can also have a psychological impact on the user,’ she explained. ‘In wartime, you can disorganize forces by attacking computer [systems].’

Koffler pointed to the clear psychological impact that Russia has made on entire populations following its use of disinformation campaigns, propaganda, digital fakes and election interference – a strategy the U.S. and the West typically do not pursue. 

‘The U.S. just doesn’t do that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘That’s just not how we operate.

 ‘In regard to Russia, it’s always been a thing – not just for foreign audiences but for domestic,’ Koffler continued. ‘With the power of AI, you can spread disinformation a lot faster.’

This could mean that Moscow may be ahead when it comes to decision-making technologies, Koffler said, though she reiterated her doubt that Russia was beating the U.S. in any aspect of AI development. 

The U.S. began employing AI technologies in warfare at the tail end of its War on Terror in Afghanistan in a move to alleviate the burden that U.S. and coalition forces were under as they attempted to maintain human intelligence networks on the Taliban amid the drawdown. 

From the beginning, human oversight has played a major role in how the U.S. and its Western allies approach ‘responsible’ AI employment in wartime, and it remains unclear how this specific factor could play a role in adversarial strategizing when it comes to AI on the battlefield. 

But it wasn’t just the U.S. that Elistratov was likely referring to when he propped up Moscow’s AI developments compared to its ‘partners.’

China, a top ally of Russia, has been making great strides when it comes to AI development and is frequently considered the U.S.’s chief competitor in the race to develop all aspects of the burgeoning technology. 

Koffler said that while Moscow is almost certainly beating allies like Iran and North Korea in the AI race, it is more likely that Russia is ‘close’ to China when it comes to AI development.