The Beyoncé song “Freedom” has become Kamala Harris’ anthem – and it was a message the vice president took to the campaign trail, as CBS News traveled with Harris over two days for a behind-the-scenes look during the final stretch of the 2024 election. 

Asked by “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell why she chose to campaign that night in Texas (a reliably red state), Harris replied, “Texas is ground zero on this most extraordinary issue, which is that we are fighting for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.”

On Friday, at Houston’s Shell Energy Stadium – the vice president’s largest rally yet – 30,000 people endured 90-degree heat to hear her scorching new attack on Texas’ strict abortion ban, which has become a lightning rod for women’s rights.

In an attack on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit aimed at accessing women’s medical records if they cross state lines to seek an abortion where it is legal, Harris said, “On the one hand, Donald Trump won’t let anyone see his medical records. And on the other hand, they want to get their hands on your medical records. Simply put: They are out of their minds.”

It was a message underscored by Beyoncé, who told the crowd, “I’m not here as a celebrity; I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother, a mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided.”

On Saturday, in the battleground state of Michigan, former first lady Michelle Obama campaigned with Harris for the first time, challenging men to see women’s health care as a life-or-death matter. “If we don’t get this election right,” Obama said, “your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”

Harris then told the audience, “I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.”

When questioned about the process of restoring the right to an abortion that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned in 2022, Harris said, “Let’s put back in place Roe vs. Wade. …

“When Roe v. Wade was intact, for 50 years, half a century, women, together with their physicians, we’re here in a medical office talking with physicians. Women, in consultation, if they chose, with their priest, their pastor, their rabbi, their imam were able to make those [decisions].”

Asked if she also supported abortion restrictions after viability, Harris replied, “I support Roe v. Wade being put back into law by Congress, and to restore the fundamental right of women to make decisions about their own body. It is that basic.”

O’Donnell said, “But you know there were, there are restrictions – with Roe v. Wade there were restrictions after viability.”

“We would not be debating this if Donald Trump had not hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris continued. “And what we have seen, as demonstrated last night [when women at the Houston rally spoke of the effects of the Texas abortion ban], and every day these last two years, is extraordinary harm that has occurred in America, where women have died because of Trump abortion bans; where women who have survived rape and girls incest, and no exception for someone whose body has been violated, to make a decision about what happens to their body next.

“We have seen women who are experiencing a miscarriage around a pregnancy they prayed for, and being denied healthcare because doctors are afraid they’re gonna go to prison, and those women developing sepsis. We have seen extraordinary harm and pain and suffering happen because of what Donald Trump did in intending and effectuating and overturning of Roe v. Wade. Yes, my first priority is to put back in place those protections and to stop this pain, and to stop this injustice that is happening around our country.”

O’Donnell asked, “So then, why not say what restrictions you would support as part of that?”

“I’ve told you: Let’s put back in place Roe v. Wade,” Harris replied.

“And when you argue that Donald Trump, if elected, would put forward a national abortion ban?”

“Just read Project 2025,” Harris said. [Project 2025 includes dozens of proposals for further restricting abortion, including outlawing abortion drugs and criminalizing shipping them through the mail.]

“The former president said that’s not true, he would veto [it],” O’Donnell said.

“He says everything – come on, are we really taking his word for it?” Harris replied. “He said that women should be punished. He has been all over the place on this. But I’m too busy watching what he’s doing to see what he has said.”

Harris is on the trail in Pennsylvania today, and plans to make a major address this coming Tuesday – one week ahead of Election Day. Her speech will be not in a battleground state, but in Washington, D.C., at the same place where Trump spoke to his supporters before they attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“I would, and do, think about that place more in the context of what will be behind me, which is the White House,” Harris said. “And I’m doing it there because I think it is very important for the American people to see and think about who will be occupying that space on January 20th. And the reality of it is that most Americans can visualize the Oval Office; we’ve seen it on television. And this is a real scenario. It’s either gonna be Donald Trump, or it’s gonna be me sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.”

With nine days left to go before Election Day, the vice president said there’s no doubt about what her closing arguments will be: Drawing a distinction between her plans, and those of her opponent.

She says that Trump’s first priority will be “people like him – not people like the people who are watching this right now, people who work hard, seniors, for example, who are depending on that Social Security check as the only source of their income, when Donald Trump is saying we should raise the age of Social Security to 70 before you’re eligible.”

O’Donnell said, “He says he’s going to cut taxes on their benefits.”

“He has been consistent [on that issue],” Harris said. “Again, Google Project 2025 about what he thinks about Social Security, and why he thinks it is nothing that should be supported. His intention’s to cut Medicare and Medicare benefits. His intention [is] – look, again, at Project 2025 – to repeal the $35 a month cap on insulin that we have put in place.”

“Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025,” said O’Donnell. “He says that is not his campaign plan.”

Harris replied, “As you know, I am a former prosecutor. His DNA is all over it. All over it. His running mate wrote the foreword to the book of the author of Project 2025. I believe Donald Trump’s name appears at least 300 times in Project 2025. And it is a blueprint, a detailed blueprint, that is about the danger and the detail of what Donald Trump and his allies plan if he is in the White House again.”

Additional excerpts from Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Kamala Harris will appear Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”; on Monday on “CBS Mornings” and the “CBS Evening News”; and on the CBS News 24/7 Streaming Network.

Story produced by Ed Forgotson and Julie Morse. Editor: George Pozderec.

      
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Amid an election-defining gender gap that is now tied for the largest this year, the already close presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump has become closer still.

But vote differences in the 2024 election between men and women are not just crosstabs on a poll memo. They reflect divergent attitudes about larger social matters, such as gender equality in the U.S. More immediately, they mark differences in how candidates are seen, with more women saying only Harris has the cognitive health to serve and more men thinking Trump would be a “strong leader.” 

Here’s one example. Men are more likely to say efforts in the U.S. to promote gender equality have gone too far of late. When they do, they’re voting overwhelmingly for Trump.

Women are more apt to say those efforts haven’t gone far enough. Voters who say this are overwhelmingly for Harris. 

And on this candidate assessment: women are a full 10 points more likely than men to say that only Kamala Harris has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, and Trump does not. 

Men are less likely than women to think Harris will be a strong leader. 

But a sizable majority of men think Trump will be a strong leader. 

For both men and women who think Harris would be a strong leader, a quarter say it is because she is a woman. For those who think Harris won’t be a strong leader, nearly 1 in 5 say it’s at least partly because she is a woman. 

In all, it nets out to even — and to an even-tighter contest. It’s tied across the composite battleground states collectively, and Harris is down to just a +1 in national vote preference. (Harris had once been at +3 in the battlegrounds in September and it narrowed to +1 two weeks ago. Trump has incrementally erased a 4-point national edge Harris had after their debate.) 

In individual CBS estimates from the specific battlegrounds, it’s also effectively tied. For context, in recent history, Democrats have needed a larger national polling lead to imply competitive Electoral College chances across the battlegrounds because so many of their national votes have come from larger, safely blue coastal states. But this year, at least so far, we see a different pattern in which the battlegrounds track more closely to the national.

Addressing the concerns of men and women

On balance, voters say women face more discrimination than men do today, and women are especially apt to say so. But men who think men face at least some discrimination (and half of them do) are voting for Trump. Women who think women face discrimination are overwhelming for Harris.

There’s also a gender gap on who thinks they’re getting attention from the campaign.

Most men think Trump is paying the right amount of attention to the concerns of men, but many think Harris is paying too little.

Women, by contrast, say Harris is paying enough attention to women’s concerns, but don’t think Trump is. 

A sizable 4 in 10 women think Trump’s campaign is paying too much attention to men.

But the percentage who say the U.S. is “ready to elect a Black woman as president” has risen, and this majority includes people who are voting for Harris and many who are not.

Approaches to governance

There’s plenty of talk in this campaign about how the candidates might lead as president, not just about policies. And on that we see differences by age, and some by gender too, but plenty by party.

Asked how best to solve the U.S.’ problems, voters mainly call for cooperation between the parties. Some — often the more ideological partisans — think one party running government would be best.

Trump voters are twice as apt as Harris voters to call for “one strong leader to do what they think best.”

Younger voters — and in particular younger men — are comparably more likely to say the country needs that.

Trump continues to win the votes of people who think the U.S. political system needs to be completely rebuilt. 

The economy — and how it still underpins Trump

Some potentially good news for Harris is that people say they’re judging her more on her own economic plans than on the economic record of the Biden administration. 

She’s cut a bit into his edge on who’d make people financially better off. 

But that edge remains nonetheless, and she has stalled in cutting into Trump’s edge with voters who say the economy is a major factor for them. 

A big majority continue to say they recall the Trump economy as good, so Harris has not gotten voters to reconsider or rethink that memory. 

People are split over whether Trump’s policies helped them financially during the pandemic specifically, and that cuts to vote. 

A few notes on what’s changed since Harris last month had more of an edge:

Perhaps one of the biggest indicators of why this race remains so close: Harris does well when people rate abortion as a top issue, especially among women who think so. And it is a major issue for half, but she has not succeeded over the course of the campaign in getting many more voters to rate it as a top issue. It’s hovered in the low 50s range for those who call it a major factor.

This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a representative sample of 2,161 registered voters nationwide interviewed between October 23-25, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and the U.S. Census Current Population Survey, as well as past vote. Respondents were selected to be representative of registered voters nationwide. The margin of error for registered voters is ±2.6 points. Battlegrounds are AZ, GA, MI, NC, NV, PA, and WI.

Anthony Salvanto

Anthony Salvanto, Ph.D., is CBS News’ executive director of elections and surveys. He oversees the CBS News Poll and all surveys across topics and heads the CBS News Decision Desk that estimates outcomes on election nights