EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Leave it to Jim Harbaugh to call an audible when addressing his health.
The Los Angeles Chargers coach wasn’t supposed to do his Monday news conference because he was undergoing medical testing after he experienced an irregular heartbeat during Sunday’s 23-16 win at Denver. Harbaugh, though, got back from his appointment with a cardiologist earlier than planned and decided it would be better to address the subject immediately instead of waiting until Wednesday.
Harbaugh said he is taking steps to address the arrhythmia he has had for many years. That includes wearing a heart monitor for the next two weeks and taking a blood thinner so his heart doesn’t go out of rhythm.
It was a rare amount of detail from the 60-year-old Harbaugh, who can be evasive when it comes to addressing the status of his players. Harbaugh, who is in his first season with the Chargers, often says players are “working through it” when discussing injuries.
“For anybody that could be out there hearing this or if I’m butchering this in any way, I apologize. I’m pretty confident on this one and that I know what it is and how to deal with it. But as always, we’ll trust the doctors to tell me what to do,” Harbaugh said during his 20-minute session on Monday.
The Chargers informed reporters at the team’s complex that Harbaugh would speak two minutes before the news conference began. The team had offensive coordinator Greg Roman and defensive coordinator Jesse Minter lined up to take Harbaugh’s place for the regular media availability.
Harbaugh said he’s dealt for many years with atrial flutter, a condition that can cause the heart to beat too quickly.
He had ablation procedures in 1999 and 2012 to treat the irregular heart rhythms and said another one could be a possibility. An ablation procedure uses small burns or freezes heart cells and creates tiny scars in heart tissue, which helps to prevent the heart from producing an irregular rhythm.
When asked if the trip to Denver and being at altitude might have played a role in the arrhythmia, Harbaugh said he was starting to feel it before the team left Southern California on Saturday.
It started to flare up during pregame warmups. During the first quarter, Harbaugh briefly entered the medical tent before heading to the locker room. While in the locker room, Harbaugh had his pulse and an EKG taken and received an IV and magnesium.
Harbaugh returned to the sideline after the EKG showed his heart had returned to normal rhythm.
Quarterback Justin Herbert said after Sunday’s game that Harbaugh had made some reference about his health Saturday night but didn’t think anything of it.
Most players weren’t aware of what happened to Harbaugh until after the game.
“I knew they were so locked in the game that this is what we wanted them locked in on,” Harbaugh said.
Minter took over head coaching duties while Harbaugh was in the locker room. Harbaugh said it was because the defense was on the field at the time and Roman was in his usual spot in the press box.
It was not the first time Minter has had to step in for Harbaugh. Minter was the interim coach at Michigan last year for the season opener against East Carolina when Harbaugh was suspended due to NCAA violations.
Baltimore coach John Harbaugh, who cut short his postgame news conference after a win over Washington when informed of what had happened, wasn’t shocked to see that his younger brother returned to the sideline.
“That’s not surprising. Not at all. He’s never going to let an opportunity like that be wasted,” John Harbaugh said Monday. “I don’t think the doctors really wanted him to go out there, but they had cleared him somehow. Somehow, he convinced them to clear him to go out there and get back out on the field, and he was fine.”
Despite everything that took place, Jim Harbaugh watched the game tape on the plane back to Los Angeles and noted that the first three quarters were the best that his team had played this season. The Chargers jumped out to a 23-0 lead before the Broncos rallied to make it interesting.
“Pretty darn good. You know, crisp, like a crisp graham cracker,” he said.
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh responds to a question during news conference after defeating the Denver Broncos in an NFL football game Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh responds to a question during news conference after defeating the Denver Broncos in an NFL football game Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, center, stands on the sideline during the first half of an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
WASHINGTON (AP) — As Election Day draws nearer, Democrat Kamala Harris is trying to maintain a diverse coalition of voters who were driven four years ago by their fierce opposition to Republican Donald Trump and anxiety over a deadly pandemic.
The former president, meanwhile, is looking to deepen gains among groups, such as men without college degrees, with whom he's already shown strength, and erode Harris' support among Hispanic Americans and other key demographics.
AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the electorate, tells the story of how Democrat Joe Biden won and Trump lost in 2020, and what those results could mean for the 2024 election. We'll know whether the candidates were able to expand their coalitions — or build new ones — when results from the 2024 VoteCast survey are released on Election Day.
Biden's victory four years ago was decisive but not overwhelming, leaving Harris with a challenge — she either needs to match his broad base of support, or shape a new winning coalition of her own.
According to AP VoteCast, Biden won clear majorities of college graduates, women and younger voters. He won around two-thirds of urban voters and more than half of suburbanites. He got the backing of around three-quarters of non-white voters, including about 9 in 10 Black voters and 6 in 10 Hispanic voters. And in addition to securing these groups, many of which have historically favored Democrats, Biden also won moderate voters and cut into Trump's support among white women and young white voters.
Unlike Biden, Harris has tapped into the energy around her campaign by holding large rallies. But she's also acknowledged the diversity of her coalition with various Zoom meetings that have targeted demographic groups such as “Black Women for Harris,” “Black Men for Harris,” “Latinas for Harris,” “Cat Ladies for Kamala" and “Dads for Kamala,” among other groups.
She has pushed hard to reach women by having a sit-down with the TV legend Oprah Winfrey and the podcast “Call Her Daddy.” She's made direct outreach with labor unions that are part of the turnout operation in swing states, while also, as a Howard University alum, tapping into her connection with historically Black colleges, universities, fraternities and sororities.
Trump, meanwhile, held onto his base of white voters without a college degree, rural voters and religious conservatives in 2020.
He remained competitive in 2020, despite losing the popular vote, because these are large blocs and he won many of them decisively. In 2020, VoteCast found that about three-quarters of U.S. voters were white and 55% of them backed Trump. The president secured the support of around 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters. He won 6 in 10 voters living in small towns and rural areas, and was backed by roughly 6 in 10 white voters without college degrees.
It wasn't enough to win him the White House four years ago, but his coalition is large enough for him to remain competitive in what will be his third time on a presidential ballot. White voters without college degrees represented about 43% of all voters in 2020, a foundation for his support that he has nurtured this year through large outdoor rallies and social media posts.
Trump, too, has gone on podcasts that tend to be popular with younger men, as well as courting major tech investors such as Elon Musk, who appeared with him at a recent Butler, Pennsylvania, rally that commemorated a prior assassination attempt. The former president has also publicly tried to court Black and Hispanic voters in his speeches. And he has also leaned into his brand as a businessman this campaign by launching a cryptocurrency business and selling sneakers and wristwatches, among other products.
But the 2020 election also took place at a very different moment for the country. Voters' top issue in 2020 — the COVID-19 pandemic — is barely registering for Americans now. Four years ago, about 4 in 10 voters said the pandemic was the most important issue confronting the country and around three-quarters of those voters supported Biden.
The shift in issues could be helpful for Trump — but it's not a guarantee. Inflation, immigration and abortion appear to be commanding most attention. Even in 2020, about half of voters said Trump was better able to handle the economy, while about 4 in 10 said this about Biden. There are signs that views on the economy are increasingly shaped by people's own political views, and Harris is trying to erode the Republicans' past advantage on the economy by focusing on policies to help middle class households manage costs.
The 2020 election was also in part a referendum on Trump, who was then the incumbent president. And while about 6 in 10 voters described their vote as mainly for their candidate, a sizable number — around 4 in 10 — said they were mostly voting against a candidate.
Harris has tried to suggest that, as a younger candidate who has never been president, she represents change, whereas Trump is also campaigning as a change candidate because he would break with Biden’s policies.
Many voters have signaled that they want a change and were initially unhappy about a Biden-Trump rematch, a concern that was allayed somewhat when Biden departed the race after a disastrous June 27 debate against Trump. In December 2023, an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 58% of U.S. adults said they would be dissatisfied if Trump was the Republican nominee, and 56% would be unhappy if Biden was the Democratic nominee.
The desire for change can be seen in higher enthusiasm among Democrats for Harris over Biden in AP-NORC polling since her emergence as a candidate. In September, polling found that more voters thought the phrase “would change the country for the better” described Harris, compared to Trump.
AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, NPR, PBS NewsHour, Univision News, USA Today Network, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. The 2020 survey of 110,485 voters was conducted for eight days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://apnews.com/ap-votecast-faq.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures after speaking at an event marking one year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Saturday, October 5, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C., after a briefing on the damage from Hurricane Helene. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
President Joe Biden speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
