Left and right media outlets are portraying vastly different narratives about the 2024 presidential election as voters go to the polls and election day is days away, an AllSides analysis found.

AllSides looked at 57 articles across 16 media outlets’ homepages—an equal number of outlets were on the left and right—to identify top themes and media bias about Trump and Harris between October 21 and October 23, 2024. (See methodology for details).

We found that the narratives on the left and right were very different – outlets on the left used the words interview, election, comments and women more while the right used words such as border, immigration, poll, and points more. Let’s break that down: see what outlets said about former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

On The Left: Concerns about Trump’s Stability to be President Again

A large story featured on homepages on the left was retired Gen. John Kelly’s comments in an Atlantic (Left bias) interview about Trump’s alleged praise of ‘Hilter’s generals.’

HuffPost (Left bias) reported that Kelly “confirmed previous reporting about Trump praising Hitler, telling the Times that ‘more than once,’ Trump told him: ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’” The story additionally said Kelly “was motivated to go on the record after Trump suggested he’d use military force against his domestic political enemies.”

In an interview with Fox News (digital news rated Right) on Sunday, October 13, “Trump suggested all his foes could be ‘very easily handled’ with military force on Election Day” according to HuffPost.

Trump and his campaign have repeatedly denied the claims made by Kelly.

On The Right: Polls, Issues May Put Trump in Advantage Over Harris

Polls and prediction models for the election have shown an incredibly tight race. And in the month of October, it’s pretty clear that Trump made improvements in the polls. The right focused heavily on recent polls and the issue of immigration in much of its coverage.

“Former President Donald Trump has emerged as the favorite to win the White House in analyses by five political forecasters,” according to Washington Times (Lean Right bias).

RELATED: AllSides Interactive – Will Trump or Harris Win the 2024 Presidential Election?

The Washington Times also went on the attack against Harris on immigration, arguing that she once “compared deportation officers to the Ku Klux Klan during her time as a senator and hinted at abolishing their agency altogether.”

Fox News (Right bias) doubled down on the issue of immigration, saying, “Immigration consistently polls as a top issue for voters in the 2024 election. The Biden-Harris administration has come under withering attack from Trump for reversing his border policies and permitting record high numbers of migrants to cross the southern border unlawfully.”

Both Sides Comment on Trump’s Campaign Stop at McDonald’s

On October 20, Trump made a campaign stop at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, where he manned a fry station and served up fries at a drive-thru. The campaign stop, which was prompted after Harris said she worked a summer job at McDonalds, featured starkly different reporting on the left and right.

A New York Post Opinion (Right bias) piece claimed that Trump’s visit “reminded voters that his rival, Kamala Harris, has repeatedly boasted about having a summer job at McDonald’s to make her sound more relatable to her fellow Americans, but to date, not a single person has been able to verify this.” It continued, ““...she didn’t mention it in her memoir, nor does it appear on the 1987 résumé she submitted when applying for a position at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office despite listing her other work experiences.”

On the other hand, MSNBC (Left bias) pushed back, arguing, “Trump has been fixated to an unhealthy degree with Vice President Kamala Harris having worked at a McDonald’s while she was a student many years ago. The Republican apparently convinced himself that Harris lied about this — it’s never been altogether clear how he arrived at this belief — and he’s raged about it on a nearly daily basis ever since… this was a trolling exercise, rooted in the idea that Trump caught Harris in a lie, despite the fact that neither the former president nor any of his allies have presented a shred of evidence discrediting the vice president’s claim.”

RELATED: Misinformation Watch – Did Kamala Harris Work at McDonald's?

For a more balanced view of stories related to the 2024 elections, visit AllSides’ Balanced Newsfeed and check out our blog tracking major updates, polls, and examples of media bias in our live blog. To learn about voting in your area, visit our Election Resource Center.

How AllSides Did This

For this analysis, AllSides collected the top headline that mentioned Donald Trump and the top headline that mentioned Kamala Harris on select news media outlet homepages on October 21, 2024 and October 23, 2024 at 10:00am ET.

The media outlets selected for this analysis include 4 Left-rated outlets (Daily Beast, HuffPost, MSNBC, Slate), 4 Lean Left-rated outlets (Associated Press, CNN, NBC News, New York Times), 4 Lean Right-rated outlets (New York Post, National Review, Washington Examiner, Washington Times) and 4 Right-rated outlets (Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, Daily Wire).

Of the 16 outlets, 56 articles were analyzed in total. Some articles mentioned both Trump and Harris in the headline, which is why the total number of analyzed articles is less than 64.

For the content collection phase, articles that were only live blogs, podcasts without text, videos without text, or advertisements (sponsored or not sponsored) were excluded from the analysis.

Blog and research by Bias Research Manager & Data Journalist Andrew Weinzierl (Lean Left bias) and Content Intern Sara Oppenheimer (Left bias).

Reviewed by Bridging Coordinator & Media Analyst Clare Ashcraft (Center bias) and News & Bias Analyst Johnathon Held (Lean Right bias).