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The 2024 presidential race has seen enough shocking events transpire in a few short months to fill an entire calendar year, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a much-talked about October surprise looming in the final weeks of the campaign.

Each of the past two presidential cycles have been marked by an October surprise, including the “Access Hollywood” tape along with the Comey letter in 2016 and then questions around a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden in 2020.

Here are five potential October surprises that could emerge this year.

The emergence of new video or audio

Each of the last two presidential elections have been marked by the emergence of new audio or video footage through news reports. 

In 2016, it was the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was heard bragging about groping women, which nearly ended his White House bid that year. In 2020, it was the Hunter Biden laptop that featured controversial images of President Biden’s son.

For Harris, the risk of new audio or video coming to light centers around her past policy positions. 

News outlets have been focused on some of the policies Harris backed during her 2020 presidential bid, when she said she supported a ban on fracking and backed decriminalizing illegally crossing the border. Additional audio or video of her as a presidential candidate, prosecutor or senator could cause new headaches for her campaign. She has distanced herself from those views during the 2024 campaign.

Trump’s ability to shock the general electorate has waned over the near decade he’s spent in the political spotlight with each incendiary comment he makes at rallies and on social media.

Even in 2016, Trump managed to quickly recover from the “Access Hollywood” scandal in a matter of days.

But video and audio of closed-door remarks by Trump to donors, for example, could create a firestorm or provide fodder for the Harris campaign, such as when the former president promised wealthy donors tax cuts in a potential second term.

The significance of a damaging news report was on display last month when CNN reported on posts North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, whom Trump endorsed, made on an online pornography forum between 2008 and 2012, including that he supported slavery and called himself a “Black Nazi.”

A major weather event

The devastation of Hurricane Helene in recent days was a prime example of how a significant weather event could upend the campaign in the coming weeks.

Helene ravaged swaths of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, taking out critical infrastructure and cutting off power for millions of people in those states. White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall told reporters Monday as many as 600 people were still unaccounted for.

The political impacts were immediate: Harris cut short a West Coast campaign swing to return to Washington, D.C., for a storm briefing. She is expected to tour storm damage in the coming days, while Trump visited Georgia to see the aftermath Monday.

There is also the possibility that the storm damage could hinder early voting, particularly in North Carolina and Georgia, where early in-person voting is set to begin in the coming weeks. Both of those states are closely contested and are expected to help determine the winner of November’s election.

Hurricane season lasts into November, leaving open the possibility of another major storm along the Gulf Coast. And White House officials in particular have warned that climate change has led to more damaging, more intense storms that could wreak havoc on the campaign.

More political violence

One of the gravest potential October surprises would be violence targeting candidates, election workers, staff or other officials.

Trump has been at the center of two attempted assassinations in recent months, ratcheting up fears of political divisions turning to violence. He was grazed by a bullet at a July rally, and an alleged gunman camped out along the perimeter of one of his golf club’s in September before a Secret Service agent fired at him.

A Virginia man was arrested in late July for allegedly making death threats against Harris.

NBC News reported in September that the FBI was investigating after election officials in at least six states received suspicious packages.

“I’m most concerned about vote-counting and election judges and violence. There’s been a pretty clear pattern of threats about who gets to count votes,” John Murphy, a professor at the University of Illinois who studies political rhetoric, said in a recent interview.

But calls to lower the political temperature after each of those assassination attempts have mostly been futile, with Trump in particular ramping up the personal attacks on his opponents. 

On Monday, the former president blamed Democrats for Secret Service staffing issues that forced him to relocate a Saturday rally in Wisconsin.

Another Trump-Harris debate

Perhaps one of the likeliest events that could shake up the presidential race would be a second debate between Trump and Harris.

The two candidates squared off on stage Sept. 10, but Trump has thus far declined to agree to a second debate, claiming he won their first clash and later suggesting it was too late for another one because early voting had already started.

Harris has repeatedly pushed for another debate with Trump in October. She has accepted an invite for a CNN-hosted debate Oct. 23.

But some Trump allies have urged him to reconsider, and there is a lingering sense that the former president could still change his mind if he feels his poll numbers could use a boost or he needs to change the news cycle in the weeks before Election Day.

“As of right now this is the only debate that is left on the calendar. President Trump has made it pretty clear where he is,” senior Trump adviser Jason Miller said Monday, referring to this week’s vice presidential clash. “There were other opportunities that Kamala Harris could have joined President Trump for previous debates.”

Broader war breaks out

While domestic events are most likely to have the most impact on the election, the risk of war breaking out abroad could also have serious ramifications on the campaign.

There are significant concerns about tensions in the Middle East, where Israel’s war with Hamas is approaching its one-year mark. 

Separately, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership with strikes over the past week, while also killing hundreds of civilians and forcing nearly 1 million people from their homes in Lebanon.

Israel reportedly told the White House on Monday it could launch a limited ground operation in Lebanon in the coming days, escalating fears of an all-out war between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.

Such a war could further inflame tensions among Democrats in particular, as the party has been divided over the Biden administration’s support for Israel over the past year despite its forces killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in its war against Hamas.

It would also create a potential opening for Trump to go on offense on foreign policy. While Harris has argued Trump can’t be trusted to maintain alliances and that he has cozied up to dictators, the former president has pointed to conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East to argue the world is less safe than it was when he was in office.

CNN
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Ryan Wesley Routh put his enmity toward Donald Trump – the man he once supported but then dismissed as an “idiot,” a “buffoon” and a “fool” – at the center of a rambling and fanciful worldview that also fixated on Ukraine, Taiwan, North Korea, and what he called the “end of humanity.”

The 58-year-old, who was detained Sunday in connection with an apparent assassination attempt on the former president, protested in Kyiv after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and committed his ideas to paper in a self-published 291-page book.

Authorities suspect Routh, who owns a small construction company in Hawaii, was planning to attack the former President as he played a round of golf on Sunday, with US Secret Service agents firing at a man with a rifle in the bushes near the golf club. He was later apprehended after being stopped on a nearby highway.

Routh appeared in federal court Monday and was charged with two counts, possession of a firearm while a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Kristy Militello, the federal public defender assigned to Routh’s case, declined to comment after the hearing.

For years, he criticized not only Trump but himself, describing Trump as “my choice” in the 2016 presidential election but later writing that he is “man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake.”

Here’s what we know about Routh so far.

Routh’s thoughts and fixations on global politics appeared idealistic to some who came across him, but his writings show how he became increasingly militant about the geopolitical forces he railed against.

His business pursuits, by contrast, appear relatively unremarkable. On Routh’s LinkedIn page, he said he started a company in 2018 called Camp Box Honolulu in Hawaii, which builds storage units and tiny houses. A story in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser said he donated a structure for homeless people.

During his court appearance on Monday, Routh said he was making $3,000 a month before his arrest, had “zero funds” in savings and had no assets beyond two trucks in Hawaii.

Routh also has ties to North Carolina, where public records show he registered as an “unaffiliated” voter without a party in 2012. He voted in that state’s Democratic primary in March of this year, according to public records.

Records from the state dating back decades also show Routh has had previous scrapes with the law – including being arrested in 2002 after he was pulled over by police and allegedly put his hand on a firearm, and then drove off and barricaded himself in a business premises.

He has also been involved in several court cases since the 1990s, with authorities repeatedly accusing him of failing to pay his taxes on time. Separately, judges have ordered him to pay tens of thousands of dollars to plaintiffs in various civil suits.

Routh became animated when writing about Trump, and he frequently weighed in on US and global current events on social media.

In June 2020, Routh appeared to say that he had voted for Trump in 2016, but that he had since withdrawn his support of the former president.

“I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I will be glad when you gone.”

Routh also mentioned Trump in his book, which appears on Amazon without a publisher listed, and is titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity.”

In that publication, he described the former US president’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 as a “tremendous blunder” that drove Tehran closer to Moscow, which it then supplied with drones that have caused devastation across Ukraine.

He even commented on the first assassination attempt on Trump, when the former president was wounded by a gunshot during a rally in Pennsylvania in July. Routh encouraged President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to visit those wounded in the incident, saying: “Trump will never do anything.”

Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s 2022 invasion also became central to Routh’s philosophy; he expressed support for Ukraine in dozens of X posts that year, saying he was willing to die in the fight and that “we need to burn the Kremlin to the ground.”

He also visited Ukraine in 2022, according to video and photos geolocated by CNN and interviews he gave to international media during his time there. In a flurry of Facebook posts last year, he tried to enlist Afghan conscripts to fight in the war, presenting himself as an off-the-books liaison for the Ukrainian government.

A representative from Ukraine’s foreign legion confirmed with CNN that Routh had contacted them several times but said he was never part of the military unit in which overseas volunteers fight.

Oleksandr Shaguri, an officer of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Land Forces Command, told CNN over the phone that “the best way to describe his messages is – delusional ideas.”

“He was offering us large numbers of recruits from different countries but it was obvious to us his offers were not realistic. We didn’t even answer, there was nothing to answer to. He was never part of the Legion and didn’t cooperate with us in any way.”

Newsweek Romania journalist Remus Cernea first met Routh in Kyiv’s Independence Square in June 2022, where the American was rallying people to join the foreign legion or to help Ukraine through various humanitarian aid organizations.

“For me, it’s a surprise because I viewed him as an idealistic innocent genuine person, without any murderous instinct,” Cernea told CNN following news of Routh’s detention in the United States.

According to Cernea, Routh described Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a “black and white… good versus evil” conflict.

In an interview with AFP news agency from Kyiv in April 2022, Routh said: “Putin is a terrorist, and he needs to be ended, so we need everybody from around the globe to stop what they’re doing and come here now and support the Ukrainians to end this war.”

He also weighed in on the political situations in Afghanistan, Taiwan and North Korea in his book. Routh has repeatedly voiced support for Taiwan and previously called for international intervention to protect the island against potential Chinese encroachment.

Routh’s eldest son, Oran, told CNN via text that Routh was “a loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man.”

“I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent,” Oran wrote.

But other people have shared testimonies of tense interactions with Routh.

Hawaiian business owner Saili Levi told CNN he had paid Routh $3,800 up front to build a trailer for his business. But when Levi came to Routh’s shop to review his work, it was shoddy, he said.

Levi said when he asked Routh to improve the work via email, Routh ranted at him.

“He just kind of started ranting about, you know, ‘You think because you have money, you’re better than me?’” Levi said, adding that Routh also mentioned having gone to Ukraine to fight against Russia.

“I kind of decided maybe I should just let it go for the sake of my family,” Levi recalled.

Curt Devine, Isabelle Chapman and Daniel Medina contributed to this report.