Biden leads Trump by 9 percentage points in Michigan and Wisconsin and 5 points in Pennsylvania.
MILWAUKEE / ROCHESTER:
President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Friday sought support in Midwestern states where the coronavirus has returned, with Trump falsely accusing doctors of taking advantage of COVID-19-related deaths while Biden said Trump is had reached the pandemic.
Trump criticized Democratic governors who have imposed restrictions designed to slow the spread of the virus and said Biden will ban Americans from gathering for holidays or other special occasions if elected. Many of those who came to see him were not wearing masks.
“You have to open your state and you have to do it fast!” Trump said at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, just four days before the election.
At a subsequent event in Rochester, Minnesota, he greeted hundreds of supporters who were excluded from a rally limited to 250 participants by state officials.
Trump has also drawn his anger at the American medical system, mistakenly claiming that doctors are somehow pressured to increase the number of deaths.
“Our doctors get more money if someone dies from COVID,” he said in Waterford Township, Michigan.
Biden accused Trump of “giving up” the fight against the virus and said he should not attack the medical staff who treat his victims.
“Unlike Donald Trump, we will not surrender to this virus,” he said at a rally in St. Paul, Minnesota. Supporters, socially left behind in their cars at the state fair, honked their horns in agreement.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 230,000 people in the United States and cost millions more in jobs, dominated the final days of the campaign.
A record increase in cases is pushing hospitals to the edge of capacity. The news pushed Wall Street to its worst week since March, undermining one of Trump’s main arguments for re-election.
Trump, who recovered from COVID-19 weeks ago, has played down the health crisis for months, telling supporters in recent weeks the country is “turning the corner” even as cases rise. Biden warned of a “dark winter” and pledged a renewed effort to contain the virus.
Biden leads Trump from 52% to 42% in national Reuters / IPSOS opinion polls, in part due to widespread disapproval of his handling of the pandemic. Opinion polls show tighter competition in the more competitive states that will decide the election.
The focus on the upper Midwest underscored the region’s importance to the race. Michigan and Wisconsin were two of three historically Democratic industrial states, along with Pennsylvania, that narrowly voted for Republican Trump in 2016, giving him a thwarted victory.
Biden leads Trump by 9 percentage points in Michigan and Wisconsin and 5 points in Pennsylvania, according to Reuters.
‘Take nothing for granted’
Minnesota, which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, is one of the few Democratic states Trump is trying to overthrow this year. Biden said his visit was not a sign that he was concerned about the condition, where he has held a steady lead. Trump was due to surrender later today.
The pandemic and an extraordinary level of enthusiasm have prompted Americans to vote early in unprecedented numbers.
More than 86 million votes were cast by mail or in person, or about 63% of the total number of votes for the entire 2016 election, according to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida.
In Texas, a traditionally Republican state where polls show Biden and Trump are shutting down, more than 9 million people voted, eclipsing the overall turnout as of 2016, the Texas secretary of state’s office said. Texas is the second state, along with Hawaii, to already exceed its 2016 total.
Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud, and recently argued that only results available on election night should count.
Early poll data shows many more Democrats cast their ballots by mail, while Republicans are expected to turn out in greater numbers on Tuesday.
This means preliminary results from states like Pennsylvania that don’t start counting mail-in ballots until election day could show Trump in the lead before switching as more Democratic ballots are added. .
Last minute legal battles have added to the uncertainty.
On Thursday, a federal appeals court said Minnesota’s plan to count ballots that arrive after election day was illegal. The move came after the Supreme Court allowed North Carolina and Pennsylvania to maintain similar deadlines.
Separately, a federal judge in Washington has ordered the U.S. Postal Service to take additional steps to ensure the prompt delivery of postal ballots to areas where service has been slow.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
