President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at Eppley Airfield, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, in Omaha, Nebraska. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)US Presidential Elections 2020 LIVE news updates: With the race for the White House heading into its final six-day stretch, president Donald Trump will hold two campaign rallies on Wednesday in the battleground state of Arizona, where polls show him narrowly trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Biden, meanwhile, will be briefed by public health experts and deliver a speech near his house in Delaware on his plans to combat Covid-19 and protect Americans with pre-existing health conditions, his campaign said.
National opinion polls show Biden comfortably leading Trump. More than 70 million people have cast early in-person and mail ballots, according to US Elections Project at the University of Florida.
The huge numbers of mail ballots, at over 46.8 million, could take days or weeks to tally, say experts, meaning that a winner might not be declared on the night of November 3, when the polls close.
Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting as prone to fraud even though experts say that is rare, and questioned the integrity of the process on Tuesday, saying it would be “inappropriate” to take extra time to count mail ballots. “It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on Nov. 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws,” he added.
Meanwhile, in her Melania Trump slammed Joe Biden, Democrats and the media as she pushed the president’s re-election message in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
The first lady defended Donald Trump’s record on COVID-19 even as he continues to play down the threat of a virus that has killed more than 226,000 Americans.
She sought to shift the blame to Democrats, who she said tried to “put their own agendas ahead of the American people’s well-being” and focused on a “sham impeachment” instead of the coronavirus.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a drive-in rally at Cellairis Amphitheatre in Atlanta, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Joe Biden has a steady lead over President Donald Trump in Nevada, a state that has been shading blue in recent elections but that Trump is hoping to flip, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday.
Biden, the Democratic nominee, leads Trump 49% to 43% among likely voters in Nevada, with 4% undecided or declining to state a preference. The poll was taken after the presidential debate last week, one of Trump’s last opportunities to change the trajectory of the race.
The results are virtually unchanged from another Times/Siena poll in the state conducted this month after Trump announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus, which found Biden leading Trump 48% to 42% among likely voters.
With just a week until Election Day and little time for Trump to make up any ground, the results underscore the challenges he faces in diverse battleground states that once seemed attainable, if not downright winnable, for an incumbent Republican president. Polls have also shown Trump trailing Biden in neighboring Arizona, a state that has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1996.
President Donald Trump questioned the integrity of the US election again on Tuesday, and said it would be 'inappropriate' to take extra time to count the tens of millions of ballots case by mail in his race against Democratic rival Joe Biden, reported Reuters.
While Trump, who trails in national opinion polls, cast doubts on mail-in votes, Biden offered a message of unity in two rallies in Georgia.
Before leaving for campaign rallies in three states, Trump told reporters at the White House, "It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on Nov. 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don't believe that that's by our laws."
Trump has repeatedly and without evidence suggested that an increase in mail voting will lead to an increase in fraud, although experts say that is rare in US elections.
Biden's visit to Georgia was a show of optimism that his campaign can end Trump's presidency. Georgia has not supported a Democrat in US presidential elections since 1992. "I'm running as a proud Democrat, but I will govern as an American president. I'll work with Democrats and Republicans. I'll work as hard for those who don't support me as for those who do," Biden said in Warm Springs, Georgia.
With less than a week to go for Election Day on November 3 in the United States, Reuters reports that more than 70 million Americans have cast ballots this year, a number that is more than half the total turnout of that in 2016. The numbers” could lead to the highest voter turnout in percentage terms in more than a century” in the US.
The Reuters report indicates that coronavirus is one reason why early voting has occurred in large numbers this year.
The next US president will be announced next week but Donald Trump has once again questioned the integrity of the US elections, casting doubts on mail-in votes, a Reuters report says. “It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on Nov. 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws,” the report quoted Trump saying at the White House.
Less than a week before Election Day, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google are set to be grilled by Republican senators making unfounded allegations that the tech giants show anti-conservative bias. Democrats want to expand the discussion to include issues such as the companies’ impact on local news.
The Senate Commerce Committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing Wednesday. The executives have agreed to appear remotely after being threatened with subpoenas.
With the election looming, Republicans led by President Donald Trump have thrown a barrage of grievances at Big Tech’s social media platforms, which they accuse without evidence of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views.
Hospitals around the United States are reeling from the rampaging spread of the coronavirus, many of them in parts of the country that initially had been spared the worst.
Approaching the eve of the election, President Donald Trump has downplayed the steep rise in cases, attributing much of it to increased testing. But the number of people hospitalized for the virus tells a different story, climbing an estimated 46% from a month ago and raising fears about the capacity of regional health care systems to respond to overwhelming demand.
The exploding case numbers point to a volatile new phase in the pandemic, coming after earlier waves hit large cities such as New York, then Sun Belt states like Florida and Arizona. While some of those places have begun to bring the virus under control, the surge of hospitalizations is crippling some cities with fewer resources.
If Joe Biden wins next week’s election, he says he'll immediately call Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. He’ll work with governors and local officials to institute a nationwide mask-wearing mandate and ask Congress to pass a sweeping spending bill by the end of January to address the coronavirus and its fallout.
That alone would mark a significant shift from President Donald Trump, who has feuded with scientists struggled to broker a new stimulus deal and reacted to the recent surge in US virus cases by insisting the country is rounding the turn.
But Biden would still face significant political challenges in combating the worst public health crisis in a century. He will encounter the limits of federal powers when it comes to mask requirements and is sure to face resistance from Republicans who may buck additional spending.