US Elections 2020: Donald Trump is trailing Joe Biden in most national polls. US ELECTIONS Live Updates: As part of their last leg of campaigning, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden focused on seeking support in the vital Midwestern states where Covid-19 once again took centre-stage. Biden highlighted Trump’s constant ignorance and the failure to handle the ongoing pandemic while the president focused on reviving the economy. Trump through his speeches has made it clear that more lockdowns due to coronavirus are not an option anymore.
The focus on Midwestern region is crucial as in 2016, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three historically democratic states narrowly voted for Trump. As of now, in the national opinion polls by Reuters Biden leads Trump 52% to 42%.
The convergence of the pandemic, joblessness and police brutality has forced the US to confront its centuries-old legacy of systemic racism this year. For many African Americans, it’s turned next week’s presidential election into a referendum on the future of race relations, an opportunity to take steps toward healing or the potential of a deeper divide.
In yesterday’s campaigning meanwhile, Trump’s dismissal of the virus was evident through the massive rallies featuring largely unmasked crowds and the lack of social distancing. Biden, on the other hand, held a drive in rally where supporters remained in or near their cars to avoid the spread of covid-19. Biden attacked the president for holding a “super-spreader event” and said that Trump had “waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to this virus.”
President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at HoverTech International, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020, in Allentown, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Joe Biden says he has learned from the mistakes that Hillary Clinton's campaign made four years ago in the Midwest. At an event Friday in Milwaukee, Biden recounted campaigning for Clinton in 2016 and added, "For a whole lot of reasons _ not all of which were her fault _ ended up not taking it as seriously. We thought it was different.'' Clinton was criticized for not campaigning enough in Midwestern states like Wisconsin and Michigan.
Addressing a rally in Rochster in Minnesota, US President Donald Trump Friday accused his rival and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of being a corrupt career politician who has done nothing but betrayed the Americans for the last 47 years.
As part of their last leg of campaigning, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden focused on seeking support in the vital midwestern states where Covid-19 once again took centerstage. Biden highlighted Trump's constant ignorance and the failure to handle the ongoing pandemic while the president focused on reviving the economy. Trump through his speeches has made it clear that more lockdowns due to coronavirus are not an option anymore. Trump criticized Democratic governors who have imposed restrictions that aim to slow the virus's spread, and said Biden would prohibit Americans from gathering for holidays or other special occasions if elected.
Researchers in the US have voiced concern over the spread of disinformation on social media platforms about US President Donald Trump, his Democratic rival Joe Biden and their poll campaigns, threatening the integrity of the November 3 presidential elections.
Researchers at the University of Southern California released a study this week that said that thousands of automated accounts, or "bots," on Twitter and conspiracy theorists are sowing disinformation around the upcoming elections. "The state of social media manipulation during the 2020 election is no better than it was in 2016. We are very concerned by the proliferation of bots used to spread political conspiracies and the widespread appeal that those conspiracy narratives seem to have on the platform," the study's lead author Emilio Ferrara, associate professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, said.
"The combination of automated disinformation and distortion on social media continue to threaten the integrity of US elections," Ferrara, who is also the associate professor of communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said. (AP)
There are no crowds at Disneyland, still shut down by the coronavirus. Fewer fans attended the World Series this year than at any time in the past century. Big concerts are cancelled.
But it's a different story in Trumpland. Thousands of President Donald Trump's supporters regularly cram together at campaign rallies around the country - masks optional and social distancing frowned upon. Trump rallies are among the nation's biggest events being held in defiance of crowd restrictions designed to stop the virus from spreading.
This at a time when public health experts are advising people to think twice even about inviting many guests for Thanksgiving dinner.
"It doesn't matter who you are or where you are, when you have congregate settings where people are crowded together and virtually no one is wearing a mask, that's a perfect setup to have an outbreak of acquisition and transmissibility," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, recently told Yahoo News. "It's a public health and scientific fact."
The Trump campaign, which distributes masks and hand sanitizer at its rallies, says those who attend are peaceful protesters who, just like Black Lives Matter demonstrators, have a right to assemble. The president says he wants to get the country back to normal. (AP)
President Donald Trump has described the November 3 election as the "most important" in US history. For the influential 1.8 million Indian-Americans, it is much more so as they hold unprecedented sway in key battleground states and could be what a top Democratic lawmaker termed "an absolute difference maker".
There are more than 257 million people in the US who are 18 or older, and nearly 240 million citizens are eligible to vote this year, according to an American daily.
More than 80 million Americans have already cast their ballots, according to a tally on Thursday from the US Elections Project at the University of Florida, setting the stage for the highest participation rate in over a century.
"We're seeing a very energised, interested electorate, and we're seeing a public that is responding to a message that you need to cast that ballot early this year," said Paul Gronke, a professor of political science at Reed College who runs the Early Voter Information Center.
The influential Indian-American community is finding itself increasingly wooed by both parties through a series of ads, speeches and exhortations of community leaders. (PTI)
Top Trump administration officials visited Texas five days before Election Day to announce they have nearly completed 400 miles of US-Mexico border wall, trying to show progress on perhaps the president's best-known campaign promise four years ago.
While most of the wall went up in areas that had smaller barriers, the government built hundreds of miles of fencing as high as 30 feet (9 meters) in a short amount of time - most of it this year. But crews blasted hills and bulldozed sensitive habitats in national wildlife refuges and on American Indian land to do it, prioritizing areas where they could build more quickly.
The Department of Homeland Security waived environmental and other reviews to expedite construction. And despite President Donald Trump's repeated promises that Mexico would pay for the wall, the construction has been funded by U.S. taxpayers for at least USD 15 billion, two-thirds coming from military funding.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said steps taken by the social media giant have helped protect the integrity of more than 200 different elections around the world, including in India, and have also played an important role in stopping abuse ahead of US elections.
Noting that next week will certainly be a "test" for Facebook, Zuckerberg said the company will continue "fighting to protect the integrity of the democratic process". "These are all changes we've made in the last four years -- and they've helped us protect the integrity of more than 200 different elections around the world, including in the EU, India and Indonesia. And they've been important for stopping abuse ahead of next week's vote in the US," Zuckerberg said during the company's earnings call and outlined some of the steps that have been taken.
He added that the company has focused on issues like voter suppression, and has worked closely with experts in the space, including civil rights leaders.
Photos AP
In three days, the US will either have Joe Biden as its new president or Donald Trump will continue to serve for four more years. The dominating talking point in this year’s elections has been the coronavirus outbreak and both presidential candidates have clashed over the issue several times over the past few months.
Now, in the battleground state of Florida, the virus outbreak and Trump’s handling of the pandemic has again become a point of contention between the two candidates and the topic of discussion in their campaign rallies. Reuters reported that Trump “downplayed the pandemic, as he has done throughout the year, telling people that if they contracted the virus, they would “get better,” just as he did after his own diagnosis.”
Read all the developments from the last 24 hours here
Ahead of the final weekend before Election Day on Tuesday,Trump and Joe Biden will barnstorm across battleground states in the Midwest, including Wisconsin, where the coronavirus pandemic has exploded.
Trump, a Republican, is scheduled to campaign on Friday in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, while Biden has planned stops in Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as Iowa.
Michigan and Wisconsin were two of the three historically Democratic industrial states, along with Pennsylvania, that narrowly voted for Trump in 2016, delivering him an upset victory. Minnesota, which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, is one of the few Democratic states that Trump is trying to flip this year.
Overall, the map looks ominous for Trump, who has consistently trailed Biden in national polls for months because of widespread disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus.
Be it the Trump or the rival Biden campaign, "Get out to Vote" is the common theme driving all the rallies and meetings for the November 3 US presidential elections. President Donald Trump, a Republican who is seeking a second term, and his Democratic rival and former vice president Joe Biden make it a point in their public remarks to emphasise to their supporters how important it is for them to go out and vote next Tuesday. "Whatever you do, you have to go out and vote," Trump said at an election rally in the Bullhead City of Arizona on Wednesday. The Democrats and the Biden Campaign have been aggressive in urging their supporters to mail in their votes or do early voting.(PTI)
If 2008 showed that America could live up to its political creed of equality, we now have grave threats to that foundational principle. Given Donald Trump’s barely disguised racism, his victory will be viewed as America’s regress into White primacy, an unfortunate historical reality which began to lose its sting after the mid-1960s. And his defeat will be welcomed by those who want Blacks and other racial minorities to reclaim the push for equality. The results will be viewed through a racial lens even if Trump’s handling of the pandemic, rather than his treatment of race relations, causes his defeat. (Read more here)
Addressing a rally in Florida, Trump said that unlike countries like France, who imposed a nationwide lockdown, America will never lockdown again due to the coronavirus pandemic. "We understood the disease, and now we are open for business," Trump remarked.
Campaigning hours away in the battleground state of Florida, President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden highlighted their contrasting approach towards the coronavirus pandemic. Trump's dismissal of the virus was evident through the massive rallies featuring largely unmasked crowds and the lack of social distancing. Biden, on the other hand, held a drive in rally where supporters remained in or near their cars to avoid the spread of covid-19.Biden attacked the president for holding a "super-spreader event" and said that Trump had "waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to this virus."