Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden took a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in the battleground state of Georgia for the first time early on Friday, putting the White House within his reach as it and other undecided states continue to count ballots.

Joe Biden moves into lead in Georgia, inches closer to White House

What's America's edge of tomorrow, Biden needs 6 electoral votes to win. Trump playing his cards for president chair, Who is going to be the next president of America?

US Election 2020:Election Results On A Knife Edge

As the country faces a dual national crisis — a monthslong pandemic and economic devastation — voters were deeply divided on what mattered more: containing the coronavirus or hustling to rebuild the economy, according early exit polls and voter surveys released Tuesday.

Their opinion of which was more important fell along starkly partisan lines, with those who viewed the pandemic as the most pressing issue favoring Joe Biden for president, while those who named the economy and jobs broke overwhelmingly toward reelecting President Donald Trump.

Reflecting a pervasive pessimism, nearly two-thirds of voters said they believed that the country was heading in the wrong direction, according to an Associated Press canvass of those who had cast ballots — and those voters overwhelmingly picked Biden. And while Trump had attempted to focus the campaign on anything other than the pandemic, it remained a defining issue: More than 4 in 10 voters said it was the most important problem facing the country, far more than any other issue.

A separate survey — the traditional exit poll, conducted by Edison Research — asked the question differently; it found that, as important as it was to them, only about 1 in 5 voters considered the virus the top issue affecting their vote. More said the economy was, and a similar share said racial inequality decided their ballots.

The overwhelming majority of Trump supporters called the economy excellent or good while an equal share of Biden supporters said it was doing poorly.

Views of the virus also cleaved to politics: Roughly 4 in 5 Trump supporters called it at least somewhat under control, while as many Biden voters said it was “not at all under control.”

Those who reported that the pandemic had taken a personal toll tended to back Biden. More than a third of all voters said they or someone in their household had lost a job or income over the past eight months, and most of those voters favored Biden.

Those who did not vote in 2016, a group that the Trump campaign said would be key to reelection, appeared to show up in significant numbers — but they mostly turned out to oppose him. First-time voters appeared to favor Biden by wide margins.

Far fewer said they knew someone who had died from the virus, but among those who did, the vast majority chose the former vice president.

Moderate voters also swung heavily for Biden, in a tacit rejection of the “radical” label that Trump had sought to pin on him. Throughout his term, Trump has alienated moderates with his rhetoric and was never seen favorably by most independent voters.

It was these voters at the center whom Biden had most aggressively targeted, using a message of unity and American tradition to offer voters a respite from the bombast of the current president, and to push back against the Trump campaign’s portrayal of the Democrat as a tool of the left.

For the first time, not one but two probability-based, scientifically sound voter surveys were conducted amid the election. The Edison exit polls, conducted on behalf of a consortium of news organizations, were carried out by phone with voters who had cast ballots early, and by in-person interviews at voting places.

The Associated Press also conducted its own voter survey, called VoteCast, using a panel of online respondents assembled by NORC, a research group based at the University of Chicago.

The overall trends in the results were consistent between the two organizations’ surveys,&lt;strong&gt; al&lt;/strong&gt;though the exit polls appeared to show Trump running strongly in more states than the VoteCast survey did. The two polls also asked different questions of their respondents; results from both are referred to in this article.

In contrast to four years ago, a very small share of voters, in the single digits, said they had decided within the past few days, according to the exit polls. Four years ago, 13% said they had decided in the final week, according to exit polls.

Pre-election polls throughout this election season had shown that roughly 4 in 5 voters held strong opinions on Trump and his leadership, and strong feelings on both sides continued to define this year’s election.

Among those voters who cast ballots for Trump four years ago, about 9 in 10 supported him again this time. But Biden held onto an even stronger share of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 supporters.

Among white voters, there were stark divides along lines of gender as well as education. While Trump appeared on pace to come close to repeating his blowout win in 2016 among white voters without college degrees, Biden held a lead among white voters with a college education.

That group was one among many — including suburbanites and political independents — that Trump had narrowly won when facing Clinton, but whose support he had long since lost.

In certain key states, Biden appeared to fall short of Clinton’s support four years ago among Latino voters, particularly men. In Florida, the exit poll put his lead in the single digits with Hispanic voters, and in Texas he was barely winning 3 in 5. But elsewhere his margin among Hispanic voters was much stronger, and nationwide he ran ahead of the president by more than 2 to 1.

As the country faces a dual national crisis — a monthslong pandemic and economic devastation — voters were deeply divided on what mattered more: containing the coronavirus or hustling to rebuild the economy, according early exit polls and voter surveys released Tuesday.

As the country faces a dual national crisis — a monthslong pandemic and economic devastation — voters were deeply divided on what mattered more: containing the coronavirus or hustling to rebuild the economy, according early exit polls and voter surveys released Tuesday. Their opinion of which was more important fell along starkly partisan lines, with those who viewed the pandemic as the most pressing issue favoring Joe Biden for president, while those who named the economy and jobs broke overwhelmingly toward reelecting President Donald Trump. Reflecting a pervasive pessimism, nearly two-thirds of voters said they believed that the country was heading in the wrong direction, according to an Associated Press canvass of those who had cast ballots — and those voters overwhelmingly picked Biden. And while Trump had attempted to focus the campaign on anything other than the pandemic, it remained a defining issue: More than 4 in 10 voters said it was the most important problem facing the country, far more than any other issue. A separate survey — the traditional exit poll, conducted by Edison Research — asked the question differently; it found that, as important as it was to them, only about 1 in 5 voters considered the virus the top issue affecting their vote. More said the economy was, and a similar share said racial inequality decided their ballots. The overwhelming majority of Trump supporters called the economy excellent or good while an equal share of Biden supporters said it was doing poorly. Views of the virus also cleaved to politics: Roughly 4 in 5 Trump supporters called it at least somewhat under control, while as many Biden voters said it was “not at all under control.” Those who reported that the pandemic had taken a personal toll tended to back Biden. More than a third of all voters said they or someone in their household had lost a job or income over the past eight months, and most of those voters favored Biden. Those who did not vote in 2016, a group that the Trump campaign said would be key to reelection, appeared to show up in significant numbers — but they mostly turned out to oppose him. First-time voters appeared to favor Biden by wide margins. Far fewer said they knew someone who had died from the virus, but among those who did, the vast majority chose the former vice president. Moderate voters also swung heavily for Biden, in a tacit rejection of the “radical” label that Trump had sought to pin on him. Throughout his term, Trump has alienated moderates with his rhetoric and was never seen favorably by most independent voters. It was these voters at the center whom Biden had most aggressively targeted, using a message of unity and American tradition to offer voters a respite from the bombast of the current president, and to push back against the Trump campaign’s portrayal of the Democrat as a tool of the left. For the first time, not one but two probability-based, scientifically sound voter surveys were conducted amid the election. The Edison exit polls, conducted on behalf of a consortium of news organizations, were carried out by phone with voters who had cast ballots early, and by in-person interviews at voting places. The Associated Press also conducted its own voter survey, called VoteCast, using a panel of online respondents assembled by NORC, a research group based at the University of Chicago. The overall trends in the results were consistent between the two organizations’ surveys, although the exit polls appeared to show Trump running strongly in more states than the VoteCast survey did. The two polls also asked different questions of their respondents; results from both are referred to in this article. In contrast to four years ago, a very small share of voters, in the single digits, said they had decided within the past few days, according to the exit polls. Four years ago, 13% said they had decided in the final week, according to exit polls. Pre-election polls throughout this election season had shown that roughly 4 in 5 voters held strong opinions on Trump and his leadership, and strong feelings on both sides continued to define this year’s election. Among those voters who cast ballots for Trump four years ago, about 9 in 10 supported him again this time. But Biden held onto an even stronger share of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 supporters. Among white voters, there were stark divides along lines of gender as well as education. While Trump appeared on pace to come close to repeating his blowout win in 2016 among white voters without college degrees, Biden held a lead among white voters with a college education. That group was one among many — including suburbanites and political independents — that Trump had narrowly won when facing Clinton, but whose support he had long since lost. In certain key states, Biden appeared to fall short of Clinton’s support four years ago among Latino voters, particularly men. In Florida, the exit poll put his lead in the single digits with Hispanic voters, and in Texas he was barely winning 3 in 5. But elsewhere his margin among Hispanic voters was much stronger, and nationwide he ran ahead of the president by more than 2 to 1.

Exit polls showed the vote came down to the pandemic versus the economy

Betting market odds on the U.S. presidential election have begun to tighten once again after flipping in favour of Republican President Donald Trump over Democratic candidate Joe Biden, according to data from three aggregators.

Britain-based Smarkets exchange is giving Trump 55% odds of winning, up from 39% when polls opened. The odds on Trump had risen to 80% at one point.

Biden`s win odds on Smarkets have fallen to 45% from 61% earlier.

The flip "has mainly been driven by&nbsp;Trump seemingly holding the key swing state of Florida as a result of a very strong showing for him in the Miami-Dade county with a large Cuban population," said Patrick Flynn, political analyst at Smarkets.

Flynn said early and election-day votes were highly split and the "outcome of this election is going to come down to the types of votes that remain to be counted in some of the key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona."

Bettors on British betting exchange Betfair were giving Trump a 75% chance of winning a second term in the White House at 2200 Eastern time (0300 GMT), up from 39% when polls opened on Tuesday morning. Biden`s odds of a win on Betfair have fallen to 25% from 61% earlier.

"Trump has overtaken Biden significantly and is now in pole position, suggesting it could be a very nervous night ahead for Biden," Betfair spokesperson Sam Rosbottom said.

Meanwhile, New Zealand-based predictions market PredictIt had Trump leading Biden at 62 cents-to-37 cents, from being 61 cents-to-44 cents in favour of the Democratic candidate on Nov. 2.

PredictIt`s website was hit by an outage earlier. It posted on Twitter that it was working to "bring service back as soon as possible," without saying exactly why it had gone down.

Betting market odds on the U.S. presidential election have begun to tighten once again after flipping in favour of Republican President Donald Trump over Democratic candidate Joe Biden, according to data from three aggregators.

Betting market odds on the U.S. presidential election have begun to tighten once again after flipping in favour of Republican President Donald Trump over Democratic candidate Joe Biden, according to data from three aggregators. Britain-based Smarkets exchange is giving Trump 55% odds of winning, up from 39% when polls opened. The odds on Trump had risen to 80% at one point. Biden`s win odds on Smarkets have fallen to 45% from 61% earlier. The flip "has mainly been driven by Trump seemingly holding the key swing state of Florida as a result of a very strong showing for him in the Miami-Dade county with a large Cuban population," said Patrick Flynn, political analyst at Smarkets. Flynn said early and election-day votes were highly split and the "outcome of this election is going to come down to the types of votes that remain to be counted in some of the key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona." Bettors on British betting exchange Betfair were giving Trump a 75% chance of winning a second term in the White House at 2200 Eastern time (0300 GMT), up from 39% when polls opened on Tuesday morning. Biden`s odds of a win on Betfair have fallen to 25% from 61% earlier. "Trump has overtaken Biden significantly and is now in pole position, suggesting it could be a very nervous night ahead for Biden," Betfair spokesperson Sam Rosbottom said. Meanwhile, New Zealand-based predictions market PredictIt had Trump leading Biden at 62 cents-to-37 cents, from being 61 cents-to-44 cents in favour of the Democratic candidate on Nov. 2. PredictIt`s website was hit by an outage earlier. It posted on Twitter that it was working to "bring service back as soon as possible," without saying exactly why it had gone down.

US election betting odds tighten but still favour Trump over Biden

Hurray, Election Day!

Not that the arrival of Nov. 3, after what has seemed like a 1,000-year campaign, felt like much consolation.

“The whole thing is just a gigantic nightmare,” said Robin Helmericks, a scientist who voted early with her 19-year-old daughter in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday.

Or, as Ian Dunt, a British political journalist, said on Twitter: “There’s not enough booze in all the world for sitting through the American election results.”

If the election generated that sort of distress in someone 3,000 miles away, how did actual Americans, marinating in a sea of collective angst, get through the day? And: If there was no result Tuesday night, how will we hang on until there is?

“Patience,” exhorted the mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, in an open letter urging the residents of his city to remain calm through Tuesday and beyond.

“After the polls close, and in the ensuing days, we will continue to need your patience,” he went on. “Never in the history of this city have so many people voted by mail. By law, staffers are not allowed to start opening and counting these ballots until Election Day itself.”

Kenney noted that the results in Pennsylvania — and, by extension, the rest of the country — might not be known for a while. That’s the message election officials everywhere have been trying to emphasize, as they cope with the pandemic reality of a record number of mail-in ballots.

“This has been the slow-moving election from hell with all the early voting,” Drew McKissick, chair of South Carolina’s Republican Party, said on Monday, eagerly anticipating its end. “It’s been draining.”

The overriding prediction was that getting through this election will indeed take patience, although it’s anyone’s guess for how long. (How long is a piece of string? Sometimes, in the run-up to Tuesday it felt as if the country was playing a brutal, penalty-filled soccer game that would clearly go into extra time — but we didn't yet know how long that extra period would last.)

The specter of civil unrest loomed large in the mind of voters like Paulino Leon, 70, a Tucson, Arizona, voter who identifies as an independent. On Tuesday, he said he was confident of a Joe Biden victory, but was not sure that President Donald Trump would accept the results.

“I bought canned food and have things set up in my house so I can stay there for at least two months,” he said. “And I’ve got my guns.”

Stationed outside a polling station in Atlanta’s historically Black West End neighborhood so that he could help direct residents of a local senior center to their proper polling place at a nearby library, Mark Robinson, 55, noticed two things in the parking lot: a big, gray-black Dodge Ram pickup truck festooned with flags and operated by a driver who exited the lot after being spotted, and a Chevrolet Suburban occupied by an agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, there to ensure that the voting ran smoothly.

Robinson said he felt as if violence was “almost assured” in America on Election Day. “I don’t think I’m being pessimistic,” he said, referring to Trump’s recent comments about the far-right Proud Boys group. “I mean, the president said ‘Stand back and stand by,’” he said. “I’m presuming that’s what they’re doing.”

In Minneapolis, Justin Salz, 41, said he planned to vote for Trump, despite finding the president too brash and tweet-happy. He also said his plan was to vote and then “go dark” — order takeout sushi with his family, go to bed without watching the news and check the results in the morning.

That seemed to be the smart approach. According to Kate Sweeny, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, anticipatory dread only increases as waiting continues.

“Quite a lot of research suggests that the worst is yet to come as far as anxiety,” said Sweeny, who specializes in the psychology of waiting.

“Even people who are general optimists show a decline in optimism as the moment of truth draws nearer,” Sweeny said.

Contributing to the current difficulty is that no one seemed able to predict when this nirvanic (or hellish, depending) “moment of truth” might actually arrive. That left people fretting and obsessing even more, particularly about the direction they see the country going in.

“As individuals, we’ve all developed more of a capacity for hate,” said Angela Smith, 35, one of about a dozen people waiting to vote at the Bigler Street polling place in South Philadelphia on Tuesday morning. “We are all capable of hating in a way that I didn’t think was possible until now.”

Smith, a teacher, mostly laid the blame on the Trump administration, which she said had sent out misinformation “and all kinds of things that get people churning and burning.”

Michael Miller, director and co-founder of the New York Meditation Center, said it was important not to play out unpleasant situations in one’s head.

“This whole season has been focused on speculating about what is going to happen,” he said. “But getting caught up in the moment-by-moment question of what results are coming in — that has never been good practice.”

Stay in the present, he counseled. Clean your oven, rake some leaves, go for a walk, take off your shoes, feel the carpet on your feet. Breathe.

“If you think, ‘Don’t think about the election, don’t think about the election, don’t think about the election,’ then the election has become your mantra,” he said, “and that’s not going to do you any good.”

All day, officials exhorted the public to stay calm and not to expect a result too quickly.

In a joint statement, officials from a disparate coalition of groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the National Association of Evangelicals; the AFL-CIO; and the National African American Clergy Network — implored people to wait peacefully until every last vote had been counted.

“With voting ending today, it is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” the statement said. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.

“It is important to remember that challenges are a normal part of every election,” the statement read. “We are confident our country and its institutions can rise to this historic moment.”

Good luck along the way.

“What is the German word for ‘feeling physically nauseous from anxiety at the news but also morbidly unable to look away and stop scrolling?” novelist Celeste Ng wrote on Twitter.

Mac Stipanovich, a Republican strategist and lobbyist in Florida who was intimately involved in the slow-burn nightmare of the 2000 election (his candidate won, but still) said that in many ways, it’s easier to be a campaign operative or a volunteer during stressful elections. Even if the tide is going against you, you’re too busy doing your job to indulge in your distress.

“It’s like having a broken foot and then being shot in the other leg — you don’t notice the foot so much,” he said.

Things are harder for regular voters whose civic engagement consists, basically, of one moment of voting followed by 1 million moments of catastrophizing.

“I try to distract myself,” Stipanovich said on Monday. “Yesterday I walked for 7 miles. Today I’m mowing and edging. I might go for a drive.”

He is also trying to avoid flaming his enemies on social media. “I will scan Twitter looking for news stories in which the vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida pops up and says something dumb,” Stipanovich said. “Whereas I would have engaged in the past, now I don’t, because it’s pointless.”

Judy Betty, a 79-year-old retired principal from Marana, Arizona, a suburb of Tucson, said on Monday that her mood was swinging like a pendulum between manic and depressed, depending on which news sources she listened to and which polls she read. As a Trump supporter, she said she has been heartened by the size and enthusiasm of the crowds at his most recent rallies.

She said she planned to watch the election results roll in on TV Tuesday night and intended to limit herself to “one cocktail.” She also expected there to be a winner by bedtime.

“If he loses,” she said of Trump, “I’m just going to go to bed.”

Her husband, Jim, a retired accountant, had a different plan. If the president loses, he said, he would liquidate the family’s stocks on Wednesday.

Hurray, Election Day! Not that the arrival of Nov. 3, after what has seemed like a 1,000-year campaign, felt like much consolation. “The whole thing is just a gigantic nightmare,” said Robin Helmericks, a scientist who voted early with her 19-year-old daughter in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday.

Hurray, Election Day! Not that the arrival of Nov. 3, after what has seemed like a 1,000-year campaign, felt like much consolation. “The whole thing is just a gigantic nightmare,” said Robin Helmericks, a scientist who voted early with her 19-year-old daughter in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday. Or, as Ian Dunt, a British political journalist, said on Twitter: “There’s not enough booze in all the world for sitting through the American election results.” If the election generated that sort of distress in someone 3,000 miles away, how did actual Americans, marinating in a sea of collective angst, get through the day? And: If there was no result Tuesday night, how will we hang on until there is? “Patience,” exhorted the mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, in an open letter urging the residents of his city to remain calm through Tuesday and beyond. “After the polls close, and in the ensuing days, we will continue to need your patience,” he went on. “Never in the history of this city have so many people voted by mail. By law, staffers are not allowed to start opening and counting these ballots until Election Day itself.” Kenney noted that the results in Pennsylvania — and, by extension, the rest of the country — might not be known for a while. That’s the message election officials everywhere have been trying to emphasize, as they cope with the pandemic reality of a record number of mail-in ballots. “This has been the slow-moving election from hell with all the early voting,” Drew McKissick, chair of South Carolina’s Republican Party, said on Monday, eagerly anticipating its end. “It’s been draining.” The overriding prediction was that getting through this election will indeed take patience, although it’s anyone’s guess for how long. (How long is a piece of string? Sometimes, in the run-up to Tuesday it felt as if the country was playing a brutal, penalty-filled soccer game that would clearly go into extra time — but we didn't yet know how long that extra period would last.) The specter of civil unrest loomed large in the mind of voters like Paulino Leon, 70, a Tucson, Arizona, voter who identifies as an independent. On Tuesday, he said he was confident of a Joe Biden victory, but was not sure that President Donald Trump would accept the results. “I bought canned food and have things set up in my house so I can stay there for at least two months,” he said. “And I’ve got my guns.” Stationed outside a polling station in Atlanta’s historically Black West End neighborhood so that he could help direct residents of a local senior center to their proper polling place at a nearby library, Mark Robinson, 55, noticed two things in the parking lot: a big, gray-black Dodge Ram pickup truck festooned with flags and operated by a driver who exited the lot after being spotted, and a Chevrolet Suburban occupied by an agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, there to ensure that the voting ran smoothly. Robinson said he felt as if violence was “almost assured” in America on Election Day. “I don’t think I’m being pessimistic,” he said, referring to Trump’s recent comments about the far-right Proud Boys group. “I mean, the president said ‘Stand back and stand by,’” he said. “I’m presuming that’s what they’re doing.” In Minneapolis, Justin Salz, 41, said he planned to vote for Trump, despite finding the president too brash and tweet-happy. He also said his plan was to vote and then “go dark” — order takeout sushi with his family, go to bed without watching the news and check the results in the morning. That seemed to be the smart approach. According to Kate Sweeny, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, anticipatory dread only increases as waiting continues. “Quite a lot of research suggests that the worst is yet to come as far as anxiety,” said Sweeny, who specializes in the psychology of waiting. “Even people who are general optimists show a decline in optimism as the moment of truth draws nearer,” Sweeny said. Contributing to the current difficulty is that no one seemed able to predict when this nirvanic (or hellish, depending) “moment of truth” might actually arrive. That left people fretting and obsessing even more, particularly about the direction they see the country going in. “As individuals, we’ve all developed more of a capacity for hate,” said Angela Smith, 35, one of about a dozen people waiting to vote at the Bigler Street polling place in South Philadelphia on Tuesday morning. “We are all capable of hating in a way that I didn’t think was possible until now.” Smith, a teacher, mostly laid the blame on the Trump administration, which she said had sent out misinformation “and all kinds of things that get people churning and burning.” Michael Miller, director and co-founder of the New York Meditation Center, said it was important not to play out unpleasant situations in one’s head. “This whole season has been focused on speculating about what is going to happen,” he said. “But getting caught up in the moment-by-moment question of what results are coming in — that has never been good practice.” Stay in the present, he counseled. Clean your oven, rake some leaves, go for a walk, take off your shoes, feel the carpet on your feet. Breathe. “If you think, ‘Don’t think about the election, don’t think about the election, don’t think about the election,’ then the election has become your mantra,” he said, “and that’s not going to do you any good.” All day, officials exhorted the public to stay calm and not to expect a result too quickly. In a joint statement, officials from a disparate coalition of groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the National Association of Evangelicals; the AFL-CIO; and the National African American Clergy Network — implored people to wait peacefully until every last vote had been counted. “With voting ending today, it is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” the statement said. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual. “It is important to remember that challenges are a normal part of every election,” the statement read. “We are confident our country and its institutions can rise to this historic moment.” Good luck along the way. “What is the German word for ‘feeling physically nauseous from anxiety at the news but also morbidly unable to look away and stop scrolling?” novelist Celeste Ng wrote on Twitter. Mac Stipanovich, a Republican strategist and lobbyist in Florida who was intimately involved in the slow-burn nightmare of the 2000 election (his candidate won, but still) said that in many ways, it’s easier to be a campaign operative or a volunteer during stressful elections. Even if the tide is going against you, you’re too busy doing your job to indulge in your distress. “It’s like having a broken foot and then being shot in the other leg — you don’t notice the foot so much,” he said. Things are harder for regular voters whose civic engagement consists, basically, of one moment of voting followed by 1 million moments of catastrophizing. “I try to distract myself,” Stipanovich said on Monday. “Yesterday I walked for 7 miles. Today I’m mowing and edging. I might go for a drive.” He is also trying to avoid flaming his enemies on social media. “I will scan Twitter looking for news stories in which the vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida pops up and says something dumb,” Stipanovich said. “Whereas I would have engaged in the past, now I don’t, because it’s pointless.” Judy Betty, a 79-year-old retired principal from Marana, Arizona, a suburb of Tucson, said on Monday that her mood was swinging like a pendulum between manic and depressed, depending on which news sources she listened to and which polls she read. As a Trump supporter, she said she has been heartened by the size and enthusiasm of the crowds at his most recent rallies. She said she planned to watch the election results roll in on TV Tuesday night and intended to limit herself to “one cocktail.” She also expected there to be a winner by bedtime. “If he loses,” she said of Trump, “I’m just going to go to bed.” Her husband, Jim, a retired accountant, had a different plan. If the president loses, he said, he would liquidate the family’s stocks on Wednesday.

How long is this going to take? Americans settle in to wait

Nov 4 | 09:00 pm Federal Reserve begins meeting as US vote yet to be decided The Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee began meeting Wednesday, a spokesperson said, hours after polls closed in the US presidential election which remains undecided.

US election result 2020 LIVE updates: The world holds its breath for the outcome

Voters returned nearly 64 million mail-in ballots before Election Day, a pandemic-driven record that is certain to make for a more complicated vote count this year but could also reshape American elections for years to come.

The counting has begun. But there will be major differences among battleground states in how that plays out, and potential legal challenges — particularly from the Trump campaign — are likely to further complicate the process.

Some battleground states, like North Carolina, have been processing ballots for weeks. Election officials there expected at least 97% of votes to be counted on Tuesday night. But in one of the most hotly contested states, Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign and Republican allies blocked counties from processing votes ahead of the election.

Mail-in balloting this year doubled from 2016, and for many voters, the shift has been a revelation.

In Atlanta, Frank Casaceli ran up the stairs of a library on the Georgia State University campus on Sunday, placed his absentee ballot in an official county drop box, and quickly headed back to his parked car. At age 42, it was the first time he had ever voted.

“Usually I work 12 hours a day,” Casaceli said, explaining why he had skipped out on the polls for the past two decades. The convenience factor, driving to the drop box on a traffic-free Sunday afternoon and skipping the lines at polls, had removed a major impediment to his participation.

Casaceli voted for Trump, who has spent much of the 2020 campaign admonishing people like him, who cast their mail-in ballots in the closing days of the election. Trump returned to the issue on Monday at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

“Get your ballots in and have them in long before the 3rd, and have them counted before the 3rd,” he said, while assailing a recent Supreme Court ruling that rebuffed his campaign’s attempt to curtail the acceptance of Pennsylvania ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive in election offices up to three days later.

“What a ruling, what a horrible thing that they’ve done,” he said of the court. “Do you know that puts our country in danger? Do you know what can happen during that long period of time?” he said. Then, answering his own question, he said, “Cheating can happen like you’ve never seen.”

The president’s persistent claims of a rigged election, however, are baseless. But with more Democrats voting by mail than Republicans, Trump has tried to sow doubts about the process and the validity of those ballots.

“I don’t care how hard Donald Trump tries, there’s nothing, nothing he can do to stop the people of this nation from voting, no matter how he tries,” former Vice President Joe Biden said at a rally in Pittsburgh. “Trump doesn’t want y’all voting. He doesn’t want Americans voting. He thinks only wealthy folks should vote. And when America votes, though, America will be heard.”

Five states were already largely voting by mail in the years before the pandemic: Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and Utah. Now the rest of the country appears to be moving in that direction as well, notwithstanding the president’s stance, concerns that absentee votes have a higher rejection rate than in-person votes, or stories of ballots that were never delivered or went astray. (Absentee and mail-in votes are largely interchangeable terms.)

“I believe the usage of mail balloting in this election will continue a trend towards expanded mail balloting that we’ve seen across the country. In particular, states with permanent absentee ballot lists will likely see their numbers swell, which may eventually lead the way to all-mail ballot elections,” said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida.

This year’s mail-in vote totals will climb well past the nearly 64 million that election officials had recorded through Monday. Some ballots have already arrived at election offices around the country but have not yet been entered into the system. Others have been mailed, but not yet delivered.

McDonald, who tracks election statistics, says that, as of Tuesday, just over 28 million absentee ballots requested by voters had not been entered as returned to election officials. In an analysis posted on his website, he said that those ballots were rightly a concern to Democrats, but that there still might be time for many of them to be counted.

While many states required that ballots arrive at election offices by the close of polls Tuesday, some permit extra time, as long as the ballots are postmarked by Election Day.

About 15 election workers in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, were busy Monday processing ballots in a large room at the State Farm Arena — space lent to the county by the Atlanta Hawks basketball team.

Huddled around white plastic Postal Service trays containing tens of thousands of ballots, the workers were methodically opening them, placing ballots and envelopes in separate stacks, then scanning the ballots into machines resembling large printers.

While the scanning is ongoing, the actual vote tallying will not take place until after polls close, but having the ballots already scanned is a significant advantage.

By contrast, Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Legislature thwarted efforts by county leaders and the governor to begin processing mail-in ballots there, which as a result did not begin until Election Day.

“The legislature has refused to give counties the time they need,” said Amber McReynolds, chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates voting by mail, and the former head of Denver’s election system. “When the president started tweeting about vote by mail, we pretty much lost all the momentum we had with legislatures in certain states. I really wish we hadn’t had the tweeting.”

Trump originally voiced concern in March, during an appearance on “Fox &amp;amp; Friends,” that Republicans would never be elected again if coronavirus-related voting changes championed by Democrats were enacted. Those concerns could have been the underlying reason for his subsequent repeated claims that voting by mail was vulnerable to mischief. By July, Trump was claiming that it would lead to large-scale election fraud.

Some Republicans worried that the president’s assault on mail voting had undermined efforts at both the party’s national and state levels to encourage its voters to apply for absentee ballots.

After all, it was Republicans who had pioneered a strategy during the 1980s of promoting absentee voting, focusing on Floridians who escaped to milder climates during the summer.

One advantage of the mail voting process is its convenience for people whose work schedules are busy or inflexible. Frequently they are lower-paid workers whose votes skew Democratic.

Democrats have embraced mail-in ballots in this election at a far higher rate than Republicans, according to numbers from states that report the party registration of voters.

In the battleground state of Florida, a major prize with 29 electoral votes, 2.1 million Democrats have returned mail ballots compared with 1.4 million Republicans. (Republicans in Florida lead, however, in early, in-person voting, a separate category of early voting.)

Despite the convenience of mail voting, and the possibility that it is partly responsible for turnout increases this year, it has downsides. In every election there are votes that go uncounted because of machine malfunctions or other snafus. Research shows that those votes, known as the “undercount,” are higher when mail ballots are used.

Part of the undercount this year — a yet-undetermined number — is made up of those voters who applied for absentee ballots but did not receive them.

A Gwinnett County, Georgia, man, Patrick Boyle, had planned to cast a vote for Biden. But Boyle, who is working temporarily in the wine industry in Oregon, received his Georgia ballot on Saturday — too late to use it — even though he requested it more than a month ago.

A postal worker came to his door and delivered the ballot in a good-sized box, first requesting to see his identification.

“Everything about it was confusing,” said Boyle, 27. “The return address is some warehouse in Detroit.”

Boyle’s partner, who had requested a ballot from Fulton County, Georgia, in September, never got hers at all, he said.

Amid Trump’s criticism of mail-in voting, he himself cast an absentee ballot this year, as he has in the past — and as have some of his supporters.

Rose Bryant, a 68-year-old retiree who attended Trump’s rally Monday in Fayetteville, said “I don’t like it” when asked about the move to broader mail-in voting, even though she and her husband have cast absentee ballots in the past. “This is how Democrats find a way to cheat.”

Voters returned nearly 64 million mail-in ballots before Election Day, a pandemic-driven record that is certain to make for a more complicated vote count this year but could also reshape American elections for years to come.

Voters returned nearly 64 million mail-in ballots before Election Day, a pandemic-driven record that is certain to make for a more complicated vote count this year but could also reshape American elections for years to come. The counting has begun. But there will be major differences among battleground states in how that plays out, and potential legal challenges — particularly from the Trump campaign — are likely to further complicate the process. Some battleground states, like North Carolina, have been processing ballots for weeks. Election officials there expected at least 97% of votes to be counted on Tuesday night. But in one of the most hotly contested states, Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign and Republican allies blocked counties from processing votes ahead of the election. Mail-in balloting this year doubled from 2016, and for many voters, the shift has been a revelation. In Atlanta, Frank Casaceli ran up the stairs of a library on the Georgia State University campus on Sunday, placed his absentee ballot in an official county drop box, and quickly headed back to his parked car. At age 42, it was the first time he had ever voted. “Usually I work 12 hours a day,” Casaceli said, explaining why he had skipped out on the polls for the past two decades. The convenience factor, driving to the drop box on a traffic-free Sunday afternoon and skipping the lines at polls, had removed a major impediment to his participation. Casaceli voted for Trump, who has spent much of the 2020 campaign admonishing people like him, who cast their mail-in ballots in the closing days of the election. Trump returned to the issue on Monday at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “Get your ballots in and have them in long before the 3rd, and have them counted before the 3rd,” he said, while assailing a recent Supreme Court ruling that rebuffed his campaign’s attempt to curtail the acceptance of Pennsylvania ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive in election offices up to three days later. “What a ruling, what a horrible thing that they’ve done,” he said of the court. “Do you know that puts our country in danger? Do you know what can happen during that long period of time?” he said. Then, answering his own question, he said, “Cheating can happen like you’ve never seen.” The president’s persistent claims of a rigged election, however, are baseless. But with more Democrats voting by mail than Republicans, Trump has tried to sow doubts about the process and the validity of those ballots. “I don’t care how hard Donald Trump tries, there’s nothing, nothing he can do to stop the people of this nation from voting, no matter how he tries,” former Vice President Joe Biden said at a rally in Pittsburgh. “Trump doesn’t want y’all voting. He doesn’t want Americans voting. He thinks only wealthy folks should vote. And when America votes, though, America will be heard.” Five states were already largely voting by mail in the years before the pandemic: Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and Utah. Now the rest of the country appears to be moving in that direction as well, notwithstanding the president’s stance, concerns that absentee votes have a higher rejection rate than in-person votes, or stories of ballots that were never delivered or went astray. (Absentee and mail-in votes are largely interchangeable terms.) “I believe the usage of mail balloting in this election will continue a trend towards expanded mail balloting that we’ve seen across the country. In particular, states with permanent absentee ballot lists will likely see their numbers swell, which may eventually lead the way to all-mail ballot elections,” said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. This year’s mail-in vote totals will climb well past the nearly 64 million that election officials had recorded through Monday. Some ballots have already arrived at election offices around the country but have not yet been entered into the system. Others have been mailed, but not yet delivered. McDonald, who tracks election statistics, says that, as of Tuesday, just over 28 million absentee ballots requested by voters had not been entered as returned to election officials. In an analysis posted on his website, he said that those ballots were rightly a concern to Democrats, but that there still might be time for many of them to be counted. While many states required that ballots arrive at election offices by the close of polls Tuesday, some permit extra time, as long as the ballots are postmarked by Election Day. About 15 election workers in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, were busy Monday processing ballots in a large room at the State Farm Arena — space lent to the county by the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. Huddled around white plastic Postal Service trays containing tens of thousands of ballots, the workers were methodically opening them, placing ballots and envelopes in separate stacks, then scanning the ballots into machines resembling large printers. While the scanning is ongoing, the actual vote tallying will not take place until after polls close, but having the ballots already scanned is a significant advantage. By contrast, Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Legislature thwarted efforts by county leaders and the governor to begin processing mail-in ballots there, which as a result did not begin until Election Day. “The legislature has refused to give counties the time they need,” said Amber McReynolds, chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates voting by mail, and the former head of Denver’s election system. “When the president started tweeting about vote by mail, we pretty much lost all the momentum we had with legislatures in certain states. I really wish we hadn’t had the tweeting.” Trump originally voiced concern in March, during an appearance on “Fox &amp; Friends,” that Republicans would never be elected again if coronavirus-related voting changes championed by Democrats were enacted. Those concerns could have been the underlying reason for his subsequent repeated claims that voting by mail was vulnerable to mischief. By July, Trump was claiming that it would lead to large-scale election fraud. Some Republicans worried that the president’s assault on mail voting had undermined efforts at both the party’s national and state levels to encourage its voters to apply for absentee ballots. After all, it was Republicans who had pioneered a strategy during the 1980s of promoting absentee voting, focusing on Floridians who escaped to milder climates during the summer. One advantage of the mail voting process is its convenience for people whose work schedules are busy or inflexible. Frequently they are lower-paid workers whose votes skew Democratic. Democrats have embraced mail-in ballots in this election at a far higher rate than Republicans, according to numbers from states that report the party registration of voters. In the battleground state of Florida, a major prize with 29 electoral votes, 2.1 million Democrats have returned mail ballots compared with 1.4 million Republicans. (Republicans in Florida lead, however, in early, in-person voting, a separate category of early voting.) Despite the convenience of mail voting, and the possibility that it is partly responsible for turnout increases this year, it has downsides. In every election there are votes that go uncounted because of machine malfunctions or other snafus. Research shows that those votes, known as the “undercount,” are higher when mail ballots are used. Part of the undercount this year — a yet-undetermined number — is made up of those voters who applied for absentee ballots but did not receive them. A Gwinnett County, Georgia, man, Patrick Boyle, had planned to cast a vote for Biden. But Boyle, who is working temporarily in the wine industry in Oregon, received his Georgia ballot on Saturday — too late to use it — even though he requested it more than a month ago. A postal worker came to his door and delivered the ballot in a good-sized box, first requesting to see his identification. “Everything about it was confusing,” said Boyle, 27. “The return address is some warehouse in Detroit.” Boyle’s partner, who had requested a ballot from Fulton County, Georgia, in September, never got hers at all, he said. Amid Trump’s criticism of mail-in voting, he himself cast an absentee ballot this year, as he has in the past — and as have some of his supporters. Rose Bryant, a 68-year-old retiree who attended Trump’s rally Monday in Fayetteville, said “I don’t like it” when asked about the move to broader mail-in voting, even though she and her husband have cast absentee ballots in the past. “This is how Democrats find a way to cheat.”

As counting begins, a flood of mail ballots complicates vote tallies

Voters largely found the experience of casting their ballots to be an easy one, though there is a wide gap between the share of White voters who say it was very easy (roughly three-quarters) and the share of Black voters who feel the same way (about half).&nbsp;

A CNN Exit Poll survey has suggested that about half of the voters in the United States say they are very confident that votes in their states will be accurately cast and counted, about the same as four years ago.

There is, however, a wide gap between the share of White voters who say voting was very easy -- roughly three-quarters -- and the share of Black voters who feel the same way -- about half

The survey also suggests a high level of new voter participation. About 1 in 8 say 2020 is the first year they have ever voted, about on par with the share saying so in 2008.

According to CNN, their exit polls are a combination of in-person interviews with Election Day voters and telephone polls measuring the views of absentee by-mail and early voters, and were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.

Voters largely found the experience of casting their ballots to be an easy one, though there is a wide gap between the share of White voters who say it was very easy (roughly three-quarters) and the share of Black voters who feel the same way (about half).

Voters largely found the experience of casting their ballots to be an easy one, though there is a wide gap between the share of White voters who say it was very easy (roughly three-quarters) and the share of Black voters who feel the same way (about half). A CNN Exit Poll survey has suggested that about half of the voters in the United States say they are very confident that votes in their states will be accurately cast and counted, about the same as four years ago. There is, however, a wide gap between the share of White voters who say voting was very easy -- roughly three-quarters -- and the share of Black voters who feel the same way -- about half The survey also suggests a high level of new voter participation. About 1 in 8 say 2020 is the first year they have ever voted, about on par with the share saying so in 2008. According to CNN, their exit polls are a combination of in-person interviews with Election Day voters and telephone polls measuring the views of absentee by-mail and early voters, and were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.

Half of voters confident their ballots will be counted accurately, CNN exit poll shows

President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are battling it out for the White House, with polls gradually closing across the United States.

The first results have just come in, with US media projecting wins for Biden in Vermont and Virginia,&nbsp;and for Trump in West Virginia.

The Republican incumbent is looking poised to win in Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia -- all states he won in 2016.

The tally gives Trump 24 electoral votes to 16 for Biden. The magic number is 270.&nbsp;

Observers expect the hotly contested race for the White House to come down to a handful of key battleground states. 
&nbsp;

President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are battling it out for the White House, with polls gradually closing across the United States. The first results have just come in, with US media projecting wins for Biden in Vermont and Virginia, and for Trump in West Virginia.

President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are battling it out for the White House, with polls gradually closing across the United States. The first results have just come in, with US media projecting wins for Biden in Vermont and Virginia, and for Trump in West Virginia. The Republican incumbent is looking poised to win in Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia -- all states he won in 2016. The tally gives Trump 24 electoral votes to 16 for Biden. The magic number is 270. Observers expect the hotly contested race for the White House to come down to a handful of key battleground states.

First election results: Biden wins Vermont and Virginia, Trump takes West Virginia

Voters in Los Angeles were treated to a musical accompaniment by a mariachi band, as they cast their ballots at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday (November 3).

Mariachi band serenades new voter in Los Angeles

Tony and Grammy award winner, Leslie Odom Jr., has released a new video singing his song "Wait For It" from the Broadway musical "Hamilton" to ask voters to be patient waiting for the Presidential election results.

Leslie Odom Jr. sings 'Wait For It' in homage to voters to be patient for election results

With a president refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power, a number of commentators have been sounding the alarm about a “rickety” U.S. electoral system seen as uniquely vulnerable to a postelection crisis. Legal scholars and a group called the Transition Integrity Project have been examining the ways in which the machinery could fail, and the nightmare scenarios gamed out are hair-raising. But while looking at points of possible legal failure is a useful exercise, it neglects an important question: Who has the power to concede?

Ultimately, all democratic transitions are based on one side being willing to concede power to another. Without a concession at some stage, power must be allocated by force: Either the military must decide, or there is civil war. There is growing concern that the United States may be arriving at a moment where a concession is no longer achievable — but if this is the case, this is ultimately a problem with the state of American politics, not its legal machinery.

To the extent that the electoral machinery matters, the American system is in many ways surprisingly robust. In ordinary presidential systems elsewhere, an election commission announces the outcome. Then, the political spotlight shifts immediately to the defeated candidate, who must make the crucial decision: Will they accept the result? It is a democracy’s most defining and most perilous moment.

By comparison, America’s electoral machinery, for all its oddities and flaws, offers greater systemic safeguards. What elsewhere is a single decision by an individual is in the United States spread out over up to two and a half months, set within a labyrinthine array of legal procedures — procedures that vest the power to concede in a vast number of actors across the constitutional system.

Any presidential election in the United States takes place in two stages: the vote-counting stage at the state level ahead of the Electoral College vote in mid-December, and a second stage in January when Congress counts the electoral votes.

The first stage involves innumerable local and state officials and courts. If even a small number of these actors break partisan ranks, they can effectively concede the election: a governor that certifies results supporting the opposing party, a judicial ruling that both sides agree to obey.

State legislatures in the United States have an untested reserve power that allows them to ignore their state’s vote and appoint electors themselves. This has been portrayed as a grave danger to the system, providing yet another way for a presidential election to go off the rails. But it also serves to imbue even more actors within the system with the power to concede. A very small group of state legislators can break partisan ranks and yield an election on behalf of a presidential candidate.

The 2000 election was arguably the closest in history, decided by Florida by a margin of one one-hundredth of one percent, so close that we will never know who the true winner of the state was: Media recounts months later concluded that the results would change depending on which counting method was used. Even so, a concession occurred before the second stage.

That next stage, when Congress convenes in January to count the electoral votes, provides further opportunities for concession. If a state’s electoral votes are disputed, the House and Senate meet separately to adjudicate the controversy. A potentially small number of representatives or senators can break rank, conceding the election by agreeing to resolve the dispute in favor of the other party. There is a potentially dangerous legal ambiguity here: If the House and Senate arrive at different decisions, the law governing the proceedings is unclear about how to reconcile them, with the potential for an unresolvable constitutional deadlock. But while legally dangerous, politically this ambiguity — along with the deadline of Inauguration Day — only serves to ratchet up the pressure to fold. The vice-president, who presides over the vote count, may have a last opportunity to concede a disputed election by choosing to resolve this ambiguity in favor of the opposing party. The process culminates in an official pronouncement of the next duly elected president by the vice-president, with the speaker of the House by his side.

Only once has a disputed electoral vote count reached the second stage. In the 1876 election, Congress invented a procedure to resolve the crisis, punting the disputes to an appointed commission.

The House and Senate could vote on the commission’s recommendation — but if the two houses disagreed, the commission’s decision would stand. The commission first recommended, on an 8-to-7 partisan vote, that Florida’s disputed electoral votes be allocated to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes. But while the Republican Senate endorsed the recommendation, the Democratic House rejected it. The pivotal moment came immediately afterward: With the speaker of the House at his side, the vice-president announced that the commission’s decision stood. The Democrats accepted the call; they allowed the count to continue.

This was the first crucial part of concession. A few weeks later, the vice-president, with the speaker at his side, would oversee the completion of the count, and proclaim Hayes as president. A threat of chaos after Inauguration Day was the Democrats’ only remaining weapon. Hayes provided certain reassurances, though the nature of those reassurances — the “Compromise of 1877” — is still disputed by historians today. Among them, however, appears to have been a promise regarding three Southern states where Black Republicans still held political power, protected by federal troops. Following 1877, the troops’ protection was withdrawn and white Democrats took control, with lasting consequences.

America’s electoral machinery provides many, many opportunities to find concession. But fundamentally, it still must be one of the parties that defers. Candidates must show a willingness to step back from the precipice. The nightmare scenarios necessarily presume that not only might a candidate reject the election result, but that an entire party will do so at every level within the system. If this comes true, the American experiment is probably over in any case.

If the American experiment is finished, the United States’ unusually complicated electoral machinery merely guides how it would end: Elsewhere, an aspiring autocrat must corrupt or defy an electoral commission to kill a democracy. Determined Americans could kill theirs through obscurities of constitutional hardball.

Peaceful transitions of power require political will. In the end, people on one side must step back from the brink.

If history is any guide, they will.

With a president refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power, a number of commentators have been sounding the alarm about a “rickety” U.S. electoral system seen as uniquely vulnerable to a postelection crisis.

With a president refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power, a number of commentators have been sounding the alarm about a “rickety” U.S. electoral system seen as uniquely vulnerable to a postelection crisis. Legal scholars and a group called the Transition Integrity Project have been examining the ways in which the machinery could fail, and the nightmare scenarios gamed out are hair-raising. But while looking at points of possible legal failure is a useful exercise, it neglects an important question: Who has the power to concede? Ultimately, all democratic transitions are based on one side being willing to concede power to another. Without a concession at some stage, power must be allocated by force: Either the military must decide, or there is civil war. There is growing concern that the United States may be arriving at a moment where a concession is no longer achievable — but if this is the case, this is ultimately a problem with the state of American politics, not its legal machinery. To the extent that the electoral machinery matters, the American system is in many ways surprisingly robust. In ordinary presidential systems elsewhere, an election commission announces the outcome. Then, the political spotlight shifts immediately to the defeated candidate, who must make the crucial decision: Will they accept the result? It is a democracy’s most defining and most perilous moment. By comparison, America’s electoral machinery, for all its oddities and flaws, offers greater systemic safeguards. What elsewhere is a single decision by an individual is in the United States spread out over up to two and a half months, set within a labyrinthine array of legal procedures — procedures that vest the power to concede in a vast number of actors across the constitutional system. Any presidential election in the United States takes place in two stages: the vote-counting stage at the state level ahead of the Electoral College vote in mid-December, and a second stage in January when Congress counts the electoral votes. The first stage involves innumerable local and state officials and courts. If even a small number of these actors break partisan ranks, they can effectively concede the election: a governor that certifies results supporting the opposing party, a judicial ruling that both sides agree to obey. State legislatures in the United States have an untested reserve power that allows them to ignore their state’s vote and appoint electors themselves. This has been portrayed as a grave danger to the system, providing yet another way for a presidential election to go off the rails. But it also serves to imbue even more actors within the system with the power to concede. A very small group of state legislators can break partisan ranks and yield an election on behalf of a presidential candidate. The 2000 election was arguably the closest in history, decided by Florida by a margin of one one-hundredth of one percent, so close that we will never know who the true winner of the state was: Media recounts months later concluded that the results would change depending on which counting method was used. Even so, a concession occurred before the second stage. That next stage, when Congress convenes in January to count the electoral votes, provides further opportunities for concession. If a state’s electoral votes are disputed, the House and Senate meet separately to adjudicate the controversy. A potentially small number of representatives or senators can break rank, conceding the election by agreeing to resolve the dispute in favor of the other party. There is a potentially dangerous legal ambiguity here: If the House and Senate arrive at different decisions, the law governing the proceedings is unclear about how to reconcile them, with the potential for an unresolvable constitutional deadlock. But while legally dangerous, politically this ambiguity — along with the deadline of Inauguration Day — only serves to ratchet up the pressure to fold. The vice-president, who presides over the vote count, may have a last opportunity to concede a disputed election by choosing to resolve this ambiguity in favor of the opposing party. The process culminates in an official pronouncement of the next duly elected president by the vice-president, with the speaker of the House by his side. Only once has a disputed electoral vote count reached the second stage. In the 1876 election, Congress invented a procedure to resolve the crisis, punting the disputes to an appointed commission. The House and Senate could vote on the commission’s recommendation — but if the two houses disagreed, the commission’s decision would stand. The commission first recommended, on an 8-to-7 partisan vote, that Florida’s disputed electoral votes be allocated to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes. But while the Republican Senate endorsed the recommendation, the Democratic House rejected it. The pivotal moment came immediately afterward: With the speaker of the House at his side, the vice-president announced that the commission’s decision stood. The Democrats accepted the call; they allowed the count to continue. This was the first crucial part of concession. A few weeks later, the vice-president, with the speaker at his side, would oversee the completion of the count, and proclaim Hayes as president. A threat of chaos after Inauguration Day was the Democrats’ only remaining weapon. Hayes provided certain reassurances, though the nature of those reassurances — the “Compromise of 1877” — is still disputed by historians today. Among them, however, appears to have been a promise regarding three Southern states where Black Republicans still held political power, protected by federal troops. Following 1877, the troops’ protection was withdrawn and white Democrats took control, with lasting consequences. America’s electoral machinery provides many, many opportunities to find concession. But fundamentally, it still must be one of the parties that defers. Candidates must show a willingness to step back from the precipice. The nightmare scenarios necessarily presume that not only might a candidate reject the election result, but that an entire party will do so at every level within the system. If this comes true, the American experiment is probably over in any case. If the American experiment is finished, the United States’ unusually complicated electoral machinery merely guides how it would end: Elsewhere, an aspiring autocrat must corrupt or defy an electoral commission to kill a democracy. Determined Americans could kill theirs through obscurities of constitutional hardball. Peaceful transitions of power require political will. In the end, people on one side must step back from the brink. If history is any guide, they will.

What happens if neither Trump nor Biden concedes?

This year, however, due to the increase in mail-in voting triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the results in many states are expected to be delayed since counting postal votes can take more time.

US Election 2020: How the votes are counted | What are precincts? Explainer

US Election 2020: How mail-in votes could delay US Presidential election results

United States President Donald Trump cast doubt on the integrity of the US election again on Sunday, saying a vote count that stretched past November 3 would be a "terrible thing" and suggesting his lawyers might get involved.

With two days to go until Tuesday's election and trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls, Trump raced through battleground states in a late hunt for support, while Biden implored attendees at two rallies in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania to get out and vote.

Americans have rushed to vote early, already casting nearly 60 million mail-in ballots that could take days or weeks to be counted in some states - meaning a winner might not be declared in the hours after polls close on Tuesday night.

"I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election," Trump told reporters before a rally in North Carolina. Some states, including Pennsylvania, do not start processing mail-in votes until Election Day, slowing the process.

Trump has said repeatedly without evidence that mail-in votes are prone to fraud, although election experts say that is rare in US elections. Mail voting is a long-standing feature of American elections, and about one in four ballots was cast that way in 2016.

"We’re going in the night of - as soon as the election is over - we’re going in with our lawyers," Trump told reporters without offering further explanation.

Trump denied an Axios report that he has told confidants he will declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he is ahead, even if the Electoral College outcome is unclear. But he said it was a "terrible thing" that ballots would be counted after Election Day.

Trump trails Biden in national opinion polls. Democrats have pushed mail-in voting as a safe way to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump and Republicans are counting on a big Election Day in-person turnout.

The race is, howeverm seen as close in enough battleground states that Trump still could achieve the 270 votes needed to win in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the victor. Trump held rallies in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia, and at midnight, a late one in Florida.

Meanwhile, a record-setting 92.2 million early votes have been cast either in-person or by mail, according to the U.S. Elections Project, representing about 40% of eligible voters. The early surge has led Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the project, to predict a turnout rate of about 65% of eligible voters, the highest since 1908.

(with inputs)

United States President Donald Trump cast doubt on the integrity of the US election again on Sunday, saying a vote count that stretched past November 3 would be a "terrible thing" and suggesting his lawyers might get involved.

United States President Donald Trump cast doubt on the integrity of the US election again on Sunday, saying a vote count that stretched past November 3 would be a "terrible thing" and suggesting his lawyers might get involved. With two days to go until Tuesday's election and trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls, Trump raced through battleground states in a late hunt for support, while Biden implored attendees at two rallies in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania to get out and vote. Americans have rushed to vote early, already casting nearly 60 million mail-in ballots that could take days or weeks to be counted in some states - meaning a winner might not be declared in the hours after polls close on Tuesday night. "I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election," Trump told reporters before a rally in North Carolina. Some states, including Pennsylvania, do not start processing mail-in votes until Election Day, slowing the process. Trump has said repeatedly without evidence that mail-in votes are prone to fraud, although election experts say that is rare in US elections. Mail voting is a long-standing feature of American elections, and about one in four ballots was cast that way in 2016. "We’re going in the night of - as soon as the election is over - we’re going in with our lawyers," Trump told reporters without offering further explanation. Trump denied an Axios report that he has told confidants he will declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he is ahead, even if the Electoral College outcome is unclear. But he said it was a "terrible thing" that ballots would be counted after Election Day. Trump trails Biden in national opinion polls. Democrats have pushed mail-in voting as a safe way to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump and Republicans are counting on a big Election Day in-person turnout. The race is, howeverm seen as close in enough battleground states that Trump still could achieve the 270 votes needed to win in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the victor. Trump held rallies in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia, and at midnight, a late one in Florida. Meanwhile, a record-setting 92.2 million early votes have been cast either in-person or by mail, according to the U.S. Elections Project, representing about 40% of eligible voters. The early surge has led Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the project, to predict a turnout rate of about 65% of eligible voters, the highest since 1908. (with inputs)

With two days to go, Trump casts doubt on integrity of prolonged vote count

Two days before the November 3 vote, US President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden raced against time across the battleground states to make themselves heard.

On Sunday, Trump made appearances in Iowa and Michigan, while Biden in pivotal Pennsylvania implored his supporters to turn out to vote.

Trump is aiming to avoid becoming the first incumbent president to lose a re-election bid since fellow Republican George HW Bush in 1992. He has a frenetic schedule for Sunday, with stops also planned in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Biden leads in national opinion polls though the race is seen as close in enough battleground states that Trump could achieve the 270 votes needed to win in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the overall victor.

The former vice president made the latest in a series of appearances in closely contested Pennsylvania, the state where he was born.

"We have to earn our democracy. We have to get out and vote," Biden said at a drive-in rally in a parking lot outside a Philadelphia church, with supporters honking their car horns.

"We're at an inflection point. So we have to vote like we never did before. Every day - every day - is a new reminder of how high the stakes are, of how far the other side will go to try to suppress the turnout, especially here in Philadelphia," Biden added.

Buffeted by snow flurries in Washington, a town north of Detroit, in his first appearance of the day Trump wore his trademark red cap emblazoned with the words "Make America Great Again" and was bundled up in an overcoat as he addressed a boisterous crowd on a cold and blustery morning.

After the crowd loudly chanted, "We love you" Trump responded, "I love you, too. If I didn't, I wouldn't be standing here because it's freezing out here."

"You better get out there and vote," Trump told the crowd.

Trump predicted he would repeat his 2016 victory in Michigan and touted his efforts to create auto jobs, a key issue for the auto manufacturing state.

"We brought back your car industry. Your car industry was finished. You would have had nothing left," Trump said.

Trump then addressed another spirited rally in windy Dubuque, where he made his pitch to Iowa farmers in the important corn-growing state and predicted he would win there as he did four years ago.

Biden was ahead 51% to 43% nationally in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken October 27-29. A coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans and battered the economy has weighed on Trump's campaign.

The race, however, remains a toss-up in Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, while Trump trails by 7 percentage points in Pennsylvania and 10 percentage points in Michigan and Wisconsin.

In his 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the real estate developer and reality TV personality-turned-politician took Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well as Michigan, states that for decades had gone in the Democratic column.

Polls show a tight race in Iowa.

Biden underscored the importance of Pennsylvania in Tuesday's election.

"President trump is terrified what will happen in Pennsylvania. He knows that if you get to have your say, he doesn't stand a chance," Biden told the Philadelphia event.

"There's too much on the line to sit it out," Biden added. "We only have two more days. In two more days, we can put an end to this presidency that has from the very beginning sought to divide us, to tear us apart."

Biden is scheduled to appear again on Monday in Pennsylvania and added a stop in Ohio on Monday, indicating his campaign views that Midwestern state as winnable.

A record-setting 93 million early votes have already cast either in-person or by mail -- something that stands to boost Biden's chances.

Trump is due to stage 10 rallies - five a day - on Sunday and Monday, the campaign's busiest stretch, with Monday appearances planned in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and back in Michigan.

Hitting on familiar themes, Trump portrayed himself as running against "a corrupt politician" and "a dummy and a half" in Biden as well as a "left-wing mob" and Democratic "maniacs." Both men have previously mused about physically striking one another.

The contest has proven unexpectedly close in Texas, typically a reliable Republican state.

Two days before the November 3 vote, US President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden raced against time across the battleground states to make themselves heard.

Two days before the November 3 vote, US President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden raced against time across the battleground states to make themselves heard. On Sunday, Trump made appearances in Iowa and Michigan, while Biden in pivotal Pennsylvania implored his supporters to turn out to vote. Trump is aiming to avoid becoming the first incumbent president to lose a re-election bid since fellow Republican George HW Bush in 1992. He has a frenetic schedule for Sunday, with stops also planned in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Biden leads in national opinion polls though the race is seen as close in enough battleground states that Trump could achieve the 270 votes needed to win in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the overall victor. The former vice president made the latest in a series of appearances in closely contested Pennsylvania, the state where he was born. "We have to earn our democracy. We have to get out and vote," Biden said at a drive-in rally in a parking lot outside a Philadelphia church, with supporters honking their car horns. "We're at an inflection point. So we have to vote like we never did before. Every day - every day - is a new reminder of how high the stakes are, of how far the other side will go to try to suppress the turnout, especially here in Philadelphia," Biden added. Buffeted by snow flurries in Washington, a town north of Detroit, in his first appearance of the day Trump wore his trademark red cap emblazoned with the words "Make America Great Again" and was bundled up in an overcoat as he addressed a boisterous crowd on a cold and blustery morning. After the crowd loudly chanted, "We love you" Trump responded, "I love you, too. If I didn't, I wouldn't be standing here because it's freezing out here." "You better get out there and vote," Trump told the crowd. Trump predicted he would repeat his 2016 victory in Michigan and touted his efforts to create auto jobs, a key issue for the auto manufacturing state. "We brought back your car industry. Your car industry was finished. You would have had nothing left," Trump said. Trump then addressed another spirited rally in windy Dubuque, where he made his pitch to Iowa farmers in the important corn-growing state and predicted he would win there as he did four years ago. Biden was ahead 51% to 43% nationally in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken October 27-29. A coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans and battered the economy has weighed on Trump's campaign. The race, however, remains a toss-up in Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, while Trump trails by 7 percentage points in Pennsylvania and 10 percentage points in Michigan and Wisconsin. In his 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the real estate developer and reality TV personality-turned-politician took Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well as Michigan, states that for decades had gone in the Democratic column. Polls show a tight race in Iowa. Biden underscored the importance of Pennsylvania in Tuesday's election. "President trump is terrified what will happen in Pennsylvania. He knows that if you get to have your say, he doesn't stand a chance," Biden told the Philadelphia event. "There's too much on the line to sit it out," Biden added. "We only have two more days. In two more days, we can put an end to this presidency that has from the very beginning sought to divide us, to tear us apart." Biden is scheduled to appear again on Monday in Pennsylvania and added a stop in Ohio on Monday, indicating his campaign views that Midwestern state as winnable. A record-setting 93 million early votes have already cast either in-person or by mail -- something that stands to boost Biden's chances. Trump is due to stage 10 rallies - five a day - on Sunday and Monday, the campaign's busiest stretch, with Monday appearances planned in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and back in Michigan. Hitting on familiar themes, Trump portrayed himself as running against "a corrupt politician" and "a dummy and a half" in Biden as well as a "left-wing mob" and Democratic "maniacs." Both men have previously mused about physically striking one another. The contest has proven unexpectedly close in Texas, typically a reliable Republican state.

Trump and Biden sprint across US battleground states two days before election

There is much to fear this year, as campaign speeches and ads remind voters. The virus is surging, hospitals are filling again, and children are falling behind in school. Renters risk eviction, and businesses remain boarded up. Violent crime has risen and could reach your neighborhood, the president warns. And in this unsettling time, you could lose your health care, your job, your property values or your local police department.

But when asked what really worries them on the eve of this election, most voters don’t cite their own finances, job prospects or personal safety. According to a national survey conducted by The Upshot and Siena College, they aren’t so much fretting about themselves as they are anxious about the country.

They fear the next generation in America will be worse off. Even some voters who say they are personally better off than four years ago say the country as a whole is worse off. And by wide margins, voters on the left and right say they’re concerned about the stability of American democracy.

These findings reflect long-standing research about the politics of fear: Broad anxieties about society tend to influence voters, and how they view government, much more than personal worries do. Even with that truism, voters in the poll described in follow-up interviews a level of alarm about the country — and American democracy in particular — that they say is new to them.

“I’ve never felt this way about our country,” said Jerry Thatcher, a 76-year-old Trump voter in Yamhill, Oregon. He doesn’t recognize the country that he says broke out in riots this year, or the politicians he believes did little about it. And he’s still haunted by the policy promises of Democrats in the primary. “It’s just not the country I fought for anymore,” he said. “They’re trying to change it over to socialism. And I’m just worried that they might get it done.”

Diane Haller, a 50-year-old Biden supporter in Avon, Ohio, says President Donald Trump has threatened the country’s foundations by bending the Department of Justice to his personal ends. “How is a democracy going to work if that’s allowed?” she said. “We’re just teetering, and it’s scary as all get-out.”

There have certainly been other moments of interlocking crises and deep anxiety in America in the past century. The 1920 election followed a world war and a pandemic, and came at a time of labor strife and racial violence. The 1968 campaign was contested amid urban unrest and anti-war protests.

But in those moments, the country didn’t have a president seen by many as having “taken a pickax to the tent poles of democratic institutions,” said David Bennett, a historian at Syracuse University.

And American sentiment has changed, too, said Beverly Gage, a Yale historian.

“People a century ago or even 50 years ago tended to still believe in a kind of narrative of progress,” she said. “‘Things are unstable now, but we are surging forth into some better future’ — even when they’re deeply, deeply anxious.”

That belief has been eroding for a couple of decades, she said. Today, there is little precedent in modern surveys for Americans expressing so much worry about democracy itself.

“Normally, these are concerns Americans have about other countries but not about their own,” said Ted Brader, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.

This presidential election, in other words, was for many voters never going to be about some of the personal fears Trump has emphasized: that your neighborhood could change for the worse in Joe Biden’s America; that you, personally, could be less safe.

Nor was it likely to be broadly about personal economic instability or job loss, the kinds of pocketbook issues Kamala Harris has often described as keeping voters up at night.

That’s in part because most voters simply don’t see how their personal circumstances relate to federal policy and the people who set it, political scientists say.

“It’s hard to make those connections — to think that your individual job is directly connected to what the government is doing,” said Jennifer Merolla, a political scientist at the University of California, Riverside. “That’s a really complex evaluation to make.”

For Trump, who effectively wielded fear of immigration and demographic change in 2016, this campaign has been more challenging.

“There are a couple ways in which the president has chosen an ineffective strategy,” said Shana Gadarian, a political scientist at Syracuse. The first is that he has tried to tug on personal worries, like falling property values. “The second,” she said, “is telling people not to be worried about something that is in fact worrisome.”

That is, the pandemic. In the Times/Siena survey, independent voters the president needs to win were far more likely than Republicans to say that they fear the worst of the coronavirus is yet to come, and that they worry their own family will become ill.

The voters who are most concerned about crime and neighborhood decline, on the other hand, are not the voters Trump’s messages appear intended to reach: They are African Americans, not white suburbanites. On crime, 38% of African American voters described themselves as very concerned, compared with just 13% of white suburban voters. The difference is similarly wide on voters’ fears that the character of their community could change for the worse.

Gayle Headen, an African American voter in New Hill, North Carolina, responded in the survey that she was very concerned about being a victim of crime — “a crime committed against me by the police,” she clarified in a follow-up interview.

That fear is both personal to her family and much wider, she said, and she connects it to her deeper worries about American democracy. She learned on her car radio about the death of Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man shot by police in Philadelphia. The news brought her to tears.

“When I was crying, I was praying, saying, ‘God, please keep me from falling into despair,’” Headen said. Racial injustice against African Americans has been at the front of her mind each day, and it is central to her family’s concerns, she said. “It is a part of our consciousness in a way that it has not been for the majority of my life,” said Headen, who is 53.

She knows that Pennsylvania could be pivotal to the outcome of the election, and that the president has repeatedly disparaged Philadelphia. She worries that the protests there in the election’s final days could discourage African Americans from voting, or that jailed protesters will be unable to cast a ballot. She, too, has never felt this anxious.

“I have more fear in 2020,” she said, “because I really see us falling over a cliff.”

The fears that Tom Scribner holds won’t be fixed by this election, he said. Scribner, a 36-year-old Hispanic voter in Gainesville, Florida, doesn’t believe the country holds the same values it did when he enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18. He opposes defunding the police and removing the statues of Confederate generals and Founding Fathers, and he feels disrespected as a veteran by athletes who kneel during the national anthem. He worries that his two children will grow up walking on eggshells in America, for fear of saying the wrong thing.

He plans to vote for Trump. But he doesn’t believe any one president or election can alter underlying shifts in American values.

“That’s why I fear for our democracy,” Scribner said. “I feel like it may just crumble. It may not happen in the next four years. It may take 20 years for it to happen, and it’s going to be chaos for however long until it does. That saddens me deeply.”

In earlier moments of anxiety about democracy itself, reforms followed, said Gage, the historian. When Americans grew anxious about corrupt political machines and concentrated economic power in the early 20th century, what followed were civil-service laws, new political primaries, the direct election of senators and voting rights for women. Out of the 1960s, the voting age was lowered so Americans old enough to be sent to war would also be old enough to vote. And political primaries were reformed again to give voters more say in the nominees.

It’s unclear whether something similar will happen this time.

“If people have actually lost faith in the idea that you can fix things and make them better,” Gage said, “then that’s not a great political moment to be in.”

There is much to fear this year, as campaign speeches and ads remind voters. The virus is surging, hospitals are filling again, and children are falling behind in school.

There is much to fear this year, as campaign speeches and ads remind voters. The virus is surging, hospitals are filling again, and children are falling behind in school. Renters risk eviction, and businesses remain boarded up. Violent crime has risen and could reach your neighborhood, the president warns. And in this unsettling time, you could lose your health care, your job, your property values or your local police department. But when asked what really worries them on the eve of this election, most voters don’t cite their own finances, job prospects or personal safety. According to a national survey conducted by The Upshot and Siena College, they aren’t so much fretting about themselves as they are anxious about the country. They fear the next generation in America will be worse off. Even some voters who say they are personally better off than four years ago say the country as a whole is worse off. And by wide margins, voters on the left and right say they’re concerned about the stability of American democracy. These findings reflect long-standing research about the politics of fear: Broad anxieties about society tend to influence voters, and how they view government, much more than personal worries do. Even with that truism, voters in the poll described in follow-up interviews a level of alarm about the country — and American democracy in particular — that they say is new to them. “I’ve never felt this way about our country,” said Jerry Thatcher, a 76-year-old Trump voter in Yamhill, Oregon. He doesn’t recognize the country that he says broke out in riots this year, or the politicians he believes did little about it. And he’s still haunted by the policy promises of Democrats in the primary. “It’s just not the country I fought for anymore,” he said. “They’re trying to change it over to socialism. And I’m just worried that they might get it done.” Diane Haller, a 50-year-old Biden supporter in Avon, Ohio, says President Donald Trump has threatened the country’s foundations by bending the Department of Justice to his personal ends. “How is a democracy going to work if that’s allowed?” she said. “We’re just teetering, and it’s scary as all get-out.” There have certainly been other moments of interlocking crises and deep anxiety in America in the past century. The 1920 election followed a world war and a pandemic, and came at a time of labor strife and racial violence. The 1968 campaign was contested amid urban unrest and anti-war protests. But in those moments, the country didn’t have a president seen by many as having “taken a pickax to the tent poles of democratic institutions,” said David Bennett, a historian at Syracuse University. And American sentiment has changed, too, said Beverly Gage, a Yale historian. “People a century ago or even 50 years ago tended to still believe in a kind of narrative of progress,” she said. “‘Things are unstable now, but we are surging forth into some better future’ — even when they’re deeply, deeply anxious.” That belief has been eroding for a couple of decades, she said. Today, there is little precedent in modern surveys for Americans expressing so much worry about democracy itself. “Normally, these are concerns Americans have about other countries but not about their own,” said Ted Brader, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. This presidential election, in other words, was for many voters never going to be about some of the personal fears Trump has emphasized: that your neighborhood could change for the worse in Joe Biden’s America; that you, personally, could be less safe. Nor was it likely to be broadly about personal economic instability or job loss, the kinds of pocketbook issues Kamala Harris has often described as keeping voters up at night. That’s in part because most voters simply don’t see how their personal circumstances relate to federal policy and the people who set it, political scientists say. “It’s hard to make those connections — to think that your individual job is directly connected to what the government is doing,” said Jennifer Merolla, a political scientist at the University of California, Riverside. “That’s a really complex evaluation to make.” For Trump, who effectively wielded fear of immigration and demographic change in 2016, this campaign has been more challenging. “There are a couple ways in which the president has chosen an ineffective strategy,” said Shana Gadarian, a political scientist at Syracuse. The first is that he has tried to tug on personal worries, like falling property values. “The second,” she said, “is telling people not to be worried about something that is in fact worrisome.” That is, the pandemic. In the Times/Siena survey, independent voters the president needs to win were far more likely than Republicans to say that they fear the worst of the coronavirus is yet to come, and that they worry their own family will become ill. The voters who are most concerned about crime and neighborhood decline, on the other hand, are not the voters Trump’s messages appear intended to reach: They are African Americans, not white suburbanites. On crime, 38% of African American voters described themselves as very concerned, compared with just 13% of white suburban voters. The difference is similarly wide on voters’ fears that the character of their community could change for the worse. Gayle Headen, an African American voter in New Hill, North Carolina, responded in the survey that she was very concerned about being a victim of crime — “a crime committed against me by the police,” she clarified in a follow-up interview. That fear is both personal to her family and much wider, she said, and she connects it to her deeper worries about American democracy. She learned on her car radio about the death of Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man shot by police in Philadelphia. The news brought her to tears. “When I was crying, I was praying, saying, ‘God, please keep me from falling into despair,’” Headen said. Racial injustice against African Americans has been at the front of her mind each day, and it is central to her family’s concerns, she said. “It is a part of our consciousness in a way that it has not been for the majority of my life,” said Headen, who is 53. She knows that Pennsylvania could be pivotal to the outcome of the election, and that the president has repeatedly disparaged Philadelphia. She worries that the protests there in the election’s final days could discourage African Americans from voting, or that jailed protesters will be unable to cast a ballot. She, too, has never felt this anxious. “I have more fear in 2020,” she said, “because I really see us falling over a cliff.” The fears that Tom Scribner holds won’t be fixed by this election, he said. Scribner, a 36-year-old Hispanic voter in Gainesville, Florida, doesn’t believe the country holds the same values it did when he enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18. He opposes defunding the police and removing the statues of Confederate generals and Founding Fathers, and he feels disrespected as a veteran by athletes who kneel during the national anthem. He worries that his two children will grow up walking on eggshells in America, for fear of saying the wrong thing. He plans to vote for Trump. But he doesn’t believe any one president or election can alter underlying shifts in American values. “That’s why I fear for our democracy,” Scribner said. “I feel like it may just crumble. It may not happen in the next four years. It may take 20 years for it to happen, and it’s going to be chaos for however long until it does. That saddens me deeply.” In earlier moments of anxiety about democracy itself, reforms followed, said Gage, the historian. When Americans grew anxious about corrupt political machines and concentrated economic power in the early 20th century, what followed were civil-service laws, new political primaries, the direct election of senators and voting rights for women. Out of the 1960s, the voting age was lowered so Americans old enough to be sent to war would also be old enough to vote. And political primaries were reformed again to give voters more say in the nominees. It’s unclear whether something similar will happen this time. “If people have actually lost faith in the idea that you can fix things and make them better,” Gage said, “then that’s not a great political moment to be in.”

Americans are afraid. Not for themselves, but for the country

With Donald Trump running for re-election, the 2020 U.S. presidential election was always expected to be a dramatic and eventful ride. But nobody predicted a global pandemic that would upend every facet of the campaign. Here are 10 pivotal moments from a dizzying election year.

Ten moments that defined the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested early on Monday that he might seek to fire a highly respected member of his coronavirus task force, Anthony Fauci, after Fauci further criticized Trump's handling of the virus.

Fauci, the country's leading infectious-disease expert who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has taken issue with Trump's repeated assertions that the U.S. fight against the virus was "rounding the turn" when in fact tens of thousands of people are being infected daily.

“We're in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation," Fauci told The Washington Post on Friday. "All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly."

When Trump defended his handling of the virus at a late-night campaign rally at Opa-Locka airport in the Miami area, a "Fire Fauci" chant broke out.

In response to the chant, Trump said: "Don't tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election."

Election Day is on Tuesday, with Trump trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls.

Fauci is one of the most popular health experts in the United States, a fact that Trump has cited in the past to avoid getting into tangles with him.

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested early on Monday that he might seek to fire a highly respected member of his coronavirus task force, Anthony Fauci, after Fauci further criticized Trump's handling of the virus.

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested early on Monday that he might seek to fire a highly respected member of his coronavirus task force, Anthony Fauci, after Fauci further criticized Trump's handling of the virus. Fauci, the country's leading infectious-disease expert who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has taken issue with Trump's repeated assertions that the U.S. fight against the virus was "rounding the turn" when in fact tens of thousands of people are being infected daily. “We're in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation," Fauci told The Washington Post on Friday. "All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly." When Trump defended his handling of the virus at a late-night campaign rally at Opa-Locka airport in the Miami area, a "Fire Fauci" chant broke out. In response to the chant, Trump said: "Don't tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election." Election Day is on Tuesday, with Trump trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls. Fauci is one of the most popular health experts in the United States, a fact that Trump has cited in the past to avoid getting into tangles with him.

Trump suggests he might try to fire Fauci post-election

If the 2016 election pitted feminism against machismo, this one asks voters to consider what masculinity means.

President Donald Trump, in his personality and policies, has presented himself as hypermasculine: tough, plain-spoken, the patriarch who is unafraid to offend and unapologetic when he does. Joe Biden has emphasized family, empathy and caring for others — the loving, supportive and protective father.

Despite trailing in polls nationally by an average of around 9 percentage points, Trump has continued to lead Biden with male voters. Now, in the final days of the campaign, both sides are trying to appeal to voters’ sense of what a man should be.

Last week, a male conservative pundit posted a photograph on Twitter of Biden embracing his son Hunter, and asked, “Does this look like an appropriate father/son interaction to you?” A female conservative media figure taunted Biden for wearing a mask, saying he should carry a purse with it. The message was clear: To show vulnerability isn’t masculine.

Biden’s campaign suggests that not only can men express love for their family members, admit when they’re wrong and tear up in public — but that it’s also manly to do so.

“There are a lot of Biden tropes that link up with masculinity — protecting, serving, sacrificing, being the rock that the family can depend on,” said Matthew Gutmann, author of “Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short,” and an anthropologist at Brown who has studied masculinity around the world.

As for Trump, Gutmann said: “I think the misogyny is front and center and absolutely essential to his total persona, his total appeal. And not just to men. A lot of women think that’s the way guys should be. They’re not just begrudgingly voting for Trump, but saying, ‘He’s a real man.’”

During the first debate, when Trump criticized Hunter, Biden responded with emotion: “My son had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him.” In recent days, male Biden supporters flooded social media with their own photos of hugging their fathers or sons.

The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, released a new ad titled “Men,” narrated by Sam Elliott, the quintessential Hollywood cowboy. It shows fathers and sons changing a tire, throwing a football and embracing.

“Our dads weren’t perfect, but they did their best to raise us to be good, to be honorable, to be men of family and faith,” it says. “But above all, they taught us to own up to it when we did something wrong.”

Implying that one of those wrong things was voting for Trump last time, the ad concludes: “It’s time to own up, to be the men our dads raised us to be and the fathers our sons need us to be. It’s our turn to set the example.”

Honor and family are values that voters in either party would support. But the goal is to convince male voters that Biden is the candidate who most embodies the men they want themselves and their sons to be, said Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project: “We’re asking these people, ‘Are you going to defy your own upbringing, the things you know you should do? And if you choose not to, are you willing to watch your child’s behavior be modeled on Donald Trump versus what your dad taught you?’”

Though Trump’s version of masculinity appeals to a large segment of voters, both male and female, it has also repelled many of the white women who once supported him. This election has a large gender gap among voters, with women supporting Biden by 23 points, and just over half of white women supporting him, according to a national poll this month by The New York Times and Siena College. Biden may also have gained more college-educated men.

Now, Wilson said, they are making their case to less educated men, who were instrumental in Trump’s 2016 victory: “It’s a harder set of targets, but it’s more rewarding if we’re able to drop off even 2 or 3% of the men who voted for him.”

Sixty-seven percent of white men without college degrees support Trump, according to the Times/Siena poll. Also, a small but potentially significant number of Black and Latino men have shifted their support from the Democratic Party to Trump, in part because of the president’s macho appeal, analysts say.

Trump’s approach can be seen as a throwback to a time when men’s main role was to provide for and lead their family, researchers said. Trump’s children briefly greeted him in his office before and after school, recalls his first wife, Ivana, in her book “Raising Trump.” Today, he relies on his children professionally — both in business and politics — and publicly praises them, but is rarely seen showing them affection.

Biden has been fully hands-on with his children, and was their primary caregiver long before that became less of a rarity. He became a single father early in his career after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash, and he helped care for his son Beau while he had cancer (he died of it in 2015).

“He’s lived that experience of ‘What will I do? I have to go to a meeting, and where will my kids be?’” said Cynthia Hogan, who served as Biden’s counsel starting in 1991 when he was a senator and again when he became vice president in 2009. “At that time — and I think even today — a lot of men really weren’t doing that.”

The two political parties in the United States have long differed along stereotypically gendered lines, as have voters, according to research by Monika McDermott, a political scientist at Fordham.

“The Democrats are the more feminine party: They’re willing to tax more and have bigger government because they’re willing to care for people,” she said. “Republicans are more about rugged individualism, being independent and fending for yourself.”

For the current candidates, their views of manhood are reflected in their policies and politics.

Trump prioritizes strength and patriarchy. “Don’t let it dominate your lives,” he said of the coronavirus, for which he was hospitalized. His foreign policy is called “America First.” He disparages or fires political enemies. At a rally this week, he told voters he wants to get “husbands back to work.” Though Trump has spoken of the need for family policies, he has delegated them to his daughter Ivanka, and very little has been done.

Biden has made caregiving a big part of his economic proposals, with a $775 billion plan to help young children, older adults and people with disabilities, and to increase pay for caregivers. He has drawn upon the grief he’s experienced to comfort families touched by the coronavirus. And he has promised to try to build consensus and share power — starting with his choice of a woman as his running mate, Kamala Harris.

“The gender norms around caregiving are changing,” said Ai-jen Poo, senior adviser for Care in Action, a nonprofit, and an expert on the care economy. “I think representation matters, and it’s not just in terms of race and ethnicity, it’s also in terms of experience. People want to see somebody who understands the kind of caregiving struggles they’ve been through.”

Still, as much as gender roles are evolving, the candidates that voters are choosing between are both straight white men in their 70s, and versions of traditional men and fathers. No matter the outcome, it will be at least four more years before America is asked to consider any version of a leader that breaks that mold.

If the 2016 election pitted feminism against machismo, this one asks voters to consider what masculinity means. President Donald Trump, in his personality and policies, has presented himself as hypermasculine: tough, plain-spoken, the patriarch who is unafraid to offend and unapologetic when he does.

If the 2016 election pitted feminism against machismo, this one asks voters to consider what masculinity means. President Donald Trump, in his personality and policies, has presented himself as hypermasculine: tough, plain-spoken, the patriarch who is unafraid to offend and unapologetic when he does. Joe Biden has emphasized family, empathy and caring for others — the loving, supportive and protective father. Despite trailing in polls nationally by an average of around 9 percentage points, Trump has continued to lead Biden with male voters. Now, in the final days of the campaign, both sides are trying to appeal to voters’ sense of what a man should be. Last week, a male conservative pundit posted a photograph on Twitter of Biden embracing his son Hunter, and asked, “Does this look like an appropriate father/son interaction to you?” A female conservative media figure taunted Biden for wearing a mask, saying he should carry a purse with it. The message was clear: To show vulnerability isn’t masculine. Biden’s campaign suggests that not only can men express love for their family members, admit when they’re wrong and tear up in public — but that it’s also manly to do so. “There are a lot of Biden tropes that link up with masculinity — protecting, serving, sacrificing, being the rock that the family can depend on,” said Matthew Gutmann, author of “Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short,” and an anthropologist at Brown who has studied masculinity around the world. As for Trump, Gutmann said: “I think the misogyny is front and center and absolutely essential to his total persona, his total appeal. And not just to men. A lot of women think that’s the way guys should be. They’re not just begrudgingly voting for Trump, but saying, ‘He’s a real man.’” During the first debate, when Trump criticized Hunter, Biden responded with emotion: “My son had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him.” In recent days, male Biden supporters flooded social media with their own photos of hugging their fathers or sons. The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, released a new ad titled “Men,” narrated by Sam Elliott, the quintessential Hollywood cowboy. It shows fathers and sons changing a tire, throwing a football and embracing. “Our dads weren’t perfect, but they did their best to raise us to be good, to be honorable, to be men of family and faith,” it says. “But above all, they taught us to own up to it when we did something wrong.” Implying that one of those wrong things was voting for Trump last time, the ad concludes: “It’s time to own up, to be the men our dads raised us to be and the fathers our sons need us to be. It’s our turn to set the example.” Honor and family are values that voters in either party would support. But the goal is to convince male voters that Biden is the candidate who most embodies the men they want themselves and their sons to be, said Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project: “We’re asking these people, ‘Are you going to defy your own upbringing, the things you know you should do? And if you choose not to, are you willing to watch your child’s behavior be modeled on Donald Trump versus what your dad taught you?’” Though Trump’s version of masculinity appeals to a large segment of voters, both male and female, it has also repelled many of the white women who once supported him. This election has a large gender gap among voters, with women supporting Biden by 23 points, and just over half of white women supporting him, according to a national poll this month by The New York Times and Siena College. Biden may also have gained more college-educated men. Now, Wilson said, they are making their case to less educated men, who were instrumental in Trump’s 2016 victory: “It’s a harder set of targets, but it’s more rewarding if we’re able to drop off even 2 or 3% of the men who voted for him.” Sixty-seven percent of white men without college degrees support Trump, according to the Times/Siena poll. Also, a small but potentially significant number of Black and Latino men have shifted their support from the Democratic Party to Trump, in part because of the president’s macho appeal, analysts say. Trump’s approach can be seen as a throwback to a time when men’s main role was to provide for and lead their family, researchers said. Trump’s children briefly greeted him in his office before and after school, recalls his first wife, Ivana, in her book “Raising Trump.” Today, he relies on his children professionally — both in business and politics — and publicly praises them, but is rarely seen showing them affection. Biden has been fully hands-on with his children, and was their primary caregiver long before that became less of a rarity. He became a single father early in his career after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash, and he helped care for his son Beau while he had cancer (he died of it in 2015). “He’s lived that experience of ‘What will I do? I have to go to a meeting, and where will my kids be?’” said Cynthia Hogan, who served as Biden’s counsel starting in 1991 when he was a senator and again when he became vice president in 2009. “At that time — and I think even today — a lot of men really weren’t doing that.” The two political parties in the United States have long differed along stereotypically gendered lines, as have voters, according to research by Monika McDermott, a political scientist at Fordham. “The Democrats are the more feminine party: They’re willing to tax more and have bigger government because they’re willing to care for people,” she said. “Republicans are more about rugged individualism, being independent and fending for yourself.” For the current candidates, their views of manhood are reflected in their policies and politics. Trump prioritizes strength and patriarchy. “Don’t let it dominate your lives,” he said of the coronavirus, for which he was hospitalized. His foreign policy is called “America First.” He disparages or fires political enemies. At a rally this week, he told voters he wants to get “husbands back to work.” Though Trump has spoken of the need for family policies, he has delegated them to his daughter Ivanka, and very little has been done. Biden has made caregiving a big part of his economic proposals, with a $775 billion plan to help young children, older adults and people with disabilities, and to increase pay for caregivers. He has drawn upon the grief he’s experienced to comfort families touched by the coronavirus. And he has promised to try to build consensus and share power — starting with his choice of a woman as his running mate, Kamala Harris. “The gender norms around caregiving are changing,” said Ai-jen Poo, senior adviser for Care in Action, a nonprofit, and an expert on the care economy. “I think representation matters, and it’s not just in terms of race and ethnicity, it’s also in terms of experience. People want to see somebody who understands the kind of caregiving struggles they’ve been through.” Still, as much as gender roles are evolving, the candidates that voters are choosing between are both straight white men in their 70s, and versions of traditional men and fathers. No matter the outcome, it will be at least four more years before America is asked to consider any version of a leader that breaks that mold.

What makes a man manly? Trump and Biden offer competing answers

He was attempting to land Democrat Joe Biden an electoral slam dunk, but former president Barack Obama nailed a 3-pointer instead. Literally.

On the campaign trail Saturday at a high school gym in Flint, Michigan, Obama, who is known for his skill on the court, was passed a basketball as he left the room.

The ex-president dribbled, then sank the 3-pointer from the corner before casually resuming his exit and telling the campaign entourage confidently that "that's what I do."

Video of the shot -- posted to Twitter by both Obama and Biden's traveling digital director Olivia Raisner -- quickly went viral, gaining hundreds of thousands of likes and praise from none other than LeBron James, recently named Most Valuable Player of the 2020 NBA Finals.

"Now you just showing out now my friend!!" James tweeted. "That's what you do huh?? Ok ok I see. All cash!"

Biden, who was Obama's vice president, made his first joint appearance of the campaign with his former boss in Flint, scrambling to boost turnout ahead of Tuesday's election against Republican incumbent President Donald Trump who is trailing in the polls.

Shooting hoops on election day is a tradition for Obama, even when his name is not on the ballot.

The habit is reportedly part superstition for the ex-president who skipped the court during voting in the New Hampshire Democratic primary in 2008 and lost the race to then-senator Hillary Clinton.

He was attempting to land Democrat Joe Biden an electoral slam dunk, but former president Barack Obama nailed a 3-pointer instead. Literally. On the campaign trail Saturday at a high school gym in Flint, Michigan, Obama, who is known for his skill on the court, was passed a basketball as he left the room.

He was attempting to land Democrat Joe Biden an electoral slam dunk, but former president Barack Obama nailed a 3-pointer instead. Literally. On the campaign trail Saturday at a high school gym in Flint, Michigan, Obama, who is known for his skill on the court, was passed a basketball as he left the room. The ex-president dribbled, then sank the 3-pointer from the corner before casually resuming his exit and telling the campaign entourage confidently that "that's what I do." Video of the shot -- posted to Twitter by both Obama and Biden's traveling digital director Olivia Raisner -- quickly went viral, gaining hundreds of thousands of likes and praise from none other than LeBron James, recently named Most Valuable Player of the 2020 NBA Finals. "Now you just showing out now my friend!!" James tweeted. "That's what you do huh?? Ok ok I see. All cash!" Biden, who was Obama's vice president, made his first joint appearance of the campaign with his former boss in Flint, scrambling to boost turnout ahead of Tuesday's election against Republican incumbent President Donald Trump who is trailing in the polls. Shooting hoops on election day is a tradition for Obama, even when his name is not on the ballot. The habit is reportedly part superstition for the ex-president who skipped the court during voting in the New Hampshire Democratic primary in 2008 and lost the race to then-senator Hillary Clinton.

'That's what I do': Obama casually sinks 3-pointer on campaign trail

The campaign for the November 3 vote in the United States -- largely muted by the pandemic -- is drawing to a close. And quite understanding the gravity of the election, a record 90 million people have already cast their early votes.

US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are making a late push for their respective campaigns, pressing closing arguments in a frantic sprint days ahead of the presidential election.

Biden has taken the offensive, pushing Trump onto the back foot in unexpected battlegrounds like Texas, a large, traditionally conservative bastion now seen as a toss-up.

Trump and Biden whisked through crucial states in the industrial Midwest and coastal southeast on Saturday.

Trump did what he has been doing -- warned of "bedlam in our country" if no clear winner emerges quickly in Tuesday's election, saying, without evidence, that it could take weeks to sort out a result and that "very bad things" could happen in the interim.

Biden meantime told backers it was "time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home."

The election takes place in a deeply divided country, with feelings so raw that gun sales have surged in some areas. Businesses in some cities, including Washington, are protectively boarding windows, and police are preparing for the possibility of violence.

Trump Saturday focussed on the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, while Biden made his first joint appearance of the campaign with his former boss Barack Obama -- probably the most popular Democrat in the country -- in Flint, Michigan as they scramble to boost turnout in a state Trump carried by a razor-thin margin in 2016.

Trump is spending the closing days of his re-election campaign criticising public officials and medical professionals who are trying to combat the coronavirus pandemic even as it surges back across the United States.

At a small, in-person rally in Newtown, Pennsylvania, Trump mocked his opponent for his criticism of the administration's record of fighting COVID-19, which has killed more people in the United States than in any other country.

"I watched Joe Biden speak yesterday. All he talks about is COVID, COVID. He`s got nothing else to say. COVID, COVID," Trump told the crowd, some of whom did not wear masks.

He said the United States was "just weeks away" from mass distribution of a safe vaccine against COVID-19, which is pushing hospitals to capacity and killing up to 1,000 people in the United States each day. Trump gave no details to back up his remarks about an imminent vaccine.

Vice-President Mike Pence meanwhile campaigned in narrowly divided North Carolina as Biden's running mate Kamala Harris was in Florida, another vitally important swing state.

In Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump arrived at the biggest rally of the day so far with well over 5,000 people crammed in -- few in masks but many wearing red Trump hats.

In remarks at an event in Bucks County, Trump lashed out at Biden, saying he would shut down the state's fossil-fuel industry.

The president claimed credit for creating the "greatest economy in the history of this country -- the history of the world" -- while "foreign nations are in freefall."

Despite recent signs of recovery from the virus-induced economic pain, however, millions remain jobless.

In stark contrast, Biden and Obama appeared Saturday before a socially distanced drive-in rally in Flint, and made an unannounced stop in suburban Bloomfield Hills before heading to Detroit, where they were joined by superstar singer Stevie Wonder.

Obama pulled few punches in Flint and Detroit, saying 140,000 American lives would have been saved if the president had taken an approach to the pandemic similar to Canada's.&nbsp;

"This is not a contest of just calling each other names," Obama said.

"This isn't a sporting event. This is life or death."

Biden said "we're done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the failure, the refusal to take any responsibility."

Biden's campaign announced he will address the nation on election night from his home base of Wilmington, after a vote that will undoubtedly leave millions bitterly disappointed, no matter who wins.

Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud and has more recently argued that only the results available on election night should count. In a flurry of legal motions, his campaign has sought to restrict absentee balloting.

"I don’t care how hard Donald Trump tries. There’s nothing – let me say that again – there’s nothing that he can do to stop the people of this nation from voting in overwhelming numbers and taking back this democracy,” Biden said.

In his closing arguments, Biden has accused Trump of being a bully, criticised his lack of a strategy to control the pandemic, which has killed nearly 229,000 Americans; his efforts to repeal the Obamacare healthcare law; and his disregard for science on climate change.

He has offered his own made-in-America economic platform, a contrast with Trump's "America First" approach, saying he will get the wealthy to pay their fair share and make sure earnings are distributed more equitably.

Opinion polls show Trump trailing former Vice President Biden nationally, but with a closer contest in the most competitive states that will decide the election. Voters say the coronavirus is their top concern.

STANFORD REPORT

Meanwhile, Stanford University economists on Saturday released an estimate that Trump rallies held from June to September led to more than 30,000 additional COVID-19 infections and possibly as many as 700 deaths. The study was based on a statistical model and not actual investigations of coronavirus cases. The paper, which did not cite disease experts among its authors, has not been peer-reviewed.

Public health officials have repeatedly warned that Trump campaign events could hasten the spread of the virus, particularly those held in places where infection rates were already on the rise. Determining the actual impact of those rallies on infection rates has been difficult due to the lack of robust contact tracing in many US states.

(with inputs from agencies)

The campaign for the November 3 vote in the United States -- largely muted by the pandemic -- is drawing to a close. And quite understanding the gravity of the election, a record 90 million people have already cast their early votes.

The campaign for the November 3 vote in the United States -- largely muted by the pandemic -- is drawing to a close. And quite understanding the gravity of the election, a record 90 million people have already cast their early votes. US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are making a late push for their respective campaigns, pressing closing arguments in a frantic sprint days ahead of the presidential election. Biden has taken the offensive, pushing Trump onto the back foot in unexpected battlegrounds like Texas, a large, traditionally conservative bastion now seen as a toss-up. Trump and Biden whisked through crucial states in the industrial Midwest and coastal southeast on Saturday. Trump did what he has been doing -- warned of "bedlam in our country" if no clear winner emerges quickly in Tuesday's election, saying, without evidence, that it could take weeks to sort out a result and that "very bad things" could happen in the interim. Biden meantime told backers it was "time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home." The election takes place in a deeply divided country, with feelings so raw that gun sales have surged in some areas. Businesses in some cities, including Washington, are protectively boarding windows, and police are preparing for the possibility of violence. Trump Saturday focussed on the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, while Biden made his first joint appearance of the campaign with his former boss Barack Obama -- probably the most popular Democrat in the country -- in Flint, Michigan as they scramble to boost turnout in a state Trump carried by a razor-thin margin in 2016. Trump is spending the closing days of his re-election campaign criticising public officials and medical professionals who are trying to combat the coronavirus pandemic even as it surges back across the United States. At a small, in-person rally in Newtown, Pennsylvania, Trump mocked his opponent for his criticism of the administration's record of fighting COVID-19, which has killed more people in the United States than in any other country. "I watched Joe Biden speak yesterday. All he talks about is COVID, COVID. He`s got nothing else to say. COVID, COVID," Trump told the crowd, some of whom did not wear masks. He said the United States was "just weeks away" from mass distribution of a safe vaccine against COVID-19, which is pushing hospitals to capacity and killing up to 1,000 people in the United States each day. Trump gave no details to back up his remarks about an imminent vaccine. Vice-President Mike Pence meanwhile campaigned in narrowly divided North Carolina as Biden's running mate Kamala Harris was in Florida, another vitally important swing state. In Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump arrived at the biggest rally of the day so far with well over 5,000 people crammed in -- few in masks but many wearing red Trump hats. In remarks at an event in Bucks County, Trump lashed out at Biden, saying he would shut down the state's fossil-fuel industry. The president claimed credit for creating the "greatest economy in the history of this country -- the history of the world" -- while "foreign nations are in freefall." Despite recent signs of recovery from the virus-induced economic pain, however, millions remain jobless. In stark contrast, Biden and Obama appeared Saturday before a socially distanced drive-in rally in Flint, and made an unannounced stop in suburban Bloomfield Hills before heading to Detroit, where they were joined by superstar singer Stevie Wonder. Obama pulled few punches in Flint and Detroit, saying 140,000 American lives would have been saved if the president had taken an approach to the pandemic similar to Canada's. "This is not a contest of just calling each other names," Obama said. "This isn't a sporting event. This is life or death." Biden said "we're done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the failure, the refusal to take any responsibility." Biden's campaign announced he will address the nation on election night from his home base of Wilmington, after a vote that will undoubtedly leave millions bitterly disappointed, no matter who wins. Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud and has more recently argued that only the results available on election night should count. In a flurry of legal motions, his campaign has sought to restrict absentee balloting. "I don’t care how hard Donald Trump tries. There’s nothing – let me say that again – there’s nothing that he can do to stop the people of this nation from voting in overwhelming numbers and taking back this democracy,” Biden said. In his closing arguments, Biden has accused Trump of being a bully, criticised his lack of a strategy to control the pandemic, which has killed nearly 229,000 Americans; his efforts to repeal the Obamacare healthcare law; and his disregard for science on climate change. He has offered his own made-in-America economic platform, a contrast with Trump's "America First" approach, saying he will get the wealthy to pay their fair share and make sure earnings are distributed more equitably. Opinion polls show Trump trailing former Vice President Biden nationally, but with a closer contest in the most competitive states that will decide the election. Voters say the coronavirus is their top concern. STANFORD REPORT Meanwhile, Stanford University economists on Saturday released an estimate that Trump rallies held from June to September led to more than 30,000 additional COVID-19 infections and possibly as many as 700 deaths. The study was based on a statistical model and not actual investigations of coronavirus cases. The paper, which did not cite disease experts among its authors, has not been peer-reviewed. Public health officials have repeatedly warned that Trump campaign events could hasten the spread of the virus, particularly those held in places where infection rates were already on the rise. Determining the actual impact of those rallies on infection rates has been difficult due to the lack of robust contact tracing in many US states. (with inputs from agencies)

On final weekend before Nov 3 vote, Trump and Biden press closing arguments

US President Donald Trump's eighteen election rallies held from June to September are estimated to have led to 700 deaths, a study by Stanford University researchers said. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/on-final-weekend-before-nov-3-vote-trump-and-biden-press-closing-arguments-339318">Also read: On the final weekend before Nov 3 vote, Trump and Biden press closing arguments</a> 
 
According to the report, the communities where Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death.

In the study titled ‘The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies', researchers concluded 18 rallies by Trump held between June 20 and September 22 "ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19 and likely led to more than 700 deaths, which may not necessarily have been among attendees. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-joe-biden-leads-in-michigan-and-wisconsin-donald-trump-struggling-survey-339408">Also read | Joe Biden leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, Donald Trump struggling: Survey</a> 
 
Public health officials have repeatedly warned that Trump campaign events could hasten the spread of the virus, particularly those held in places where infection rates were already on the rise. Determining the actual impact of those rallies on infection rates has been difficult due to the lack of robust contact tracing in many US states.

Amesh Adalja, an infectious diseases expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, described the report as "suggestive."

“I would just say it’s suggestive but hard to completely isolate the specific impact of one event without robust contact trace data from the cases,” Adalja said.

(With inputs from agencies)

US President Donald Trump's eighteen election rallies held from June to September are estimated to have led to 700 deaths, a study by Stanford University researchers said.

US President Donald Trump's eighteen election rallies held from June to September are estimated to have led to 700 deaths, a study by Stanford University researchers said. Also read: On the final weekend before Nov 3 vote, Trump and Biden press closing arguments According to the report, the communities where Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death. In the study titled ‘The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies', researchers concluded 18 rallies by Trump held between June 20 and September 22 "ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19 and likely led to more than 700 deaths, which may not necessarily have been among attendees. Also read | Joe Biden leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, Donald Trump struggling: Survey Public health officials have repeatedly warned that Trump campaign events could hasten the spread of the virus, particularly those held in places where infection rates were already on the rise. Determining the actual impact of those rallies on infection rates has been difficult due to the lack of robust contact tracing in many US states. Amesh Adalja, an infectious diseases expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, described the report as "suggestive." “I would just say it’s suggestive but hard to completely isolate the specific impact of one event without robust contact trace data from the cases,” Adalja said. (With inputs from agencies)

Trump rallies led to 30,000 Covid-19 infections, 700 deaths: Stanford study

Launching a scathing attack on his successor at the White House, Former US president Barack Obama has accused Donald Trump of focusing on feeding his ego, saying he did not take the significant problem of the coronavirus pandemic seriously and had time to worry about other things. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-rallies-led-to-30000-covid-19-infections-700-deaths-stanford-study-339425">Also read: Trump rallies led to 30,000 Covid-19 infections, 700 deaths: Stanford study</a> 
 
Obama's remarks included blistering rebukes of Trump -- including mocking his focus on crowd sizes and belittling his economic achievements -- but the events stood out from earlier Obama appearances because of the way the former President touted Biden's character. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/on-final-weekend-before-nov-3-vote-trump-and-biden-press-closing-arguments-339318">Also read: On the final weekend before Nov 3 vote, Trump and Biden press closing arguments</a>

"President Trump is focused on feeding his ego, while the Democratic presidential candidate Biden focused on decency and empathy," Obama said. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-joe-biden-leads-in-michigan-and-wisconsin-donald-trump-struggling-survey-339408">Also read | Joe Biden leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, Donald Trump struggling: Survey</a>

Obama, who was the 44th US president, blasted Trump for his policies and rhetoric.

"He hasn't shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself or his friends or treating the presidency as anything more than a reality show to give him the attention that he craves. But unfortunately, the rest of us have to live with the consequences," he said.

According to a new study by Stanford University researchers, about 18 election rallies by Donald Trump are estimated to have led to more than 30,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and likely claimed over 700 lives, stressing that the communities where the US President's rallies took place "paid a high price in terms of disease and death.”

Earlier on October 25, Claiming that Trump has no empathy and no concern for average Americans, Obama had said that the US president was seeking a second term only "to help himself" and his wealthy friends.

On the other hand, Biden and Harris are going to be in the fight, not for themselves, "but for you and us", he had said.

(With inputs from agencies)

Launching a scathing attack on his successor at the White House, Former US president Barack Obama has accused Donald Trump of focusing on feeding his ego, saying he did not take the significant problem of the coronavirus pandemic seriously and had time to worry about other things.

Launching a scathing attack on his successor at the White House, Former US president Barack Obama has accused Donald Trump of focusing on feeding his ego, saying he did not take the significant problem of the coronavirus pandemic seriously and had time to worry about other things. Also read: Trump rallies led to 30,000 Covid-19 infections, 700 deaths: Stanford study Obama's remarks included blistering rebukes of Trump -- including mocking his focus on crowd sizes and belittling his economic achievements -- but the events stood out from earlier Obama appearances because of the way the former President touted Biden's character. Also read: On the final weekend before Nov 3 vote, Trump and Biden press closing arguments "President Trump is focused on feeding his ego, while the Democratic presidential candidate Biden focused on decency and empathy," Obama said. Also read | Joe Biden leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, Donald Trump struggling: Survey Obama, who was the 44th US president, blasted Trump for his policies and rhetoric. "He hasn't shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself or his friends or treating the presidency as anything more than a reality show to give him the attention that he craves. But unfortunately, the rest of us have to live with the consequences," he said. According to a new study by Stanford University researchers, about 18 election rallies by Donald Trump are estimated to have led to more than 30,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and likely claimed over 700 lives, stressing that the communities where the US President's rallies took place "paid a high price in terms of disease and death.” Earlier on October 25, Claiming that Trump has no empathy and no concern for average Americans, Obama had said that the US president was seeking a second term only "to help himself" and his wealthy friends. On the other hand, Biden and Harris are going to be in the fight, not for themselves, "but for you and us", he had said. (With inputs from agencies)

Trump focused on feeding his ego, did not take pandemic seriously: Obama

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris has urged the Americans to come out and vote in large numbers to bring a change at the White House.

Speaking at a rally in Texas on Friday, Harris, 56, accused the Republicans of creating a confusion on votes.

"Everyone should vote to bring a change at the White House. Need to realise the power of vote and the opponents are for creating confusion on votes," Harris, who is the first Democratic vice-presidential candidate to address an election rally in Republican stronghold Texas in decades, said.

"They know our power. They know when we vote, things change. They know when we vote, we win. We vote to honour the ancestors. We vote because everything is at stake. Everything is at stake," Harris added.

She said the country is undergoing a major health crisis, with the death of more than 220,000 Americans due to coronavirus pandemic and blamed President Donald Trump for the situation.

"We want to make sure we see it through and then let's make sure on Election Day, everybody we know has made sure that their voice, their powerful voice, is represented in this election through their vote, because there is so much at stake and so many reasons to vote," she said.

US is the worst impacted nation by the coronavirus, with the total number of infections and deaths standing at 9,034,925 and 229,544, according to Johns Hopkins University.

"We're in the midst of a public health pandemic. You also have a situation where we have a president who, while we are seeing spikes around our country, talking about we've turned the corner, continuing to mislead the American people," she said.

She said that because of the pandemic, the worsening of the wealth gap in America has been such that over 30 million people in just the last several months had to file for unemployment insurance. "We are seeing numbers that tell us one in five mothers who has a child under the age of 12 is describing her children as being hungry," she rued, adding that the US is in the middle of a hunger crisis.

The Democratic Party under the leadership of Joe Biden, she asserted, is a plan to fight coronavirus, and is committed to not raising taxes ever on anyone making less than USD 400,000 a year, and is also committed in investing in working people in America.

"Biden understands that we need to deal with these racial disparities. We need to acknowledge them, difficult though they may be, to think about, much less talk about. We need to address it in terms of what we're doing around healthcare. We need to address it in terms of the racial wealth gap. We need to address it in terms of the gaps in our education system," she said.

She accused President Trump of ruining America.

"A president of the United States who has called Mexicans rapists and criminals, who as his first order of business instituted a Muslim ban. America, we deserve better,"&nbsp;she said.

"That does not reflect who we are as our values and priorities, as a nation that knows we are our strongest when we are unified, knows that we have so much more in common regardless of where you live, the race, your ethnicity, the language your grandmother speaks,"&nbsp;said the Senator from California.&nbsp;

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris has urged the Americans to come out and vote in large numbers to bring a change at the White House. Speaking at a rally in Texas on Friday, Harris, 56, accused the Republicans of creating a confusion on votes.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris has urged the Americans to come out and vote in large numbers to bring a change at the White House. Speaking at a rally in Texas on Friday, Harris, 56, accused the Republicans of creating a confusion on votes. "Everyone should vote to bring a change at the White House. Need to realise the power of vote and the opponents are for creating confusion on votes," Harris, who is the first Democratic vice-presidential candidate to address an election rally in Republican stronghold Texas in decades, said. "They know our power. They know when we vote, things change. They know when we vote, we win. We vote to honour the ancestors. We vote because everything is at stake. Everything is at stake," Harris added. She said the country is undergoing a major health crisis, with the death of more than 220,000 Americans due to coronavirus pandemic and blamed President Donald Trump for the situation. "We want to make sure we see it through and then let's make sure on Election Day, everybody we know has made sure that their voice, their powerful voice, is represented in this election through their vote, because there is so much at stake and so many reasons to vote," she said. US is the worst impacted nation by the coronavirus, with the total number of infections and deaths standing at 9,034,925 and 229,544, according to Johns Hopkins University. "We're in the midst of a public health pandemic. You also have a situation where we have a president who, while we are seeing spikes around our country, talking about we've turned the corner, continuing to mislead the American people," she said. She said that because of the pandemic, the worsening of the wealth gap in America has been such that over 30 million people in just the last several months had to file for unemployment insurance. "We are seeing numbers that tell us one in five mothers who has a child under the age of 12 is describing her children as being hungry," she rued, adding that the US is in the middle of a hunger crisis. The Democratic Party under the leadership of Joe Biden, she asserted, is a plan to fight coronavirus, and is committed to not raising taxes ever on anyone making less than USD 400,000 a year, and is also committed in investing in working people in America. "Biden understands that we need to deal with these racial disparities. We need to acknowledge them, difficult though they may be, to think about, much less talk about. We need to address it in terms of what we're doing around healthcare. We need to address it in terms of the racial wealth gap. We need to address it in terms of the gaps in our education system," she said. She accused President Trump of ruining America. "A president of the United States who has called Mexicans rapists and criminals, who as his first order of business instituted a Muslim ban. America, we deserve better," she said. "That does not reflect who we are as our values and priorities, as a nation that knows we are our strongest when we are unified, knows that we have so much more in common regardless of where you live, the race, your ethnicity, the language your grandmother speaks," said the Senator from California.

Kamala Harris urges voters to vote in large numbers; bring change at White House

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden Friday had the dais to himself as he and the incumbent US president, Donald Trump, sparred over American Midwest in the run up to the November 3 vote.

The resurgent coronavirus has passed the milestone of nine million cases in the US, and as would be apparent, Biden intensified his attacks on Trump over his mishandling of the pandemic.

Trump held a rally in Michigan before heading to Wisconsin and Minnesota -- all states battling climbing numbers of virus cases.

"We just want normal," Trump told supporters -- many of them unmasked -- at an outdoor rally near Detroit as he pushed states to relax public health restrictions and resume daily life.

He again bucked his own administration's health experts as he downplayed the Covid-19 threat, saying "if you get it, you're going to get better, and then you're going to be immune."

Covid-19 has killed nearly 230,000 people in the US, which is experiencing surges in most states as the winter flu season looms.

"We can not afford four more years of Donald Trump," Biden said at a socially distanced drive-in rally in St. Paul, Minnesota.

"So honk your horn if you want America to lead again!" he said, embracing the awkward pandemic-era campaign trend of rallying supporters in their vehicles.

"Honk your horn if you want to have civility again, and honk your horn if you want America to be united again!"

"Donald Trump has given up (and) waved the white flag," Biden told a drive-in rally with more than 300 cars in Des Moines.

Trump flipped Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin from the Democrats to clinch his shock victory four years ago.&nbsp;Now polls show Biden leading in all three, albeit narrowly in Iowa.

It was Biden's first visit to Iowa since his inauspicious campaign start in February, when he placed a dismal fourth in the opening Democratic nominating contest.

With voters concerned about the health hazards of crowded polling stations on November 3, a record 86 million have already cast early ballots by mail or in person.

Even as the US hit a grim new high in daily Covid-19 infections Thursday, Trump has stuck to his guns, downplaying the dangers and branding Democrats as rampaging "socialists" intent on shuttering the country.

And while Trump has touted the economic successes of his presidency, including positive GDP figures Thursday, US stocks closed out their worst week since March, highlighting concerns about a shaky recovery.

After a campaign largely muted by the pandemic, Biden is on the offensive, pushing Trump onto the back foot in unexpected battlegrounds like Texas, a large, traditionally conservative bastion now rated a toss-up by multiple analysts.

On Friday, the state reported that a staggering nine million residents had already voted, surpassing its entire 2016 total.

On Saturday Biden returns to the Midwest bringing with him perhaps his strongest surrogate: ex-president Barack Obama, making his first joint in-person campaign appearance of the year with his former VP.

Trump will spend the day campaigning in the critical state of Pennsylvania, where he narrowly trails Biden in polls.

Biden will follow suit there both Sunday and Monday in a clear sign that his campaign sees the Keystone State as absolutely crucial to his victory.

Trump and Biden on Thursday campaigned in Florida.

(with inputs)

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden Friday had the dais to himself as he and the incumbent US president, Donald Trump, sparred over American Midwest in the run up to the November 3 vote.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden Friday had the dais to himself as he and the incumbent US president, Donald Trump, sparred over American Midwest in the run up to the November 3 vote. The resurgent coronavirus has passed the milestone of nine million cases in the US, and as would be apparent, Biden intensified his attacks on Trump over his mishandling of the pandemic. Trump held a rally in Michigan before heading to Wisconsin and Minnesota -- all states battling climbing numbers of virus cases. "We just want normal," Trump told supporters -- many of them unmasked -- at an outdoor rally near Detroit as he pushed states to relax public health restrictions and resume daily life. He again bucked his own administration's health experts as he downplayed the Covid-19 threat, saying "if you get it, you're going to get better, and then you're going to be immune." Covid-19 has killed nearly 230,000 people in the US, which is experiencing surges in most states as the winter flu season looms. "We can not afford four more years of Donald Trump," Biden said at a socially distanced drive-in rally in St. Paul, Minnesota. "So honk your horn if you want America to lead again!" he said, embracing the awkward pandemic-era campaign trend of rallying supporters in their vehicles. "Honk your horn if you want to have civility again, and honk your horn if you want America to be united again!" "Donald Trump has given up (and) waved the white flag," Biden told a drive-in rally with more than 300 cars in Des Moines. Trump flipped Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin from the Democrats to clinch his shock victory four years ago. Now polls show Biden leading in all three, albeit narrowly in Iowa. It was Biden's first visit to Iowa since his inauspicious campaign start in February, when he placed a dismal fourth in the opening Democratic nominating contest. With voters concerned about the health hazards of crowded polling stations on November 3, a record 86 million have already cast early ballots by mail or in person. Even as the US hit a grim new high in daily Covid-19 infections Thursday, Trump has stuck to his guns, downplaying the dangers and branding Democrats as rampaging "socialists" intent on shuttering the country. And while Trump has touted the economic successes of his presidency, including positive GDP figures Thursday, US stocks closed out their worst week since March, highlighting concerns about a shaky recovery. After a campaign largely muted by the pandemic, Biden is on the offensive, pushing Trump onto the back foot in unexpected battlegrounds like Texas, a large, traditionally conservative bastion now rated a toss-up by multiple analysts. On Friday, the state reported that a staggering nine million residents had already voted, surpassing its entire 2016 total. On Saturday Biden returns to the Midwest bringing with him perhaps his strongest surrogate: ex-president Barack Obama, making his first joint in-person campaign appearance of the year with his former VP. Trump will spend the day campaigning in the critical state of Pennsylvania, where he narrowly trails Biden in polls. Biden will follow suit there both Sunday and Monday in a clear sign that his campaign sees the Keystone State as absolutely crucial to his victory. Trump and Biden on Thursday campaigned in Florida. (with inputs)

Biden and Trump campaign in heartland states in US election finale

Two prominent Indian-Americans are among Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden's core advisors who have been guiding him on issues ranging from the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery to foreign policy and climate change.

According to a report published in The New York Times, Biden is said to have been leaning on veteran advisors with high-level governmental experience rather than outsiders and ideological rivals to help guide him on subjects including the coronavirus pandemic and the country's diminished standing in the world.

Among those advising him on the pandemic are Dr Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General who was appointed by President Barack Obama and Harvard economist Raj Chetty who briefs Biden on economic issues.

Murthy and former head of the Food and Drug Administration David Kessler were among those present on a conference call convened by the Biden campaign when it learned that two people who had travelled with Senator Kamala Harris had tested positive for the coronavirus.

"Biden has spoken often of his briefings with experts, and Dr Murthy and Dr Kessler have been two of the most prominent medical figures whose counsel Biden has sought during the public health crisis," the NYT report said.

The NYT report quoted Kessler as saying that in the early days of the pandemic, he and Murthy would brief Biden "every day, or four times a week."

The report added that Biden has signalled that the government's top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci will have a prominent role in a Biden administration.

On economy, Biden has cast a wide net for economic advice, soliciting input from several hundred policy experts, the report said.

Also, among the most influential foreign policy advisor for Biden is Antony Blinken, who has previously worked for Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served as a deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state under Obama.

"Known more for his diplomatic touch than any fixed ideas, he is considered a likely candidate for national security adviser or secretary of state," the NYT report said.

Two prominent Indian-Americans are among Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden's core advisors who have been guiding him on issues ranging from the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery to foreign policy and climate change.

Two prominent Indian-Americans are among Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden's core advisors who have been guiding him on issues ranging from the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery to foreign policy and climate change. According to a report published in The New York Times, Biden is said to have been leaning on veteran advisors with high-level governmental experience rather than outsiders and ideological rivals to help guide him on subjects including the coronavirus pandemic and the country's diminished standing in the world. Among those advising him on the pandemic are Dr Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General who was appointed by President Barack Obama and Harvard economist Raj Chetty who briefs Biden on economic issues. Murthy and former head of the Food and Drug Administration David Kessler were among those present on a conference call convened by the Biden campaign when it learned that two people who had travelled with Senator Kamala Harris had tested positive for the coronavirus. "Biden has spoken often of his briefings with experts, and Dr Murthy and Dr Kessler have been two of the most prominent medical figures whose counsel Biden has sought during the public health crisis," the NYT report said. The NYT report quoted Kessler as saying that in the early days of the pandemic, he and Murthy would brief Biden "every day, or four times a week." The report added that Biden has signalled that the government's top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci will have a prominent role in a Biden administration. On economy, Biden has cast a wide net for economic advice, soliciting input from several hundred policy experts, the report said. Also, among the most influential foreign policy advisor for Biden is Antony Blinken, who has previously worked for Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served as a deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state under Obama. "Known more for his diplomatic touch than any fixed ideas, he is considered a likely candidate for national security adviser or secretary of state," the NYT report said.

Two prominent Indian-Americans are among Joe Biden's core advisors

The incumbent US president, Donald Trump, and his Democratic rival Joe Biden rallied supporters on Thursday in the closely fought state of Florida. Their respective addresses at the rallies highlighted their contrasting approaches to the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.

With its 29 electoral votes, the state is a major prize in Tuesday's election. Trump's victory in Florida in 2016 was vital to his surprise election win.

Opinion polls show Biden with a significant edge nationally, but with a tighter lead in the battleground states that play a decisive role in the final result.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed Trump had moved into a tie with Biden in Florida, with 49% saying they would vote for Biden and 47% for the president.

Thousands of people, many of them without masks, crowded together at an outdoor event in Tampa on Thursday to hear Trump.

"Could you imagine losing to this guy? Could you imagine?" Trump said, adding he was confident of winning a second term.

Biden held "drive-in" rally in the same city -- where attendees remained in or near their cars to avoid the possible spread of the coronavirus. Supporters at the event wore masks, as required by Biden's campaign, although they did not always maintain social distancing.

Biden criticised Trump for holding what he termed a "super-spreader event" and attacked the president's repeated assertion that the country had moved past the worst days of the pandemic, despite rising cases nationwide.

"Donald Trump has waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to this virus," Biden said. "But the American people never give up; we never give in."

The pandemic that has upended life across the United States, killed more than 227,000 people and caused millions of job losses, is roaring back.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the threat of the pandemic, saying this week his opponents and the news media would stop paying attention to it right after the election, even as leaders in Europe scramble to contain a second wave and public health experts predict a grim winter in the United States.

Officials in Gastonia, North Carolina, warned people who attended an Oct. 21 Trump rally there that two people who took part tested positive for COVID-19.

Following his own bout with COVID-19, the president has had a hectic campaign schedule, holding as many as three rallies a day in different states, while Biden has taken a more measured tack, spending two days this week close to his home base of Delaware.

In all, he plans to visit 10 states in the last days of the campaign and will host 11 rallies in the final 48 hours, a campaign official said.

Biden's own Tampa speech was cut short by a sudden downpour. He is expected to travel to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa on Friday.

Meanwhile, more than 80 million Americans have already cast ballots in the presidential election. That surge includes more than 51 million ballots cast by mail, a long-standing practice of American elections that is surging in popularity because of the pandemic. State officials and experts have warned that it may take days or even weeks to tally them as some states have rules that forbid counting early votes before Election Day.

(with inputs)

The incumbent US president, Donald Trump, and his Democratic rival Joe Biden rallied supporters on Thursday in the closely fought state of Florida. Their respective addresses at the rallies highlighted their contrasting approaches to the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.

The incumbent US president, Donald Trump, and his Democratic rival Joe Biden rallied supporters on Thursday in the closely fought state of Florida. Their respective addresses at the rallies highlighted their contrasting approaches to the resurgent coronavirus pandemic. With its 29 electoral votes, the state is a major prize in Tuesday's election. Trump's victory in Florida in 2016 was vital to his surprise election win. Opinion polls show Biden with a significant edge nationally, but with a tighter lead in the battleground states that play a decisive role in the final result. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed Trump had moved into a tie with Biden in Florida, with 49% saying they would vote for Biden and 47% for the president. Thousands of people, many of them without masks, crowded together at an outdoor event in Tampa on Thursday to hear Trump. "Could you imagine losing to this guy? Could you imagine?" Trump said, adding he was confident of winning a second term. Biden held "drive-in" rally in the same city -- where attendees remained in or near their cars to avoid the possible spread of the coronavirus. Supporters at the event wore masks, as required by Biden's campaign, although they did not always maintain social distancing. Biden criticised Trump for holding what he termed a "super-spreader event" and attacked the president's repeated assertion that the country had moved past the worst days of the pandemic, despite rising cases nationwide. "Donald Trump has waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to this virus," Biden said. "But the American people never give up; we never give in." The pandemic that has upended life across the United States, killed more than 227,000 people and caused millions of job losses, is roaring back. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the threat of the pandemic, saying this week his opponents and the news media would stop paying attention to it right after the election, even as leaders in Europe scramble to contain a second wave and public health experts predict a grim winter in the United States. Officials in Gastonia, North Carolina, warned people who attended an Oct. 21 Trump rally there that two people who took part tested positive for COVID-19. Following his own bout with COVID-19, the president has had a hectic campaign schedule, holding as many as three rallies a day in different states, while Biden has taken a more measured tack, spending two days this week close to his home base of Delaware. In all, he plans to visit 10 states in the last days of the campaign and will host 11 rallies in the final 48 hours, a campaign official said. Biden's own Tampa speech was cut short by a sudden downpour. He is expected to travel to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa on Friday. Meanwhile, more than 80 million Americans have already cast ballots in the presidential election. That surge includes more than 51 million ballots cast by mail, a long-standing practice of American elections that is surging in popularity because of the pandemic. State officials and experts have warned that it may take days or even weeks to tally them as some states have rules that forbid counting early votes before Election Day. (with inputs)

Trump and Biden are a stark contrast in battleground Florida

Donald Trump and Joe Biden square off with rallies in key Midwestern states on Friday as resurgent coronavirus further highlights their sharp differences just four days before the US presidential election.

Even with the United States reaching another daily record in new Covid-19 infections on Thursday, President Trump stuck to his strategy of downplaying its dangerousness and calling for businesses to reopen.

He has also ramped up fear-mongering, warning of rampaging "socialists" and seeking to portray his Democratic challenger as intent on shutting the country down.

Biden has sought to persuade the few remaining undecided voters that he would provide a steady hand on the wheel and heal America's "soul," calling Trump irresponsible.

The former vice president has held drive-in, socially distanced rallies, while Trump's gatherings have often seen attendees ignore such guidelines and eschew masks.

The two candidates plan to be in three Midwestern states on Friday, with both campaigning in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Trump will also travel to Michigan and Biden also plans to be in Iowa.

Trump's wins in Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa helped propel him to victory in 2016.

But polling averages from the RealClearPolitics.com site show Biden up in all four of those states, ranging from 6.5 percentage points in Michigan to just one point in Iowa.

Still, Democrats and Republicans alike have repeatedly warned of the unreliability of polls, pointing to Trump's shock defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite surveys showing her to be the clear favorite.

- Florida rallies -

Trump and Biden are concentrating their efforts on battleground states that will decide the election in the days before the November 3 polls, and on Thursday both were in the crucial state of Florida.

Trump, 74, held another raucous rally in Tampa, telling the cheering crowd that coronavirus lockdowns under Biden would banish normal life.

"They will allow you nothing," the Republican said.

"We're never going to lock down again.... We're open for business," he said, telling supporters that his own recent bout with Covid-19 proved that it can be beaten.

"You know, the bottom line is you get better," he said.

But the pandemic, which has already taken 228,000 American lives, has shown its resilience and is undergoing a long-predicted second wave.

On Thursday more than 91,000 new US infections were recorded, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally, the highest 24-hour total since the pandemic began.

Trump however did receive good news Thursday in his argument that he is best placed to bring about an economic recovery.

New figures showed an annual growth rate of 33.1 percent in the third quarter -- a jaw-dropping statistic that reflected the economy's rebound from such a low base.

Biden, addressing a socially distanced drive-in event in Broward County, reminded supporters that of all the states there are few as important as Florida in deciding the outcome of tight elections.

Rebuffing Trump's central charge, the 77-year-old emphasized his claim that he would bring responsible leadership after months of the White House downplaying the virus' danger.

"I'm not going to shut down the economy, I'm not going to shut down the country. I'm going to shut down the virus," he said in Tampa.

While Trump mocks him for holding small campaign events, Biden said he was leading by example, instead of staging the president's "super-spreader" events.

"The heart and soul of this country is at stake," he said.

- Huge early voting -

Trump sets the pace with a frenetic schedule, but Biden's strikingly quiet campaign is also revving up.

After Florida, Trump flew to Fort Bragg in North Carolina for a meeting with troops. A planned rally in the toss-up state was postponed until Monday due to the weather, the campaign said.

Mother nature intruded on Biden's Tampa rally too, as a heavy downpour forced him to cut his remarks short.

Trump defeated Clinton in Florida in 2016 but an NBC News/Marist poll released Thursday had Biden with a 51-47 point lead there.

A stunning 81 million Americans have already cast their ballots early in the hugely consequential election.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden square off with rallies in key Midwestern states on Friday as resurgent coronavirus further highlights their sharp differences just four days before the US presidential election.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden square off with rallies in key Midwestern states on Friday as resurgent coronavirus further highlights their sharp differences just four days before the US presidential election. Even with the United States reaching another daily record in new Covid-19 infections on Thursday, President Trump stuck to his strategy of downplaying its dangerousness and calling for businesses to reopen. He has also ramped up fear-mongering, warning of rampaging "socialists" and seeking to portray his Democratic challenger as intent on shutting the country down. Biden has sought to persuade the few remaining undecided voters that he would provide a steady hand on the wheel and heal America's "soul," calling Trump irresponsible. The former vice president has held drive-in, socially distanced rallies, while Trump's gatherings have often seen attendees ignore such guidelines and eschew masks. The two candidates plan to be in three Midwestern states on Friday, with both campaigning in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Trump will also travel to Michigan and Biden also plans to be in Iowa. Trump's wins in Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa helped propel him to victory in 2016. But polling averages from the RealClearPolitics.com site show Biden up in all four of those states, ranging from 6.5 percentage points in Michigan to just one point in Iowa. Still, Democrats and Republicans alike have repeatedly warned of the unreliability of polls, pointing to Trump's shock defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite surveys showing her to be the clear favorite. - Florida rallies - Trump and Biden are concentrating their efforts on battleground states that will decide the election in the days before the November 3 polls, and on Thursday both were in the crucial state of Florida. Trump, 74, held another raucous rally in Tampa, telling the cheering crowd that coronavirus lockdowns under Biden would banish normal life. "They will allow you nothing," the Republican said. "We're never going to lock down again.... We're open for business," he said, telling supporters that his own recent bout with Covid-19 proved that it can be beaten. "You know, the bottom line is you get better," he said. But the pandemic, which has already taken 228,000 American lives, has shown its resilience and is undergoing a long-predicted second wave. On Thursday more than 91,000 new US infections were recorded, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally, the highest 24-hour total since the pandemic began. Trump however did receive good news Thursday in his argument that he is best placed to bring about an economic recovery. New figures showed an annual growth rate of 33.1 percent in the third quarter -- a jaw-dropping statistic that reflected the economy's rebound from such a low base. Biden, addressing a socially distanced drive-in event in Broward County, reminded supporters that of all the states there are few as important as Florida in deciding the outcome of tight elections. Rebuffing Trump's central charge, the 77-year-old emphasized his claim that he would bring responsible leadership after months of the White House downplaying the virus' danger. "I'm not going to shut down the economy, I'm not going to shut down the country. I'm going to shut down the virus," he said in Tampa. While Trump mocks him for holding small campaign events, Biden said he was leading by example, instead of staging the president's "super-spreader" events. "The heart and soul of this country is at stake," he said. - Huge early voting - Trump sets the pace with a frenetic schedule, but Biden's strikingly quiet campaign is also revving up. After Florida, Trump flew to Fort Bragg in North Carolina for a meeting with troops. A planned rally in the toss-up state was postponed until Monday due to the weather, the campaign said. Mother nature intruded on Biden's Tampa rally too, as a heavy downpour forced him to cut his remarks short. Trump defeated Clinton in Florida in 2016 but an NBC News/Marist poll released Thursday had Biden with a 51-47 point lead there. A stunning 81 million Americans have already cast their ballots early in the hugely consequential election.

Trump, Biden square off in key Midwestern states

Be aware: Fake Twitter accounts will very likely sow disinformation in the few remaining days before Election Day on Nov. 3.

This week, researchers at the University of Southern California released a new study that identified thousands of automated accounts, or “bots,” on Twitter posting information related to President Donald Trump, Joe Biden and their campaigns. The study examined over 240 million election-related tweets from June through September.

Many of these bots, the study said, spread falsehoods related to the coronavirus and far-right conspiracy theories such QAnon and “pizzagate.” The study said that bots accounted for 20% of all tweets involving these political conspiracy theories.

“These bots are an integral part of the discussion” on social media, said Emilio Ferrara, the University of Southern California professor who led the study.

A Twitter spokesman questioned the study’s methods. “Research that uses only publicly available data is deeply flawed by design and often makes egregiously reductive claims based on these limited signals,” the spokesman said. “We continue to confront a changing threat landscape.”

Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook have long worked to remove this kind of activity, which has been used by groups trying to foment discord in past elections in the United States and abroad. And the University of Southern California study showed that about two-thirds of the conspiracy-spreading bots it identified were no longer active by the middle of September.

In some cases, bots exhibit suspicious behavior. They might “follow” an unusually large number of other accounts — a number nearly as large as the number of accounts following them — or their usernames will include random digits.

But identifying bots with the naked eye is far from an exact science. And researchers say that automated accounts have grown more sophisticated in recent months. Typically, they say, bots are driven by a mix of automated software and human operators, who work to orchestrate and vary the behavior of the fake accounts to avoid detection.

Some bots show signs of automation — like only retweeting rather than tweeting new material or posting very frequently — but it can be difficult to definitively prove that accounts are inauthentic, researchers say. An automated account may stop tweeting at night, for example, as if there is a person behind it who is sleeping.

“You can clearly see they are automated,” said Pik-Mai Hui, an Indiana University researcher who has helped build a new set of tools that aim to track these bots in real time. “But they are operated in a way that makes it very difficult to say with complete certainty.”

These bots are operating on both sides of the political spectrum, according to the study from the University of Southern California. But right-leaning bots outnumbered their left-leaning counterparts by a ratio of 4-to-1 in the study, and the right-leaning bots were more than 12 times more likely to spread false conspiracy theories.

The study indicates that 13% of all accounts tweeting about conspiracy theories are automated, and because they tweet at a higher rate, they are sending a much larger proportion of the overall material.

“This is the most concerning part,” Ferrara said. “They are increasing the effect of the echo chamber.”

Be aware: Fake Twitter accounts will very likely sow disinformation in the few remaining days before Election Day on Nov. 3. This week, researchers at the University of Southern California released a new study that identified thousands of automated accounts, or “bots,” on Twitter posting information related to President Donald Trump, Joe Biden and their campaigns.

Be aware: Fake Twitter accounts will very likely sow disinformation in the few remaining days before Election Day on Nov. 3. This week, researchers at the University of Southern California released a new study that identified thousands of automated accounts, or “bots,” on Twitter posting information related to President Donald Trump, Joe Biden and their campaigns. The study examined over 240 million election-related tweets from June through September. Many of these bots, the study said, spread falsehoods related to the coronavirus and far-right conspiracy theories such QAnon and “pizzagate.” The study said that bots accounted for 20% of all tweets involving these political conspiracy theories. “These bots are an integral part of the discussion” on social media, said Emilio Ferrara, the University of Southern California professor who led the study. A Twitter spokesman questioned the study’s methods. “Research that uses only publicly available data is deeply flawed by design and often makes egregiously reductive claims based on these limited signals,” the spokesman said. “We continue to confront a changing threat landscape.” Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook have long worked to remove this kind of activity, which has been used by groups trying to foment discord in past elections in the United States and abroad. And the University of Southern California study showed that about two-thirds of the conspiracy-spreading bots it identified were no longer active by the middle of September. In some cases, bots exhibit suspicious behavior. They might “follow” an unusually large number of other accounts — a number nearly as large as the number of accounts following them — or their usernames will include random digits. But identifying bots with the naked eye is far from an exact science. And researchers say that automated accounts have grown more sophisticated in recent months. Typically, they say, bots are driven by a mix of automated software and human operators, who work to orchestrate and vary the behavior of the fake accounts to avoid detection. Some bots show signs of automation — like only retweeting rather than tweeting new material or posting very frequently — but it can be difficult to definitively prove that accounts are inauthentic, researchers say. An automated account may stop tweeting at night, for example, as if there is a person behind it who is sleeping. “You can clearly see they are automated,” said Pik-Mai Hui, an Indiana University researcher who has helped build a new set of tools that aim to track these bots in real time. “But they are operated in a way that makes it very difficult to say with complete certainty.” These bots are operating on both sides of the political spectrum, according to the study from the University of Southern California. But right-leaning bots outnumbered their left-leaning counterparts by a ratio of 4-to-1 in the study, and the right-leaning bots were more than 12 times more likely to spread false conspiracy theories. The study indicates that 13% of all accounts tweeting about conspiracy theories are automated, and because they tweet at a higher rate, they are sending a much larger proportion of the overall material. “This is the most concerning part,” Ferrara said. “They are increasing the effect of the echo chamber.”

Twitter bots poised to spread disinformation before US election

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<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-joe-biden-and-wife-jill-biden-cast-early-vote-in-wilmington-days-before-us-election-338663">Joe Biden and wife, Jill Biden, cast an early vote in Wilmington days before US Election</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/10/29/167153-joe-biden-casts-early-vote.jpg?itok=aDng4tqw" /> 
Less than a week away from the US elections 2020, the Democrat candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden cast an early vote with his wife, Jill Biden, in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware on Wednesday.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/war-torn-yemen-on-brink-of-losing-an-entire-generation-of-children-to-hunger-un-338662">War-torn Yemen on brink of losing an entire generation of children to hunger: UN</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/07/03/148002-yemen-humanitarian-crisis.jpg?itok=0cz8vT9u" /> 
Conflict-ravaged Yemen has become a "living hell" for children with thousands dying every year from malnutrition and easily preventable diseases. 
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General Bajwa quivering, Qureshi said India will attack if Abhinandan not released: Pakistan MP recalls A Pakistan politician claimed that fearing an attack by India, the Imran Khan Government had abruptly released Indian Air Force (IAF) Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.

General Bajwa quivering, Qureshi said India will attack if Abhinandan not released: Pakistan MP recalls A Pakistan politician claimed that fearing an attack by India, the Imran Khan Government had abruptly released Indian Air Force (IAF) Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman. Joe Biden and wife, Jill Biden, cast an early vote in Wilmington days before US Election Less than a week away from the US elections 2020, the Democrat candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden cast an early vote with his wife, Jill Biden, in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware on Wednesday. War-torn Yemen on brink of losing an entire generation of children to hunger: UN Conflict-ravaged Yemen has become a "living hell" for children with thousands dying every year from malnutrition and easily preventable diseases.

Morning news brief: India-Pakistan dogfight, US election and more