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Trump & Biden in Epic Nail Biter; Key Swing States Go Red

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Edited by: Fern Sidman

President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden were locked in tight races in battleground states across the country Tuesday night as they concluded an epic campaign that will shape America’s response to the surging pandemic and foundational questions of economic fairness and racial justice, as was reported by AP.

Biden picked up the first battleground state of the night, New Hampshire, a small prize that Trump tried to steal from Democrats. But races were too early to call in the most fiercely contested and critical states on the map, including Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

AP reported that Biden won California, the nation’s biggest electoral haul, and other predictable victories including Colorado and Virginia, two former battlegrounds that have become Democratic strongholds. Trump’s wins included Kansas, North Dakota and other conservative bastions.

Demonstrator holds up a sign while waiting for election results at Black Lives Matter Plaza, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Americans made their choices as the nation faced a confluence of historic crises with each candidate declaring the other fundamentally unfit to navigate the challenges. Daily life has been upended by the coronavirus, which has killed more than 232,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs.

Millions of voters braved their worries about the virus — and some long lines — to turn out in person, joining 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73% of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election, as was reported by AP.

Early results in several key battleground states were in flux as election officials processed a historically large number of mail-in votes. Democrats typically outperform Republicans in mail voting, while the GOP looks to make up ground in Election Day turnout, according to AP. That means the early margins between the candidates could be influenced by which type of votes — early or Election Day — were being reported by the states.

Control of the Senate was at stake, too: Democrats needed to net three seats if Biden captured the White House to gain control of all of Washington for the first time in a decade. AP reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky won reelection in an early victory for the Republicans, and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, fought off a fierce challenge to hang onto his seat.

The parties traded a pair of seats in other early results: Democratic former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper defeated incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner, and in Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville knocked off Sen. Doug Jones. The House was expected to remain under Democratic control, according to the AP report.

As the results began to come in, the nation braced for what was to come — and an outcome that might not be known for days.

A new anti-scaling fence was erected around the White House, and in downtowns from New York to Denver to Minneapolis, workers boarded up businesses lest the vote lead to unrest.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a stop in Philadelphia, Pa., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

AP reported that with the worst public health crisis in a century still fiercely present, the pandemic — and Trump’s handling of it — was the inescapable focus for 2020.

For Trump, the election stood as a judgment on his four years in office, a term in which he bent Washington to his will, challenged faith in its institutions and changed how America was viewed across the globe. Rarely trying to unite a country divided along lines of race and class, he has often acted as an insurgent against the government he led while undermining the nation’s scientists, bureaucracy and media.

At the White House on Tuesday night, more than 100 family members, friends, donors and staff were set to watch returns from the East Room. Trump was watching votes come in upstairs in the residence with a few close aides. Most top campaign officials were monitoring returns from a “war room” set up in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Biden spent the day last-minute campaigning in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was born, and in Philadelphia with a couple of local stops in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was spending Election Night.

The president began his day on an upbeat note, predicting that he’d do even better than in 2016. But during a midday visit to his campaign headquarters, he spoke in a gravelly, subdued tone.

“Winning is easy,” Trump told reporters. “Losing is never easy, not for me it’s not.”

Trump left open the possibility of addressing the nation Tuesday night, even if a winner hadn’t been determined. Biden was also scheduled to give a nighttime speech from Wilmington.

“I’m superstitious about predicting what an outcome’s gonna be until it happens … but I’m hopeful,” said Biden. “It’s just so uncertain … you can’t think of an election in the recent past where so many states were up for grabs.”

AP reported that the momentum from early voting carried into Election Day, as an energized electorate produced long lines at polling sites throughout the country. Turnout was higher than in 2016 in numerous counties, including all of Florida, nearly every county in North Carolina and more than 100 counties in both Georgia and Texas. That tally seemed sure to increase as more counties reported their turnout figures.

Voters braved worries of the coronavirus, threats of polling place intimidation and expectations of long lines caused by changes to voting systems, but appeared undeterred as turnout appeared it would easily surpass the 139 million ballots cast four years ago.

AP reported that no major problems arose on Tuesday, outside the typical glitches of a presidential election: Some polling places opened late, robocalls provided false information to voters in Iowa and Michigan, and machines or software malfunctioned in some counties in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.

The cybersecurity agency at the Department of Homeland Security said there were no outward signs by midday of any malicious activity.

President Donald Trump speaks at the Trump campaign headquarters on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

With the coronavirus now surging anew, voters ranked the pandemic and the economy as top concerns in the race between Trump and Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

Voters were especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind. Fewer named health care, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change.

AP reported that the survey found that Trump’s leadership loomed large in voters’ decision-making. Nearly two-thirds of voters said their vote was about Trump — either for him or against him.

VOA News reported that the early vote count focus was on three Atlantic coastal states — Florida, Trump’s adopted home state, Georgia to the immediate north and North Carolina. Trump won all three states in his 2016 upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

As of 11:55 pm on Tuesday night, Trump held leads in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida Pennsylvania, Michigan and a slight lead in Wisconsin.

Comprehending the importance of winning the rust belt states, Trump spent the last few days of his campaign at rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He even held at midnight rally on Sunday in Opa Locka, Florida to shore up the vote in this paramount battleground state where 29 electoral votes are up for grabs.

While in the Sunshine state, he had the support of Governor Ron DeSantis and US senator Rick Scott, among other prominent GOP leaders in the state. As of publication time, Trump was holding the lead most of the state including the panhandle region. Traditional Democratic counties such as Dade, Broward and Palm Beach all went to Biden as was expected.

In New York City, Trump saw overwhelming support in the Orthodox Jewish communities of Brooklyn and in the upstate area, the president received unanimous support from Chassidic Jewish communities in the Rockland County area. Many Jewish supporters of Trump were inspired to vote for him because of his unwavering support of Israel and because they were roiled at the policies of New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio and Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.

VOA reported that analysts say Trump likely needs to win all three states if he is to claim a second term and avoid becoming the third president in the last four decades to lose a bid for re-election. The last president who was not re-elected to a second term was George HW Bush and the one before that was Jimmy Carter back in the late 1970s.

A victory for Biden, a political fixture in Washington for nearly a half century, in any of the three states would significantly increase his chances of winning the presidency on his third try. He lost bids for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008.

VOA reported that Florida, with 29 electoral votes, Georgia, with 16, and North Carolina, with 15, play an important role in the outcome of the presidential elections, rather than the national popular vote. The outcome is effectively decided in state-by-state elections throughout the 50-state country and the national capital city, Washington, D.C.

There were other key states in play in early vote-counting as well, including Virginia along the Atlantic Coast with 13 electoral votes and Ohio in the Midwest with 18.

Protesters in Washington, DC, unfurled two large protest banners Tuesday evening as they waited for results of the 2020 election. One of the large black banners, with white lettering, read “remove Trump, and the other “Trump lies all the time (Nov 4)

The winner needs a 270 majority in the 538-member Electoral College.

Over last weekend, tensions mounted as thousands of Trump campaign supporters rallied and demonstrated throughout the country.

Authorities and merchants in some cities, including New York, Detroit and Washington near the White House, have boarded up storefronts to prevent potential damage and looting in the event election-related violence erupts, according to the VOA report.

Many of the early voters — two-thirds of whom mailed in ballots while the rest cast votes in person — said they wanted to avoid coming face to face Tuesday with other people in long lines at polling stations, as the U.S. on some recent days has recorded more than 90,000 new coronavirus cases, according to the VOA report.

Some Democrats said they wanted to be among the first to vote against Trump, while many Republicans said they planned to vote in person on the official presidential Election Day — the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November — as has been the norm in U.S. elections every four years since the mid-1800s.

VOA reported that the president, in the waning days of the campaign, called the election “a choice between the American Dream and a socialist nightmare. … A choice between a Trump super-recovery and a Biden depression.”

Trump has claimed that Biden, if elected, would be beholden to the policy proposals of more progressive Democrats who are pushing for a government takeover of U.S. health care and a Green New Deal to control climate change, both of which the moderate Biden says he opposes, as was reported by VOA.

Trump has repeatedly contended that the U.S., with a world-leading coronavirus death toll of more than 231,000 people and 9.2 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University, is “rounding the corner” in dealing with the pandemic, and promises that within weeks, the U.S. will have a vaccine against the coronavirus.

“I watched Joe Biden speak yesterday,” Trump said Saturday. “All he talks about is COVID, COVID. He’s got nothing else to say. COVID, COVID.”

Musician “Mr. Next,” right, of the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, works on his voting ballot at a polling place inside The Magic Castle, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

On Tuesday, VOA reported that a key member of Trump’s coronavirus task force says the nation is entering a “deadly phase” of the nearly year-long COVID-19 pandemic.

News outlets say Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force’s coordinator, issued a memo Monday urging administration officials to undertake “an aggressive balanced approach” between lockdowns and taking steps to control the virus, including urging Americans to wear masks, observe social distancing and launch an aggressive testing program.

Right around midnight, VOA reported the following:

* There often were long lines of voters across the country and some reports of polling stations opening late. Voting equipment issues were reported in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and Georgia.

* The FBI said it was investigating reports of robocalls discouraging people from voting in some states. But there were no signs of large-scale conflict at polls as some had feared.

*The U.S. Postal Service said there were delays in delivering 300,000 ballots to election officials in Michigan and parts of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The ballots must be delivered by Election Day in Michigan and must be postmarked by Election Day in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to count

*Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told reporters Tuesday there is “no indication” that a “foreign actor” has successfully interfered in the election.

* Biden will be 78 by Inauguration Day on January 20, while Trump is 74. Whoever wins will be the oldest U.S. leader ever.

At 12:45 am, Biden addressed his supporters saying he was “optimistic” about the ultimate results of the election. The Trump campaign believes that the election could be stolen due to questionable mail in ballots. He tweeted,. “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the polls are closed!”

(AP & VOA)

(AP reporters Jonathan Lemire, Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin & Alexandra Jaffe contributed to this report as did Ken Bredemeier of VOA News)

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