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The flood of early votes for Tuesday’s US presidential election surpassed 70 million, the equivalent of more than half of all votes cast in 2016, as Donald Trump blatantly listed one of the highlights of his presidency as “Ending the Covid-19 Pandemic”.
Trump’s claim, featured in a White House news release, came in a week that saw days of record new infections, nearly 1,000 daily deaths a day and a 23% increase in cases.
As the US president prepared to return to Florida’s key battlefield state for a rally in Tampa on Thursday, Trump and his campaign continued their tactic of downplaying a pandemic that has claimed at least 226,000. lives and continues to ravage many parts of the country.
While Biden entered the final week of the campaign ahead of nine percentage points in national polls, the margin in key states on the battlefield, including Florida and Pennsylvania, stayed closer.
In some highly contested states, early voting turnout was even higher than the national figure, including Florida, where the equivalent of two-thirds of those who voted in 2016 have voted.
In Texas, when the influential Cook Political Report on Wednesday went from “Republican inclined” to a “change” between Biden and Trump, the figure was 87%.
But it was the coronavirus pandemic that continued to dominate the agenda. When asked about Trump’s claim to be “finished,” even White House communications director Alyssa Farah, he fought to defend the claim.
“I think it was badly written,” Farah told Fox News. “The intention was to say that our goal is to end the virus. But what I would say is this, due to the leadership of the president, we are turning the corner of the virus.
In the last week of the campaign, Trump has continued to adhere to the antagonistic and often false approach that has marked the four years of his presidency.
That has included abusing rivals and making wildly exaggerated claims, especially about the pandemic and his chaotic handling of it.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the media has armed coverage of the coronavirus to damage his chances of re-election. “Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of Fake News Lamestream Media,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday, repeating a line he has used before.
“They won’t talk about anything else until November 4, when the elections (hopefully!) End. Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, how many hospital rooms and how many tests of the young people. “
Trump’s latest comments on the coronavirus appear to have been sparked by a mocking speech given by Barack Obama in Florida on Tuesday.
“What is your final argument? That people are too focused on Covid. He said this at one of his rallies: ‘Covid, Covid, Covid,’ he’s complaining, “the former president said, referring to Trump’s usual complaints about the media’s focus on the coronavirus. “He is jealous of the media coverage of Covid.”
Biden was due to outline his own approach to the coronavirus and health care in general on Wednesday.
Addressing the pandemic in a speech, Biden aimed for a much more realistic tone. “Even if I win, it will take a lot of work to end this pandemic,” he said in Wilmington, Delaware, where he lives. “I am not keeping false promises that I can end this pandemic with the flip of a switch. But I promise this: we will start from day one by doing the right things. “
In the last week of the campaign, the dynamics of the electoral college – which Trump won in 2016 despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton – seemed to be defining the campaign schedules of the two candidates.
With Trump targeting the Midwestern states he needs to keep to stay in office, Biden planned to visit Iowa later in the week, a state Trump won by 10 points in 2016.
“We are definitely on the offensive, but we are also visiting the states where the president last won,” Trump’s reelection campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a conference call with reporters.
For Biden in particular, and for Democrats in general, the allocation of precious hours for the candidate’s visits in the last days of the campaign has become a source of anxiety, amid memories of the missteps of Hillary Clinton, who ignored Wisconsin and watched him narrowly bow. to Trump.
Of particular concern have been polls in Pennsylvania, where Biden’s current lead in a state that is key for both candidates is just 5.1 points, leading some to suggest that if voting errors observed in 2016 were replicated, the state could be close to a tie.
Commenting on Pennsylvania’s tight race, Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight polling website underscored its importance.
“It’s close to being something for Trump, who has only a 2% chance of winning the electoral college if he loses Pennsylvania. Biden, however, has a little more room for error. “
