WASHINGTON – The bitter and increasingly tight contest between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden turned on a handful of battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, dashing hopes for a decisive victory for either candidate.
Trump was projected to win the critical states of Florida and Texas while the Democratic former vice president was forecast to flip Arizona – the first state on the board for Biden that Trump had won in 2016.
Biden also picked up an Electoral College vote in a Nebraska congressional district that voted for Trump four years ago. The president hadn’t converted any new territory by early Wednesday morning.
But many states remained up for grabs early Wednesday as ballots were being counted, and some state officials began to signal the tallying would continue well into the day.
Democrats’ hope that Biden could bring the race to an early close by capturing Florida evaporated early Wednesday. Republicans breathed another sigh of relief when must-win Ohio was added to Trump’s column. Biden made an unplanned visit to the Buckeye State on Monday, hoping the state might be within his reach on Election Day.
Trump touted his wins in Florida and Texas during early morning remarks at the White House on Wednesday and claimed – falsely – that he had already won. Neither candidate had reached the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, and millions of votes were still being counted in several key battleground states.
“Frankly, we did this win election,” Trump told supporters. “As far as I’m concerned, we have already have won.”
Trump pointed to his early lead in Pennsylvania and suggested it would be “almost impossible” for Democrats to catch up there and several other states. In fact, there were enough outstanding votes in those states to swing the totals back to Biden’s favor. Trump described the counting of the mail ballots as a “fraud on the American public.”
Trump said he would be “going to the US Supreme Court” and that “we want all voting to stop.” The remarks were similar to those he raised before the election casting doubt on the validity of ballots that had been cast by mail because of the pandemic. Polling has shown that those ballots, which were legitimately cast, may favor Biden.
While Trump racked up a number of early wins, the overall race remained too close to call, with officials in several key battlegrounds indicating that they had a large share of outstanding absentee ballots. Polling indicated those votes are more likely than not to tilt in Biden’s favor, but whether those votes would be enough for the Democrat was unclear.
Biden thanked his supporters an early Wednesday rally, saying he was confident of victory against Trump based on support in Arizona and the so-called “blue wall” of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“Keep the faith, guys,” Biden told a cheering crowd honking their car horns outside Chase Center on the Riverfront. “We’re going to win this.”
Biden told the crowd their patience was commendable. But he said it was well known before voting ended Tuesday that it would take a while to count record early voting by mail. “We’re going to have to be patient,” he said. “It ain’t over until every vote is counted, ballot is counted.”
Millions turned out for an election that will decide how the nationresponds to a pandemic that has killed a quarter of a million Americans, bolsters an economy that has taken a beating from the virus and heals deep divisions over racial injustice.
Trump and Biden each claimed early and predictable state calls, with Trump projected to win Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and North and South Dakota. Biden locked downa slew of blue states in the Northeast, including his home state of Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.
As the night progressed, Biden kept Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, California and Washington state in Democrats’ column. Trump retained Kansas, Idaho and Utah.
Biden was projected to win both Minnesota and New Hampshire, two of the few states Trump lost in 2016 that the campaign hoped to flip. Trump had campaigned in both states in the final weeks.
As Americans settled down to watch the earlier returns, campaign aides and political prognosticators began pouring over Election Day survey data to try to glean some clues about the electorate’s mood. The pandemic was foremost on voters’ minds, according to a survey of votersthe electorate, conducted by the Associated Press.
Forty-two percent said it’s the most important issue facing the country, by far the highest response to the question. Twenty-seven percent picked the economy, which is related.
Nearly all – 95% – said the federal government’s response to the pandemic was a factor in deciding how to vote. The same share said the economic downturn was also factor. That’s a slightly higher share than said the same of protests over police violence (92%) or Supreme Court nominations (90%).
And more voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the pandemic than approved: 58% to 42%.
By the end of an emotionally draining and bitter contest, the two candidates had spent more money than any campaign in history and were expected to generate record turnout, with more than 100 million Americans casting ballots before any polling location opened on Election Day. Long lines formed at schools and government buildings, underscoring the significance of the choice for many voters.
“Winning is easy. Losing is never easy – not for me, it’s not,” Trump said during at his campaign headquarters Tuesday, adding he had not readied a victory or a concession speech. “Everybody should come together and I think success brings us together.”
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2020 Election Results | USA TODAY
Fundamental questions about the direction of the country and its democracy were at stake. Throughout the campaign, Trump cast the election as America’s last chance to avoid careening left. Biden ran a race that focused heavily on his character and the promise of avoiding another four years of chaos, division and Trump-style drama.
Biden started the day at church with his wife, Jill, and two granddaughters. He flew to his birthplace of Scranton, Pa., where he signed the living room wall in his childhood home.
“From this house to the White House with the grace of God,” he wrote.
Highest stakes
Biden walked into Election Day with a wider path to the presidency. Polls indicated he held a steady lead nationally and in two of the battlegrounds – Michigan and Wisconsin – that thrust Trump to victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Polls have shown a narrower lead for him in Pennsylvania. If Biden captures all three states, the election would represent a rebuilding of the “blue wall” that has benefited Democrats as far back as Bill Clinton.
Trump and his aides insisted the polls underestimated his support.
Trump and Biden offered stark contrasts on policy as well as style, with the president vowing to continue his efforts to curb legal and illegal immigration, cut taxes, push federal courts to the right and pursue an “America first” foreign policy that has threatened to upend the global order that emerged after World War II.
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Biden hopes to shore up the 2010 Affordable Care Act he helped shepherd through Congress with his former boss, President Barack Obama, reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels and reset relationships between the U.S. and its allies.
“This election is one that historians and political scientists are going to be talking about for a long time,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, “because of the massive outpouring of Americans who are determined to vote and determined that their vote will count.”
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Eric Cantor, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, described the decision in weighty terms.
“What’s at stake in this election is the American position in the world in terms of its economic competitiveness, as well as its military dominance,” he said.
COVID redraws the map
No issue featured as prominently, or threw the differences between the two candidates into such stark relief, as COVID. Trump’s administration encouraged rapid progress on a vaccine, but the president handed much of the response to the virus to state leaders as he sidelined his own top scientists and dismissed their recommendations.
A watershed event that could have brought people together instead split them further apart as other nations got a better handle arresting the spread of infections and death.
That contrast was on display throughout a surreal campaign in which Trump himself was hospitalized with the virus, recovered and used the episode to argue the virus wasn’t all that bad – even as he was forced to repeatedly acknowledge that the treatment he received was out of reach for most Americans.
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Campaign methods differed as much as the candidates during the pandemic. After briefly suspending his massive rallies, Trump resumed the boisterous events – packing mostly maskless supporters shoulder to shoulder on airport tarmacs across the country.
“This is a poll,” Trump of the supporters who came out for his final, post-midnight, rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. “This is not the crowd of somebody who’s going to lose this state.”
He repeatedly mocked Biden for “hiding” in his basement and wearing a mask, arguing that a president had to project an image of confidence rather than setting an example for others to follow.
Biden did campaign mainly from home for months, holding virtual fundraisers and inviting Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., to be his running mate on a video call. As the weeks went by, he began holding more small events, with participants donning masks and maintaining social distance, sometimes from their cars at drive-in rallies.
Biden chose western Pennsylvania for his first and last major campaign event, telling supporters in Pittsburgh Monday night that they “represent the backbone of this nation.”
Protests, BLM alter course
Racial justice protests during the summer revealed another stark contrast.
The death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25 sparked nationwide protests for racial justice. The incident rekindled attention on the shooting death of Breonna Taylor during a police raid on March 13 in Louisville, Kentucky. And outrage erupted Kenosha, Wisconsin, after a police officer shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake on Aug. 23.
Trump campaigned as the law-and-order president, supporting police as protests occasionally turned violent with arson, burglaries and shootings. He accused state and local officials such as the mayor of Portland and governor of Oregon of timidity in quieting the protests. Federal authorities cleared a path June 1 with batons and tear gas for Trump to walk from the White House to a nearby church to hold a Bible aloft.
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Biden walked a line between supporting peaceful protests while denouncing violence. He urged greater training for police to calm tense confrontations, while dismissing proposals from more progressive supporters to defund police. And Biden, who had lost his wife, a daughter and a son to an accident and illness, met relatives of the victims.
“He talked about how nothing was going to defeat him, how whether he walked again or not, he wasn’t going to give up,” Biden said of Jacob Blake.
A nation holds its breath
Both men ratcheted up their rhetoric during the campaign, describing their opponent as dangerous and wildly out of step with mainstream American values. As both parties launched a series of last-minute legal battles over voting laws, Trump repeatedly sought to undermine confidence in election systems, arguing any votes counted after the polls closed on election night should be considered suspect.
The argument and claims of widespread fraud were demonstrably false: Millions voted on paper ballots effortlessly because of the pandemic. There was little indication of major problems at the polls on Tuesday.
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The tensions that have plagued the country since before Trump took office remained at an elevated state heading into the election, with law enforcement agencies preparing for violence regardless of who wins. Authorities erected a new fence around the White House late Monday night, with memories of the Black Lives Matter protests from the summer still fresh.
The FBI is reviewing a Texas highway incident last week in which a caravan of vehicles waving Trump flags swarmed a Biden campaign bus. Similar incidents have occurred in other states since then.
Trump, a real-estate magnate and former reality TV star, won the White House in 2016, despite polls heading into Election Day that showed Hillary.
For Biden’s part, the campaign marked his third attempt at the presidency, after serving eight years as vice president and 36 representing Delaware in the Senate.
Whoever wins will be the oldest president sworn in – older than Ronald Reagan when he was sworn in for a second term in 1985. Trump is 74 and Biden turns 78 on Nov. 20.
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