President Donald Trump cast his vote in person in his adoptive home state Florida on Saturday before heading out to address three rallies in battleground states, seeking to build momentum for the final 10 days left of polling ending November 3.
Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee who on Friday promised free Covid-19 vaccines for everyone once it was available, will address two rallies in Pennsylvania, the battleground state that has been described as the tipping-point for the 2020 White House race. He will be joined by musician Jon Bon Jovi at one of them.
“I voted for a guy named Trump,” the president said jokingly to reporters when asked who he voted for, at an early polling station in West Palm Beach. “We’re going to make three stops today, big ones, big rallies, three big ones … I don’t think there’s ever been anything like this, tremendous spirit.”
More than 54 million Americans have already cast their ballots either through early in-person voting or mail, of an estimated 240 million eligible voters in all.
President Trump’s first rally of the day was in Fayetteville in North Carolina, a battleground state he won in 2016, but where he is now trailing Biden by a thin margin of 1.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
His next stops were Columbus, Ohio and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, also states he won in 2016. But he now trails Biden in Wisconsin by 4.6 points and Ohio, which he won by 8.1% then, he leads only by 0.6 points.
At his rallies, Trump has sought to build a momentum using talking points from the last presidential debate to play on what he believes are Biden’s vulnerabilities — shifting positions on fossil fuel and fracking, for instance, and social security funding.
“That could be one of the biggest mistakes made in presidential debate history,” Trump said about Biden’s remarks at the debate on transitioning from oil. “The oil industry pollutes, significantly. … It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time,” Biden had said.
The former vice-president kept his focus on his key case against the president: his handling of the Covid-19 epidemic. “Last night, we saw the President of the United States lie to the American people — repeatedly — about the state of this pandemic,” Biden said in a speech from Wilmington, Delaware, referring to the Thursday night debate.
After reiterating his criticism of Trump’s response to the epidemic, which has killed more than 224,000 Americans and infected nearly 8.5 million, Biden spoke at length about his own plan if elected and it included ramped up production and availability of testing kits and protective gear for healthcare professional, a mask mandate in federal buildings and free vaccines.
“Once we have a safe and effective vaccine, it has to be free to everyone, whether or not you are insured,” he said, “Let me say that again. This vaccine must be free and freely available for everyone.”
