Early voting in US hits a record 50m
OF ALL DISAGREEMENTS, NONE BLAZED MORE BRIGHTLY THAN THEIR ASSESSMENTS OF US BATTLING CORONAVIRUS
More than 50 million Americans voted early in the US election, a group monitoring balloting said yesterday. This surpasses the 47million votes cast early in the 2016 election and signals a record turnout for the November 3matchup between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The tally by the US Elections Project, run by the University of Florida, said more than 35 million people voted by mail and more than 15 million in person by leaving their ballots in drop boxes. Voters seem to want to avoid crowded polling centres on election day over Covid fears. Early voting in New York, one of themost populous states, starts today, so the tally is expected to increase further
President Donald Trump and Joe Biden delivered starkly divergent closing arguments to the country in the final presidential debate on Thursday, offering opposite prognoses for the coronavirus pandemic and airing irreconcilable differences on subjects from rescuing the economy and bolstering the health care system to fighting climate change and reshaping the immigration system.
The debate was, on the whole, a more restrained affair than the first encounter between the two candidates last month, when Trump harangued Biden for most of an hour and a half and effectively short- circuited any policy debate. But if the tenor of Thursday’s forum was more sedate, the conflict in matters of substance and vision could not have been more dramatic.
Opposing stances
From the opening minutes, the two candidates took opposing stances on the pandemic, with Trump promising, in defiance of evidence, that the disease was “going away” while Biden called for much more aggressive federal action in a “dark winter” ahead.
Trump, who badgered Biden with increasing aggression over the course of the debate, appeared determined to cast his opponent as a career politician who was, as he jabbed toward the end of the debate, “all talk and no action.”
Trump, however, did little to lay out an affirmative case for his own reelection, or to explain in clear terms what he would hope to do with another four years in the White House. He frequently misrepresented the facts of his own record, and Biden’s. And on his most important political vulnerability — his mismanagement of the pandemic — Trump hewed unswervingly to a message that happy days are nearly here again, even as polls show that a majority of voters believe the worst of the coronavirus crisis is still ahead.
Biden’s salvo
Biden, for his part, stuck to the core of the argument that has propelled his campaign from the start, denouncing Trump as a divisive and unethical leader who had botched the federal response to a devastating public- health crisis.
The former vice- president also laid out a fuller version of his own policy agenda than he managed in the first debate, calling for large- scale economic stimulus spending, new aid to states battling the pandemic and a muscular expansion of health care and worker benefits nationwide.
Significantly, Biden made no serious error of the sort that could haunt him in the final days of a race in which he’s leading.
Of all the disagreements between the two candidates, none blazed more brightly than their assessments of theUS experience battling the coronavirus.
Prompted by the moderator, Kristen Welker of NBC News, to explain his plan for the coming months, Trump stuck to the sunny message he has delivered at recent campaign rallies, promising a vaccine in short order and citing his own recovery as an example of medical progress.
Record turnout expected
Meanwhile, at least 52 million people cast ballots in person or by mail 11 days before Election Day, an early- voting expert said yesterday, signaling a potential record turnout out for the November 3 matchup between Trump and Biden.
According to Michael McDonald of the University of Florida’s Elections Project, this is 22 per cent of all eligible U. S. voters. Experts predict the election could set amodern turnout
record, surpassing the 60 per cent participation rate of recent presidential elections.
The massive early- vote total gives Trump less leeway to change minds. Trump said those polls underestimated his support. “I think we’re leading in a lot of states you don’t know about,” he told reporters.
Biden enters the final days of the race with more cash than Trump. He raised about $ 130 million in the October 1- 14 period, about three times the $ 44 million raised by Trump.