Donald Trump and Joe Biden campaigned in key swing states ahead of Tuesday’s election, with many already turning to the electoral college map to figure out who will be sworn into office on January 20.
Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has a 7 point lead over Republican Trump in the RCP National Average of polls and has more than three points in polling for battleground states, putting him in the driving seat ahead of Tuesday’s general election. However, both Biden and Trump know that the election is unlikely to be decided by the popular vote - as was the case when Trump won in 2016, with almost three million votes less than Hillary Clinton but was elected by the electoral college system in America. And what’s more is that Biden knows that his lead in the polls has been cut back from double figures just a few weeks ago, indicating a worrying trend. The election is starting to look like it will be far closer than earlier anticipated.
As a result, both Trump and Biden ramped up their election campaigns by travelling across the country on Sunday, with Trump visiting five swing states, namely Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan and North Carolina. Biden opted to court votes in Pennsylvania, which it appears will end up being the state that decides the election when all is said and done.
Trump told voters in Washington, Michigan that “the economy is now growing at the fastest rate ever recorded”. He predicted that he’d win the state again, having done so in 2016 because the state “didn’t have any auto plants four years ago” when he was elected. “We brought back your car industry. Your car industry was finished. You would have had nothing left,” he said, as reported by BBC.
Secure borders and filling the courts with conservative judges were the policies that he vowed to implement at a later rally in Dubuque, Iowa. He also said that, in the fight against COVID-19, voters are left with a choice between a “deadly Biden lockdown” or “a safe vaccine that ends the pandemic”.
While Trump won Pennsylvania narrowly in 2016, Biden holds a small lead in the polls and aimed to consolidate that by a rally in Philadelphia, where Biden specifically addressed members of the black community, saying that he would address systemic racism in the United States, before criticising Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s almost criminal the way he’s handled it,” he said. “It’s a mass casualty event in the black community and it’s totally unnecessary.”
The former Vice President also tweeted in Spanish that he would reunite migrant families and end the practice of separation at the borders in an attempt to court the Latino vote.
“President Trump has attacked the dignity of Latino families time and again,” the tweet read. “This will end when I am president.”
Finally, Biden addressed the President’s earlier statements reported by Axios that indicated he will attempt to declare victory on election night if he’s in the lead before all of the votes are counted.
“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election,” Trump said. Biden responded by saying, “the president’s not going to steal this election.”
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