More than 90 million vote early as Trump, Biden make late campaign push

A record 90 million Americans have voted early in the U.S. presidential election, data on Saturday showed, as President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden campaigned in the united states to try to sway the few remaining undecided voters.

The lot of early voters, about 65% of the full total turnout in 2016, reflects extreme interest in the contest, with three days of campaigning left.

Concerns about contact with the coronavirus at busy Election Day voting places on Tuesday also have pushed up the numbers of people voting by mail or at early in-person polling sites.

Trump, a Republican, is spending the closing days of his re-election campaign criticizing public officials and doctors who want to combat the coronavirus pandemic even as it surges back over the United States.

Opinion polls show Trump trailing former Vice President Biden nationally, but with a closer contest in the best states that will decide the election. Voters say the coronavirus is their top concern.

Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud and has recently argued that only the results available on election night should count. In a flurry of legal motions, his campaign has sought to restrict absentee balloting.

"I don’t care how hard Donald Trump tries. There’s nothing - i want to say that again - there’s nothing that he can do to avoid the people of the nation from voting in overwhelming numbers and taking back this democracy,” Biden said at a rally in Flint, Michigan, where he was joined by former President Barack Obama because of their first 2020 campaign event together.

Officials in a number of states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, say it might take several days to count all those mail ballots, meaning there may be days of uncertainty if the results depends on those states.

At a little, in-person rally in Newtown, Pennsylvania, Trump mocked his opponent for his criticism of the administration's record of fighting COVID-19, which includes killed more people in the United States than in virtually any other country.

"I watched Joe Biden speak yesterday. All he discusses is COVID, COVID. He's got nothing else to state. COVID, COVID," Trump told the crowd, some of whom didn't wear masks.

He said america was "just weeks away" from mass distribution of a safe vaccine against COVID-19, which is pushing hospitals to capacity and killing up to at least one 1,000 people in america every day. Trump gave no details to back up his remarks about an imminent vaccine.

In his closing arguments, Biden has accused Trump of being a bully, criticized his lack of a strategy to regulate the pandemic, which includes killed almost 229,000 Americans; his efforts to repeal the Obamacare healthcare law; and his disregard for science on climate change. He has offered his own made-in-America economical platform, a contrast with Trump's "America First" approach, saying he'll get the wealthy to pay their fair share and make sure earnings are distributed more equitably.

STANFORD REPORT

Stanford University economists on Saturday released an estimate that Trump rallies held from June to September resulted in more than 30,000 additional COVID-19 infections and perhaps as much as 700 deaths. The analysis was predicated on a statistical model and not actual investigations of coronavirus cases. The paper, which did not cite disease experts among its authors, has not been peer-reviewed.

Public health officials have repeatedly warned that Trump campaign events could hasten the spread of the virus, particularly those held in places where infection rates were already increasing. Determining using the impact of those rallies on infection rates has been difficult as a result of lack of robust contact tracing in lots of U.S. states.

Amesh Adalja, an infectious diseases expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, described the report as"suggestive."

“I would just say it’s suggestive but hard to completely isolate the precise impact of 1 event without robust contact trace data from the cases,” Adalja said.

Biden’s campaign, which has sharply limited crowd sizes at events or restricted supporters to their cars, quickly seized on the Stanford findings.

"Trump doesn't even value the lives of his strongest supporters," Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

On Saturday, Trump was centered on campaigning in Pennsylvania, with a total of four rallies planned.

“If we win Pennsylvania, it’s over,” Trump said during his second rally of the day, in Reading.

The state hasn't up to now seen the dramatic rises in coronavirus cases that are threatening hospital capacity in Wisconsin and other battleground states. Still, almost 8,700 people in the state have died of the disease.