3dfoto/iStockBy LIBBY CATHEY, ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — With four days until Election Day, and President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden racing toward Nov. 3, more than 82 million Americans have already cast their ballots — an early voting record.
Friday brings both Trump and Biden to Minnesota and Wisconsin, revealing how crucial the states are to both campaigns, with the contest overshadowed by coronavirus cases rising there and in nearly every battleground state.
The president’s aggressive, defensive strategy — visiting states he won in 2016 including a first stop in Michigan Friday afternoon — comes as polls show him trailing nationally and in swing states key to his reelection hopes. Vice President Mike Pence returns to Arizona for a pair of rallies in Flagstaff and Tucson.
Biden will see his busiest travel day to date of the general election. With a stop in Iowa too, it’s the first time the former vice president has made plans to campaign in three states in one day for the 2020 cycle. Running mate California Sen. Kamala Harris is in Texas as Democrats play offense and sense an opportunity to snatch the GOP-stronghold for the first time in more than four decades.
Here is how the day is developing Friday. All times Eastern:
Oct 30, 9:32 am
Biden to ‘barnstorm’ Pennsylvania in final days
Biden’s campaign has announced that he will be spending at least part of the last 72 hours in the 2020 race in Pennsylvania — an indication of just how important Democrats believe the Keystone State will be in determining a winner.
On Sunday, Biden will travel to Philadelphia to “discuss bringing Americans together to address the crises facing the country and win the battle for the soul of the nation.”
On Monday, Biden and former second lady Jill Biden, along with Sen. Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, plan to “barnstorm” the state, spreading out across all the four corners.
Biden’s speech on Sunday offers a bit of a full circle moment for the former vice president, who held his “campaign launch rally” in Philadelphia on May 18, 2019, and laid out his campaign vision for unifying the country in the remarks just under a month after launching his third run for president.
Pennsylvania is by far the state Biden has visited the most in the 2020 general election and one that holds a particular importance to him.
“I’m going to win Pennsylvania. It’s a matter of a great deal to me, personally as well as politically,” Biden told reporters Monday.
Trump will take to Pennsylvania Saturday for three rallies, and he’s still planning to barnstorm nearly a dozen events in the final 48 hours across states he carried in 2016.
FiveThirtyEight currently places Pennsylvania as the likeliest “tipping-point state” in its forecast or the state that could determine the winner of the Electoral College.
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.