President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden have one last chance to make their case to voters in critical battleground states on Monday, the final full day of a campaign that has laid bare their dramatically different visions for tackling the nation's pressing problems and for the office of the presidency itself.
The candidates are seeking to lead a nation at a crossroads, gripped by a historic pandemic that is raging anew in nearly every corner of the country and a reckoning over race.
More than 93 million people have already voted and each campaign insists it has a pathway to victory, though Biden's options for picking up the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win are more plentiful. Trump is banking on a surge of enthusiasm from his most loyal supporters.
The president's final day has him sprinting through five rallies, from North Carolina to Wisconsin. Biden, meanwhile, was devoting most of his time to Pennsylvania, where a win would leave Trump with an exceedingly narrow path. Biden was also dipping into Ohio, a show of confidence in a state where Trump won by 8 percentage points four years ago.
Heading into the closing 24 hours, Trump and Biden each painted the other as unfit for office and described the next four years in near apocalyptic terms if the other were to win.
"The Biden plan will turn America into a prison state locking you down while letting the far-left rioters roam free to loot and burn," Trump thundered Sunday at a rally in Iowa, one of the five he held in battleground states.
Biden said America was on the verge of putting "an end to a presidency that's fanned the flames of hate." "When America is heard, I believe the message is going to be clear: It's time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home," Biden said in Philadelphia, the biggest city in a state that could decide the presidency. "We're done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the hate." As the candidates close out the campaign, the pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 Americans and cost nearly 20 million to lose jobs, reached a new peak in infection rates, threatening yet another blow to lives and livelihoods of voters.
The election caps an extraordinary year that began with Trump's impeachment, the near collapse of Biden's candidacy during the crowded Democratic primary and then was fully reshaped by the coronavirus outbreak.
A record number of votes have already been cast, through early voting or mail-in ballots, which could lead to delays in their tabulation. Trump has spent months claiming without evidence that the votes would be ripe for fraud while refusing to guarantee that he would honor the election result.
In the starkest terms yet, Trump on Sunday threatened litigation to stop the tabulation of ballots arriving after Election Day. As soon as polls closed in battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania, Trump said, "we're going in with our lawyers." It was unclear precisely what Trump meant. There is already an appeal pending at the Supreme Court over the counting of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania that are received in the mail in the three days after the election.
The state's top court ordered the extension and the Supreme Court refused to block it, though conservative justices expressed interest in taking up the propriety of the three added days after the election. Those ballots are being kept separate in case the litigation goes forward. The issue could assume enormous importance if the late-arriving ballots could tip the outcome.
Trump is focusing his last rounds of stops only on states he won four years ago, playing defense in a campaign that has become a referendum on his handling of the pandemic. Both parties say the election holds outsize importance given the confluence of challenges facing the country.
With traffic jams, POTUS supporters show their love
Indian-American supporters of Donald Trump held a car rally in the Houston city of Texas to show their support for his re-election as US President.
The line of cars stretched for miles on Sunday as supporters caravanned through the city, wearing masks, holding decorated cards with patriotic colours, American flag and placards saying, "keep Texas Red", "Trump-Keep America Great"; "I stand with Trump" and "Indian Americans for Republicans".
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested the FBI should stop investigating an incident in which his supporters were seen surrounding a Biden campaign bus in Texas, which led Democrats to cancel an event there.
The president's tweet came hours after the FBI confirmed that it was "aware of the incident and investigating." On Sunday night, Trump retweeted a screenshot of the FBI statement, adding: "In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!" An FBI spokesperson said the bureau had no comment about the president's tweet.
Honking replaces clapping, cheers and boos in rally
Honking has got a new meaning in the US politics with the annoying sound replacing clapping, cheers and even boos in election campaigns, in particularly the drive-in car rallies of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
Drive-in car rallies have become a signature election event of the Democratic Party which has taken the innovative path wherein a select group of supporters gather in a parking lot to be addressed by the party's top leadership as part of its efforts to maintain social distancing due to the coronavirus.
Both Biden, 77, and Harris, 56, ask their supporters sitting in their cars to honk to express their sentiments.
In fact, honking in the election rallies of the Democratic Party has replace all kinds of emotion in election rallies.
The level of honking reflects the sentiments, happiness and anger of their supporters.
On Sunday at a drive-in rally attended by less than 100 cars, invited by the local campaign officials, every time Harris' supporters got excited with her remarks, they honked. Every time she was critical of Trump, they honked. Every time she spoke about "Black Lives Matter", they honked.
