Election 2020 live updates: Biden tells Pennsylvania it will decide the future; Trump confident despite polls

Joe Biden delivered a scathing critique of the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic during a drive-in rally in Philadelphia, telling his supporters that the future of the country is in the hands of Pennsylvania voters. 

"Pennsylvania is critical to this election," the former vice president said, as supporters honked their car horns in approval. "The power to change this country, not figuratively, is literally in the hands of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania." 

Biden laid responsibility for the deaths of more than 230,000 Americans from coronavirus, over 8,800 of which occurred in Pennsylvania, and more than 9 million infections nationwide squarely at the feet of Trump, asking "imagine where we would be if this president just wore a mask instead of mocked it from the beginning?"

Biden vowed to put an action plan in place on day one of his presidency to get the surging coronavirus outbreaks across the country under control, through masking, social distancing, testing and tracing. "Two more days, two more days," the former vice president said.

"In two days, we put an end to a presidency that has divided this nation," Biden said. "In two days, we put an end to a presidency that has failed to protect this nation. In two days, we can put an end to a presidency that has fanned the flames of hate all across this nation."

— Spencer Kimball

President Donald Trump dismissed questions about whether he would accept the election outcome if he loses, telling supporters in Iowa that he's winning despite polls showing Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead nationally and in several key swing states.

"Now they say, will you respect the decision of the voters? And will there be a friendly transition? First of all, there's not going to be a transition, we're winning," Trump told supporters in Dubuque.

An Iowa poll published Saturday showed Trump pulling ahead of Biden in the Hawkeye State by seven points. Several polls show Biden leading in other battleground states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The former vice president leads nationally by 10 points, according to a NBC/WSJ survey.

The president's comments come amid a new report that Trump has told confidants he will declare victory Tuesday night if it looks like he's ahead. It could take days for key swing states like Pennsylvania to finish counting mail-in ballots, raising concerns about a tense period of time without a clear winner.

Trump has repeatedly declined to state unequivocally that he will accept the election outcome in the event he loses.

— Spencer Kimball

Democratic nominee Joe Biden holds a 10-point lead in Wisconsin and Michigan and a 7-point lead in Pennsylvania, according to new polls from Reuters/Ipsos.

The percentage of voters who said they planned to vote for Biden was over 50% in each of the three states, which all voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. The online polls were conducted from Oct. 27 to Nov. 1 and had more than 1,000 participants in each state with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

The Upper Midwest and Pennsylvania have seen some of the heaviest campaigning this election cycle after Trump's narrow victories in those states four years ago fueled his surprise election win.

Reuters/Ipsos also has Biden slightly ahead in its most recent polls of Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, though the leads were within the margin of error. Those polls were conducted from Oct. 21 to Oct. 27.

— Jesse Pound

White House health advisor Dr. Scott Atlas apologized on Twitter for appearing on RT, the Russia-controlled television network, where he downplayed concerns about the coronavirus pandemic and criticized "lockdowns." Atlas said that he was "unaware they are a registered foreign agent."

The controversy around RT has been ongoing for several years, with U.S. intelligence officials describing the television network as a Russian tool to undermine faith in the U.S. government in a 2017 report. The network registered as a foreign agent later that year.

"The rapid expansion of RT's operations and budget and recent candid statements by RT's leadership point to the channel's importance to the Kremlin as a messaging tool and indicate a Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the US Government and fuel political protest," the report said.

Atlas has drawn criticism, including from Dr. Anthony Fauci, for his advice on the United States' pandemic response.

— Jesse Pound

The Texas Supreme Court rejected an effort by Republicans to invalidate more than 120,000 ballots cast at drive-thru polling places in the state's most populous county.

The decision marked an incremental win for Democrats and Harris County, Texas, which implemented the voting method in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Republicans are pursuing a similar challenge in federal court, which could ultimately result in the votes being disqualified.

"A car is not a polling place. If a car is a polling place, Harris County now has millions of voting locations around the county that change locations throughout the day," the Republicans argued in court papers.

Democrats countered that the drive-thru sites "follow identical procedures used at every other early voting location" and had been approved by the Texas Secretary of State over the summer.

Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Texas by nine percentage points and is leading Biden in the state by a slimmer margin of about two points, according to recent polls.

— Tucker Higgins

Biden and Harris are going all in on Pennsylvania on Monday.

The Democrats detailed plans to barnstorm the state the day before the election, with Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, traveling across the western half of the state while Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, visit the east.

"Along the way, they'll visit the collar counties surrounding Philadelphia, will visit Black and Latino neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley, and will meet with farmers and students to get out the vote for the Biden-Harris ticket," the Biden campaign said in a statement.

Monday night, Harris is scheduled to host a rally in Philadelphia while Biden addresses supporters in Pittsburgh, where he kicked off his campaign.

The Trump and Biden campaigns are zeroing in on Pennsylvania in the race's final days. Trump's campaign sees Pennsylvania as the most critical opportunity of the contest, NBC News reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the conversations.

Biden leads Trump in Pennsylvania by about four percentage points in recent polls.

— Tucker Higgins

Democratic nominee Joe Biden will make an appearance in Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday before the final day of voting, his campaign announced.

Ohio has traditionally been viewed as a bellwether of the overall election outcome but has trended more toward Republicans in recent cycles. President Donald Trump won the state by more than 8 percentage points in 2016 despite losing the national popular vote.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that he expected Trump to win the state, with strong support in the Ohio Valley region and in rural counties.

"I think the President's ground game has been a lot better than the Biden ground game, frankly," DeWine said.

DeWine's predecessor, two-term Republican Gov. John Kasich, has endorsed Biden and spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Kasich ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Biden's other recent campaign stops include Pennsylvania, Iowa and Michigan.

— Jesse Pound

Pennsylvania Secretary of Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar expects the majority of ballots in the state to be counted "within a matter of days" after Election Day on Nov. 3

Nearly 2.4 two million Pennsylvanians have already cast their votes. There are ten times as many mail-in ballots for the 2020 election compared to the last presidential election in the state, Boockvar said in an interview with NBC News.

"Elections have never been called election night," Boockvar said, referring to service members overseas who have until a week after Election Day to cast ballots in some states.

"I expect that the overwhelming majority of ballots in Pennsylvania, that's mail-in and absentee ballots, as well as in-person ballots, will be counted within a matter of days," she said.

The Trump campaign has tried to block Pennsylvania and other crucial battleground states from extending the deadline for counting absentee ballots, a challenge that was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court.

President Trump has claimed without evidence that "bad things" could happen while states count ballots in the days following the election.

— Emma Newburger

GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said that high Republican turnout on Election Day will be enough to power Trump to victory despite a flood of early votes from Democrats.

"Republicans will have a surge that day, we are going to have that, and that's why we are going to win," McDaniel told Margaret Brennan of CBS News on "Face the Nation."

"Covid has changed things. So it has pulled a lot of Democrat Election Day voters into that absentee and early vote category and Republicans are wanting to vote on Election Day in person and cast their ballot that way," McDaniel explained. "So we feel very strong that we have a surge coming on Election Day."

McDaniel added that Republicans had 2.5 million volunteers and 3,000 staff on the ground around the country.

"We are contacting these voters, right now, all weekend, through the next few days, to make sure they turn out to vote," she said.

More than 92 million Americans have already cast their ballots, which represents 66.8% of the total voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election.

— Tucker Higgins

The editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the largest newspaper in western Pennsylvania, endorsed Donald Trump for President on Saturday night, marking the first time since Richard Nixon in 1972 that it has supported a Republican for President.

The editorial touted the economic performance of the United States and Pittsburgh region prior to the Covid-19 pandemic as a key reason to support Trump while also being critical of the president's personal character.

"We believe Mr. Trump, for all his faults, is the better choice this year. We respect and understand those who feel otherwise. We wish that we could be more enthusiastic and we hope the president can become more dignified and statesmanlike," the editorial said.

The management at the paper has increasingly been at odds with its reports in recent years, with the union representing the Post-Gazette's reporters calling for the executive editor to resign earlier this year due to coverage decisions surrounding the George Floyd protests.

— Jesse Pound

More than 92 million votes have already been cast for the 2020 election nationwide. Early in-person voting ends in Wisconsin today, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission

Check here for more information on when polling sites close in other states.

— Emma Newburger

Dr. Anthony Fauci drew a sharp rebuke from the White House after offering a grim assessment of the state of the pandemic in the United States and criticizing the Trump administration's response.

"All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors," Fauci told the Washington Post in an interview Friday. "You could not possibly be positioned more poorly."

Fauci said the U.S. needed to make an "abrupt change" in public health policies and practice to slow the spread of the virus. He also criticized Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist who has criticized economic restrictions to slow the virus and become favored by President Donald Trump, saying "I have real problems with that guy" and that Atlas did not have the expertise to be advising on a pandemic.

In response to Fauci's comments, White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement that "It's unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President's Coronavirus Taskforce and someone who has praised President Trump's actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics."

— Jesse Pound

Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump among Latino voters by a 2-1 margin just days before Election Day, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo survey has found.

The poll finds that 62% of Latino voters support Biden, while only 29% support Trump. Among Hispanic women, 71% support Biden while only 19% support Trump.

However, Latino voter interest in the election ranks below other groups, with 67% saying their interest in the election ranks a nine or ten out of ten, versus 87% of white voters and 80% of Black voters who have the same level of interest.

— Emma Newburger

The Trump campaign is projecting confidence about the president's chances of winning the vote in the battleground states of Florida and North Carolina despite state polls showing a tight race.

NBC News, citing unnamed people familiar with the campaign's conversations, reported Sunday that some allies of the president believe based on internal polling that the races in those states will be called early on Tuesday evening. They did not provide evidence, though, or the polls themselves.

The reelection campaign is reportedly less confident about the states of the upper Midwest, including Michigan and Wisconsin, according to NBC News.

Biden is narrowly leading Trump in Florida and North Carolina, according to recent averages of publicly available polls. In Michigan and Wisconsin, the former vice president maintains a lead of more than five percentage points.

If Biden wins in Michigan and Wisconsin and Trump wins in Florida and North Carolina, Trump will also likely have to pick up both Ohio and Pennsylvania in order to have a shot at winning in the the Electoral College. Ohio is neck-and-neck based on recent polls and Biden leads in recent surveys of Pennsylvania.

According to NBC News, the Trump campaign is completely optimistic about its chances of winning Ohio, but sees Pennsylvania as the most critical state in the whole contest.

Trump, who will spend a substantial portion of the race's final days in Pennsylvania, has acknowledged the significance of the state, where Biden maintains his campaign headquarters.

"If we win Pennsylvania, it's over," Trumps told thousands of his supporters at an event in the state on Saturday.

— Tucker Higgins

White House health advisor Dr. Scott Atlas appeared on Russia's state-controlled television channel, RT, on Saturday and downplayed concerns about the pandemic.

Atlas said that the "lockdowns," which he defined as including the process of testing asymptomatic individuals and isolating positive tests and quarantining possible cases, were "killing people." He also said he was "proud to be an outlier," responding to a comment from Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Atlas has become a controversial figure during the pandemic, with former colleagues from Stanford criticizing him in an open letter and Twitter deleting a post of his about masks for being "misleading."

NBC News reported in September that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said of Atlas that "everything he says is false."

The Kremlin-backed RT is also viewed suspiciously by many amid concerns about foreign election interference. U.S. intelligence officials said in a 2017 report that RT "seeks to influence politics, fuel discontent in US."

— Jesse Pound

Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 10 percentage points nationally two days before Election Day, a final NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll has found.

A majority of voters say they're unhappy with how the president has dealt with the coronavirus pandemic and where the country is going.

Biden's key advantages are among Black voters (Biden has 87% to Trump's 5%), voters ages 18-34 (60% to 32%), seniors (58% to 35%), women (57% to 37%), whites with college degrees (56% to 41%) and independents (51% to 36%).

Trump takes the lead among white voters (51% to 45%) and whites without degrees (58% to 37%). He also takes a narrow 1-point lead among men (48% to 47%).

— Emma Newburger

Joe Biden was one of the youngest people to be elected to the Senate and is one of the oldest to run for president. He had just turned 30, the minimum age, when he was sworn in to the upper chamber. Tuesday's election is 2½ weeks before his 78th birthday.

Biden failed in two pervious bids for the Oval Office, in 1988 and 2008. Then at age 76, he decided to try again, motivated by President Donald Trump's declaration after the deadly neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that there were "very fine people on both sides."

"We are in the battle for the soul of this nation," Biden declared.

Here's a look at Biden's life and long career as the quintessential D.C. insider tries to dislodge the incomparable outsider from the White House.

— Marty Steinberg

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump in four crucial swing states, powered by voters who did not participate in the 2016 election, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

Biden leads by 6 points in Arizona, 3 points in Florida, 6 points in Pennsylvania and 11 points in Wisconsin. Florida, however, is really a dead heat due to the 3.2 point margin of error.

The margin of error is 3.2 points in Wisconsin as well; 3 points in Arizona and 2.4 points in Pennsylvania, according to the Times.

In Wisconsin, voters who didn't cast a ballot in 2016 favor Biden by 19 points, the Times reports. His advantage with these voters is 17 points in Florida, 12 points in Pennsylvania and 7 points in Arizona.

— Spencer Kimball

With two days left before Election Day, more than 92 million Americans have already cast their ballots, which represents 66.8% of the total voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election.

That's according to data from the U.S. Elections Project.

More than 33 million Americans have voted early in-person, while 58.8 million have sent their ballots by mail. There are 32.3 million mail-in ballots that have not been returned yet.

Democrats make up 45.7% of the total early turnout so far, while Republicans represent 30.3% and voters with no party affiliation are 23.4% of the total.

Democrats continue to favor mail-in ballots while Republicans have a preference for voting in person, according to the handful of states that break down the data by party.

— Spencer Kimball

President Donald Trump is barnstorming the country today from the Upper Midwest to the Deep South. Former Vice President Joe Biden is laser focused on Pennsylvania, where polls suggest the race is tight. His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, is heading south.

Trump

• Washington, Michigan — 11 a.m. ET
• Dubuque, Iowa — 2 p.m. ET
• Hickory, North Carolina — 5:30 p.m. ET
• Rome, Georgia — 8:30 p.m. ET
• Opa-Locka, Florida — 11:30 p.m. ET

Biden

• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — 3 p.m. ET
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — 5:15 p.m. ET

Harris

• Gwinnett County, Georgia
• Goldsboro, North Carolina
• Fayetteville, North Carolina