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Election 2020 updates: Trump delivers shorter speech in chilly Pennsylvania

Trump holds a rally in Pennsylvania while Biden is prepping for their debate.

Last Updated: October 21, 2020, 9:09 AM EDT

With 14 days to go until Election Day, and President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden racing toward Nov. 3, voters are turning out in record numbers to cast their ballots early.

Roughly 35 million Americans have already voted in the 2020 election, reflecting an extraordinary level of participation and interest despite unprecedented barriers brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

In the final weeks of campaigning, the president remains on defense as his approval rating drags. He's hosting rallies this week mostly in states he won in 2016 including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.

Biden, maintaining a nationwide lead in polls -- his largest lead of the election, according to FiveThirtyEight's average -- has no public events on his schedule this week so far ahead of Thursday's final presidential debate with Trump. Staying off the trail ahead of debates is a pattern for the former vice president.

Polls indicate a huge pre-Election-Day edge for Biden and a sizable Trump advantage among those who plan to vote on Nov. 3 itself. Trump has sowed doubt in the mail-in ballot process -- and imminent election results -- for months.

The rhetoric between candidates is expected to heat up ahead of their second and final showdown in Nashville.

All 50 states plus Washington, D.C., currently have some form of early voting underway. Check out FiveThirtyEight’s guide to voting during the COVID-19 pandemic here.

Oct 20, 2020, 10:00 AM EDT

Early voting breaks records in Florida 

Voters in Florida weathered downpours that swept across a big portion of the state Monday and still managed to shatter the state's opening-day record for in-person early voting, with at least 350,000 people casting ballots. But some Florida voters faced hurdles that election officials had pledged would not be an issue.

The Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office website suffered a technical issue that prevented some users from accessing the site for several hours. Danae Rivera-Marasco, communications and community outreach coordinator, told ABC News that while it took two to three hours to resolve the issue for the majority of users, some trying to access the website via an AT&T connection were still unable to access it in the evening. 

Florida residents line up at a polling station as early voting begins ahead of the election in Orlando, Fla., Oct. 19, 2020.
Octavio Jones/Reuters

The election office said the issue was “not due to traffic or hacking” and said there hadn’t been a security breach.

In Broward County, voters reported waiting in lines for hours, just days after a spokesman for the county’s supervisor of elections told ABC News he did not expect to see lines at polling sites.

People line up at the John F. Kennedy Library polling station as early voting begins ahead of the election in Hialeah, Florida, U.S. October 19, 2020.
Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters

“We rarely have lines during early voting as it is, so this is likely to be even less, simply because of the fact that so many voters are now voting from the kitchen table,” said Steve Vancore, the Broward County elections spokesman, over the weekend.

One voter in Miramar, Florida, told ABC News she waited for close to three hours to vote. In a text, Vancore attributed the back-up there to voter enthusiasm and social distancing.

-ABC News’ Will McDuffie

Oct 20, 2020, 9:44 AM EDT

With coronavirus concerns a factor, it's all tied up in North Carolina: Poll

Coronavirus concerns lift Biden in North Carolina while the state’s sizable evangelical and rural populations pull for Trump, producing a dead-heat contest in a state that’s backed Democratic presidential candidates just twice in the last half century.

Biden has 49% support among likely voters in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll in the state, with 48% for Trump. The U.S. Senate race, potentially critical for control of the chamber, is similar, with 49% support for Democrat Cal Cunningham, despite revelations of an extramarital relationship, and 47% for incumbent Republican Thom Tillis.

The presidential race differs from the contest nationally -- an ABC/Post poll last week found a 12-point Biden lead -- in large part given differing demographics. Most notably, evangelical white Protestants account for 31% of likely voters in North Carolina, compared with 15% nationally. White evangelicals in the state support Trump over Biden by 82-17%.

Rural voters also are part of the difference in this survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates; they account for 21% of likely voters nationally but 28% in the state, and back Trump by nearly 2-1, 63-33%. So, too, are very conservative likely voters -- 16% nationally but 24% in North Carolina, nearly all for Trump.

Biden pushes back with a 34-point lead among moderate voters, 64-30%, surpassing Hillary Clinton’s 20-point win in this group in 2016; a 68-30% lead in the state’s political, academic and technology hub, the Raleigh-Durham area; and 60-38% among college graduates -- the widest Democratic advantage in this group in exit polls since 1988.

See PDF for full results, charts and tables here

-ABC News’ Polling Director Gary Langer

Oct 20, 2020, 8:56 AM EDT

Early voting by the numbers

With two weeks to go until Election Day, at least 31 million votes have been cast in the 2020 general election as early voting data continues to hit record numbers across the nation.

According to the United States Elections Project, spearheaded by University of Florida political expert Michael McDonald, an unprecedented 31,677,305 voters have already voted and at least 83,196,705 ballots have been requested in early voting states. 

Texas has the most votes already cast with roughly four million. California follows the lead with roughly 3.5 million absentee ballots cast. 

Election workers process mail-in ballots as a monitor displays a livestream of the process at the Orange County Registrar of Voters on Oct. 19, 2020 in Santa Ana, Calif.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

At this time in 2016, 5.6 million votes had been cast nationwide.

The large early voting numbers are a factor of the coronavirus pandemic as well as an increase in voter interest. Voters are more eager to cast a ballot ahead of Election Day where polling sites could be viewed as overcrowded during pandemic standards. 

In-person early voting begins Tuesday in Hawaii, Louisiana and Utah.

-ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh

Oct 20, 2020, 8:36 AM EDT

Trump's Fauci feud keeps campaign focus on COVID-19

This is now an actual attack line that Trump is deploying against former Biden.

"He wants to listen to Dr. Fauci," Trump told a crowd in Arizona Monday afternoon, the mention of Dr. Anthony Fauci's name drawing boos.

It takes head-spinning logic to cast Trump's feud with Fauci as a winning campaign message for an incumbent who is down in the polls. The campaign is continuing to air ads that feature Fauci -- out of context -- appearing to applaud the president's decisions on COVID-19, even while Trump calls him a "disaster" and his fellow health officials "idiots."

President Donald Trump dances as he walks off stage during a campaign rally at Pitt-Greenville Airport, Oct. 15, 2020, in Greenville, N.C.
Evan Vucci/AP

This fight, though, only makes more obvious what the campaign is about. With cases surging in battleground states and beyond, and with the president himself back on the trail from his own illness for only a week, Trump's assertion that "people are tired of COVID" is pretty clearly true -- with whatever meaning one might impose on those words.

New ABC News/Washington Post polling from North Carolina, out Tuesday morning, reinforces how much the coronavirus has cost the president credibility and political standing.

It’s Biden 49, Trump 48 in one of the president's must-win states, with Biden leading by 34 points among self-described moderates. He captures 68% support among those worried about catching the coronavirus.

One last debate and two weeks of rallies will give Trump more chances to try to change the campaign subject. For now, and once again, the campaign that could have been about so many different things remains focused on one very big thing.

-ABC News’ Political Director Rick Klein