Judge rejects GOP effort to throw out 127K Texas votes

With Election Day just hours away, coronavirus cases are rising in every key political battleground state around the country, according to an ABC News analysis, a striking reality that highlights the inextricable link between the pandemic and the 2020 race, despite the president’s best efforts to refocus the conversation elsewhere.

As deaths and hospitalizations are rising as well, the outbreak is hitting in record numbers nationwide -- but the virus is spreading faster in case per population in many hotly contested states, including Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin and Texas, according to the analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.

Just this week, Pennsylvania, one of the most likely tipping points in the election, broke its single-day new case record this week with over cases 2,700 reported -- the highest since the start of the pandemic. In Wisconsin, there have been more than 150,000 new cases in just the past two months -- nearly double all the cases reported from March through the end of August combined. And Georgia, which has emerged as a competitive state, is experiencing a "surge."

Exactly how the most recent rise in cases in key swing states, which began earlier this fall, will ultimately impact the presidential election remains unclear, but experts said its effects have already been felt. Many say the surge in cases is likely to hurt the president at the ballot box, though a Trump campaign official Sunday suggested it may be to their advantage to have Democrats talking about it so much, as fear over the outbreak could prevent those more likely to support Biden from turning out on Election Day.

Record numbers of mail-in ballots have been requested, though, and early voting is smashing total tallies from 2016 and fears of getting the virus do not appear to be suppressing the drive to vote in person, even in places where cases are surging, experts said.

-ABC News’ Olivia Rubin, Soorin Kim and Mark Nichols

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in a Fox News interview this morning, appearing as Trump's "campaign adviser," confirmed he plans to be at the White House on election night. 

"We'll be there at the White House in D.C.," McEnany said. 

The Trump campaign had reportedly planned a traditional campaign party at his hotel, also off Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington. But the president told reporters last week that he was considering other options including staying at the White House or spending time between the two. The District's coronavirus precautions limit indoor gatherings to 50 people.

The Democratic ticket, meanwhile, is slated to be in Wilmington, Delaware, on election night.

-ABC News' Jordyn Phelps

With the clock ticking down until Election Day, Trump and Biden have only hours left to make their closing arguments to voters, and with more than 94 million already having cast their ballots, the pool of uncommitted voters they're hoping to win over is thinning out.  

On the final full day of campaigning, the candidates return to the swing states they deem critical in their pathways to the White House the election -- but the trips come as the the contest is overshadowed by coronavirus cases rising across the country and in nearly every election battleground.

Trump and Biden are competing amid a pandemic and continue to paint contrasting realities of the COVID-19 landscape, with Trump insisting "COVID, COVID, COVID' -- as he puts it -- will disappear from media reports after the election, saying the country is "rounding the turn" while Biden acknowledges ending the pandemic won’t be like “flipping a switch” if he’s elected. 

Continuing what Biden has deemed “superspreader” events, Trump has five rallies in four states Monday --  in Fayetteville, North Carolina at 11:30 a.m., in Avoca, Pennsylvania, at 2:30 p.m., in Traverse City, Michigan, at 5 p.m., and in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at 8 p.m., -- before traveling back to where he ended his campaign in 2016: Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a final rally.

Other than making a quick side trip to neighboring Cleveland, Ohio, Biden is focused on barnstorming what is shaping to be the pivotal battleground of the election -- Pennsylvania -- with events in Beaver County at 2:40 p.m. and in Pittsburgh at 5:40 p.m. with members of the African American community. He closes out the day at a drive in rally with Lady Gaga in Pittsburgh. 

Biden’s running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, is also campaigning in Pennsylvania and finishes her day at a drive-in rally with John Legend in Philadelphia. Their ticket's top surrogate, former President Barack Obama, is spreading out their efforts with events in Georgia and Florida. 

Vice President Mike Pence has a pair of rallies in Pennsylvania -- a state Trump won by one point in 2016 and one where a Democratic win this time would leave him with an exceedingly narrow path to victory -- before joining Trump on the trail in Michigan. 

With a nation on edge, roiled by tension and palpable high anxiety on the eve of Election Day, the president seems more determined than ever to exploit divisions as his best hope of closing the gap in the polls.

Trump denied to reporters Sunday night that he would try to declare some of "victory" on election night but added, "as soon as the election is over, we’re going in with our lawyers." His comments on the heels of repeated attacks ON the Supreme Court for not allowing GOP efforts to block the counting of ballots arriving in the days after the election in key battleground states.

The ultimate disruptor needs one last shocker. 

That can happen in one of two ways for Trump -- one in a scenario that would play out in the hours before Tuesday night, the other immediately after.

The bottom line that both parties acknowledge: The Trump campaign needs the polls -- virtually all of them -- to be wrong. They need the images of massive crowds to translate into an Election Day army at the polls, to wipe out the advantage that Biden has almost certainly built up as early voting smashes new records.

As for the other way, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller offered a hint on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. Miller said -- without evidence, and quite implausibly -- that the president would be "over 290 electoral votes on election night."

"So no matter what they tried to do, what kind of hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense they try to pull off, we're still going to have enough electoral votes to get President Trump reelected," Miller said.

Given the president's repeated assertions that a winner needs to be determined on Nov. 3 -- "that's the way it's been and the way it should be," Trump said Sunday -- Miller is strongly suggesting that the campaign would rely on incomplete voting results to suggest that the race is over. A legal strategy of seeking to disqualify uncounted votes could follow.

Several states -- Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan among them -- are unlikely to tabulate early votes promptly on election night, meaning initial results may favor Trump, perhaps misleadingly. Media organizations, including ABC News, will not make projections without far more data than is likely to be released before midnight.

A premature declaration of victory has no force of law, of course. But it may mark the ultimate test of a political system that Trump has sought to disrupt, time and again.

-ABC News’ Political Director Rick Klein