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Election 2020: No mute button, but mics will be muted at debate

This is designed to prevent the kind of serial interruptions seen in Cleveland.

ByLibby Cathey and Lauren King
Last Updated: October 19, 2020, 11:43 AM EDT

With 15 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, with long lines forming across Florida Monday as voting kicks off in that battleground state.

Roughly 28 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 Arizona, 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.

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.

Top headlines

Here's how the day unfolded. All times Eastern.
Oct 19, 2020, 9:48 AM EDT

Early voting kicks off in Florida

Early voting has begun in Florida, a state key to a Trump or Biden victory.

Of the state's 67 counties, 52 are opening their polling sites to an electorate eager to determine the outcome of one of the nation's most critical battlegrounds.

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris is slated to attend a drive-in rally in Orlando mid-morning and a voter mobilization event in Jacksonville in late afternoon.

Voters wait in line to cast their early ballots at the Coral Gables Branch Library precinct in Coral Gables, Fla., Oct. 19, 2020.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

As of Sunday, a staggering 2.5 million Floridians had already cast their ballots by mail -- only 200,000 shy of 2016's entire vote-by-mail total. Most polls in the state still show a tight contest between Trump and Biden.

With every state having some form of voting now underway, an unprecedented 28,117,692 voters have already voted and at least 82,013,225 ballots have been requested in early voting states, according to the United States Elections Project, spearheaded by University of Florida's political expert Michael McDonald.

Oct 19, 2020, 9:49 AM EDT

For Democrats, 2016's memories mix with 2020's anxieties

If Trump's worst enemy has always been himself, Biden's most important opponent at the moment might be his own party -- its memories, its anxieties and its growing expectations.

Fifteen days out from Election Day, any honest reading of the data suggests that this is Biden's race to lose. The race's stubborn fundamentals are combining with COVID-19 spikes and the president's scattered messaging, while 28 million Americans and counting have already cast ballots.

Voters wait in line to cast their early ballots at the Coral Gables Branch Library precinct, Oct. 19, 2020 in Coral Gables, Fla., as in-person early voting opens in the state and runs through Nov. 1.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Democrats, of course, are terrified that Biden could still lose. The buzz in numbers-obsessed circles is about party registration gaps and early vote spikes among white, non-college voters; the word from the Biden campaign is not to put stock in public polling and to expect a nasty finish.

It's easy to see Trump's late-stage attacks on Biden and his family, along with his squabbles with fellow Republicans, and view it as self-destructive or simply irrelevant. Add Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to a growing list of incumbents in tight races to put distance between himself and Trump, and welcome Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., back to Trump's Twitter attack list.

But even those story lines carry a gnawing familiarity to Democrats who remember how messy the last few weeks of the last campaign really were. Running confident is less appealing than running scared, at least for now.

-ABC News Political Director Rick Klein