Election 2020 updates: Trump delivers shorter speech in chilly Pennsylvania

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

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. 

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

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."

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

With just two weeks until voters cast their final ballots, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign is launching a new ad, “I Can’t,” focused on a small business owner in Arizona -- a state the former vice president is hoping to turn blue on Election Day. 

“I can’t do another four years of this. I—I can’t,” Maggie, a hair salon co-owner from Phoenix, Arizona, says in the ad. ”There’s never been more divisiveness in this country. It’s frightening and sad.” 

In her testimonial, Maggie takes aim at Trump on his signature issue of the economy, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That was Trump’s whole thing, you know -- take the politics out of it and run it like one of his businesses. I know people were looking for that kind of change, but it’s not working,” she said.

“We’ve only gotten more in debt, we have this virus now out of control, people out of work, no healthcare. How is that helping people?” Maggie continued, echoing arguments Biden has taken up against Trump on the trail.

The ad continues similar messaging from another recent ad from Biden’s team, focused on a bar and music venue owner in Michigan hurting from the coronavirus outbreak, and comes one day after the president held two rallies in Arizona, a state he carried by nearly four points in 2016. 

However, recent Arizona state polling shows Trump now trailing Biden significantly in the state the former vice president’s team has identified as an expansion opportunity in their path to 270 electoral votes.

The ad is slated to run nationally during cable programming, as well as in key battleground states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

In the final two weeks until Election Day, the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee and pro-Biden outside groups are slated to outspend Trump and pro-Trump efforts on Television and radio ads.

According to ad spending data from media research firm CMAG, Biden and pro-Biden groups have reserved a total of $147 million in airtime from Tuesday through Nov. 3.

-ABC News’ Molly Nagle