Election 2020 updates: Biden outlines plan for tackling COVID-19

In afternoon remarks on COVID-19 and the economy, Biden slammed Trump for what he called his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and predicted a “dark winter ahead” as the virus resurges in parts of the country. 

“My fellow Americans, last night, we saw the president of the United States lie to the American people, and repeatedly lie, about the state of this pandemic,” Biden began, reading from a teleprompter for the speech. “As I told him last night, we're not learning to live with it, we're learning to die with it.”

Biden then laid out his plan to beat COVID-19 which includes, he said, enacting a national testing strategy, asking Congress for another relief bill to sign by the end of January, building a national core of contact tracers and appointing a supply commander to ensure the U.S. can manufacture critical supplies at home. 

He also emphasized universal masking saying he would ask every governor to mandate mask wearing in their states and turn to local officials if they refused, along with making mask-wearing a mandatory practice  in federal buildings and on interstate transportation.

The president departed the White House South Lawn this afternoon for the battleground of Florida, a state he narrowly won in 2016, to court the senior vote first with a rally in The Villages, a sprawling mecca for retirees in a conservative pocket of central Florida.

Underpinning Trump's success in 2016 was, in part, an army of seniors that made up a large slice of the electorate and backed him by 7 percentage points over Hillary Clinton, according to national exit poll data. Older voters are among the most likely to vote and have sided with Republican nominees in every presidential election since 2004, reinforcing Trump four years ago and helping tilt key battleground states in his favor.

But this cycle, Biden is cutting into Trump's coalition, making significant gains with older voters across the U.S., particularly in must-win states for Trump. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found the two men running even among likely voters 65 and older nationally.

Trump is leading Biden by 8 points among likely voters over 65 in Florida, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll -- a margin slashed by roughly half compared with 2016 when he carried this demographic by 17 points in the state.

Sources told ABC News Trump campaign aides have grown weary of the president's declining support among older Americans, a group they know is critical to his reelection chances.

-ABC News’ Kendall Karson and Will Steakin

While announcing a peace deal this afternoon between Israel and Sudan -- the third Arab country to move toward normalizing relations with the Jewish state in an election-season push by the Trump administration -- the president took a swipe at his political rival in the historic joint phone call from the Oval Office.

"Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi?" Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a speakerphone, referring to Biden.

"Well, Mr. President," Netanyahu replied, starting slowly, "one thing I can tell you is we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America, and we appreciate what you've done enormously." 

Trump took questions from reporters following the call, and in speaking to the massive amount of early voting across the country, he predicted a “great red wave” is imminent -- "like you've never seen before."

But polls show Trump trailing Biden nationwide, and some Republicans in tight races have sought to distance themselves from the president in the homestretch to Election Day.

When asked about his debate performance last night compared to his first debate, Trump said while he thinks his approach to the second debate was “obviously a more popular way of doing it,” the first debate was more effective.

“I think the other is more effective in terms of business and life,” Trump said. “The first one. I thought I did great. There are certain groups of very aggressive people that loved the first debate. But I think this was better. This was obviously a more popular way of doing it."

-ABC News' Elizabeth Thomas

With early voting having kicked off in all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., at least 52 million votes have already been cast in the 2020 general election -- breaking records across the country.

In 2016, a total of 47 million early votes were cast, meaning the country has already surpassed its 2016 early voting data by roughly 5 million votes.

As of Friday at 1 p.m. an unprecedented 52,480,306 voters had already voted and at least 85,546,463 ballots had been requested in early voting states, according to the United States Elections Project, spearheaded by University of Florida's political expert Michael McDonald.

TargetSmart, a Democratic firm that collects political data including early voting statistics, reports that 10 million voters who have already voted in the 2020 election did not participate in the 2016 election. Many of these early votes are coming from young people as well as first-time voters. Individuals under 30 years old have cast 9.1% of early votes. 

During a press conference Thursday, TargetSmart predicted there will still be an additional 40 million early votes cast as well as between 60-70 million votes cast on Election Day. The prediction is for at least 150 million ballots cast in total. In comparison, in the 2016 election, there were 138 million total votes. 

-ABC News' Kelsey Walsh