Our live coverage has ended. Read more about the 2020 election here.
President Trump continues to project an optimistic tone about the coronavirus, a tone that is out of touch with reality as cases surge throughout the country.
“We’re going to quickly end this pandemic, this horrible plague that came in from China,” Trump said at a rally at The Villages in Florida on Friday. “Normal life will fully resume. We had the greatest economy in our history and next year will be the greatest economic year in the history of our country.”
Earlier in the rally, Trump criticized Joe Biden for only wanting to talk about coronavirus and again claimed the US is “rounding the turn.”
“You look at what is going on and we’re rounding the turn, we’re rounding the corner. We’re rounding the corner beautifully,” Trump said.
Some context: On Thursday, there were more than 71,000 new coronavirus cases in the US, the worst day since the summer.
Trump has attempted to project an optimistic tone on the pandemic since it first began.
Since February, he has said that the virus will simply disappear at least 38 times, though his “rounding the turn” rhetoric is slightly different from that.
President Trump confirmed at a rally on Friday that he will be voting in Florida this weekend.
“I’m voting early tomorrow in Florida. Can you believe it? I’m coming to vote,” Trump said at a rally in The Villages, Florida. “I came down here to vote.”
Trump added: “I actually came here to see The Villages and tomorrow morning I’m voting here, as opposed to sending it in, you know, as a mail-in. I like being able to vote. I’m old fashioned, I guess. I like to get on-line and if I have to stand there for two hours, maybe they’ll move (me) up a little bit. But I like to vote.”
The Trump campaign is out with yet another ad hitting Joe Biden’s position on fossil fuels and fracking.
The ad, airing in Pennsylvania, features Biden saying “No new fracking,” along with a testimonial from Jennifer, a fracking technician.
Biden attempted to clarify remarks following last night’s debate, saying he’d phase out fossil fuels.
“Eventually we’re going to have to go to oil, but we’re not getting rid of fossil fuels. We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels, but we’re not getting rid of fossil fuels for a long time. It will not be gone for … probably 2050,” he told reporters before his departure from Nashville.
According to the Trump campaign, the ad will “air in Pennsylvania and as a part of the $55 million in combined spending between the Republican National Committee and the Trump Campaign in the closing weeks of the election.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that if a coronavirus vaccine is developed, it should be provided free to all Americans, whether or not they have health insurance.
“Once we have a safe and effective vaccine, it has to be free to everyone, whether or not you’re insured,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden criticized President Trump and Republicans’ efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and said that “overturning the ACA would mean people would have to pay to get Covid-19 vaccine. That’s wrong.” The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the future of the ACA on Nov. 10.
Biden said if he is elected president, he would direct the federal government to “bulk-purchase as many doses as necessary of the Covid-19 vaccine so we can provide it free to those who are uninsured, underinsured or Medicaid-eligible.”
He noted that despite what Trump has promised, it will still be “many months before any vaccine is widely available.” He said that the United States needs a president “who will take responsibility for making sure it gets to every single person in this country in a way that’s equitable and accountable.”
Watch the moment:
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday lambasted President Trump for his administration’s mishandling of the response to the coronavirus pandemic, as the United States surpassed 223,000 deaths from the virus.
“We’re more than eight months into this crisis, and the President still doesn’t have a plan. He’s given up. He’s quit on you. He’s quit on your family. He’s quit on America,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware. “He just wants us to grow numb and resign to the horrors of this death toll and the pain it’s causing so many Americans.”
Biden said Trump “can’t erase his own words or deeds.” He pointed to the reporting by journalist Bob Woodward that shows Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous and repeatedly played it down publicly.
“Covid-19 dwarfs anything we’ve faced in recent history and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down,” Biden said. “The virus is surging in almost every state.”
Biden on Thursday during the presidential debate accused Trump of denying responsibility for the virus’ spread in the United States, and predicted that a “dark winter” is coming.
Watch:
With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, the stakes at Thursday night’s debate could not have been higher. President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden faced off in a more cordial debate, discussing a range of issues from the coronavirus pandemic to health care and the economy.
Here’s what some of our viewers around the country thought about the debate:
Michael, Columbus, Ohio
“I know what Trump is going to do. As for Biden, he is all over the place on what he is going to do, he says one thing, then denies he said it. He pretty much put his foot in him mouth last night. Besides I can’t vote for anyone that tells the American people that we don’t deserve to know what he is doing with the courts. Trump isn’t perfect but he does get things done and he will get my vote.”
Abigail DiMatteo, Stamford, Connecticut
“I thought Trump was an EMBARRASSMENT when he said that only those with the ‘lowest IQ’s’ show up back to court when seeking asylum. How absolutely disgusting and ignorant to say of people who fought for better lives for themselves and their families. Trump was disrespectful, outright lied multiple times, and just a nightmare to watch. I screamed at my phone. Cried once.”
Deb Bergeson-Graham, Greendale, Wisconsin
“I thought the debate was dull and somewhat boring. I didn’t hear anything particularly new … just a lot of the same old lies from the incumbent. I did think the answer to the last question would have been enough. T didn’t answer it. Biden did and very well.”
Jaye King, Antioch, Tennessee
“The part about the kids was so cruel, how can DT sleep at night. It’s a shame these men DT, Jeff Sessions & … [Rosenstein] separated the kids from their parents, imagine how they would feel if someone ‘took’ their kids from them — total barbaric behavior and no compassion or shame!”
Liam, Indiana
“Trump won. He needed to stay calm and presidential. He accomplished both goals!”
Keep reading here.
More than 55 million people watched Thursday night’s debate, according to preliminary Nielsen TV ratings.
The debate between President Trump and Joe Biden averaged 55.2 million viewers across the six biggest broadcast and cable channels on American television.
For comparison’s sake, 62 million people watched the first Trump-Biden debate on those same six channels, which means the second and final debate of the season was down just about 11% from the first.
Frequently the first debate of an election cycle is the most-watched, so this year’s results follow a familiar pattern. Thursday’s high ratings reflect intense interest in the election.
These numbers are preliminary. The official total, to be released by Nielsen later in the day on Friday, will be even higher because it will count additional channels.
The finalized total for the first debate of the season was 73.1 million.
The Nielsen ratings only include Americans who watched on television sets. An unknown number of people live-streamed the debate on various devices, listened on the radio, or watched in other ways.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, brushing aside Democratic concerns over the expedited timeframe for confirming President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, moved on Friday to cut off debate and set up a final confirmation vote eight days before the election.
McConnell’s move sets up a Sunday afternoon procedural vote to break a Democratic filibuster and then a final confirmation vote, likely on Monday evening.
All Democrats are expected to vote against the nomination and two Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins — are expected to vote against the nomination as well due to their concerns that it’s too close to the election to consider a nominee.
But Republicans have enough votes to get Barrett confirmed.
Some background: On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the nomination of Barrett to the Supreme Court. Though the vote was 12-0, the 10 Democratic senators on the panel boycotted the vote, and filled their seats with pictures of people who rely upon the Affordable Care Act, drawing attention to an upcoming case on the health care law’s constitutionality.
Barrett, 48, will give conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, influencing a range of issues that could come before it, including Americans’ personal privacy rights, campaign finance regulation, affirmative action in higher education, public aid for religious schools, environmental and labor regulations, the ACA and any potential disputes regarding the 2020 election.
If Barrett is confirmed and serves as long as her predecessor, the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she will sit on the court for nearly four decades.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided unanimously that county elections officials can’t throw out absentee ballots with signatures that they deem don’t match versions on file.
The ruling is among a few remaining legal challenges over voter practices in the battleground state.
As with the ruling Friday, Republicans have lost several bids to make vote by mail practices in Pennsylvania stricter.
Here’s what the court ruled:
“We conclude that the Election Code does not authorize or require county election boards to reject absentee or mail-in ballots during the canvassing process based on an analysis of a voter’s signature on the ‘declaration’ contained on the official ballot return envelope for the absentee or mail-in ballot. We, therefore, grant the Secretary’s petition for declarative relief, and direct the county boards of elections not to reject absentee or mail-in ballots for counting, computing, and tallying based on signature comparisons conducted by county election officials or employees, or as the result of third- party challenges based on such comparisons.”
More than 2.27 million New Jersey residents have already voted in the 2020 election, Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted Friday.
That makes New Jersey among six states that have exceeded half of the turnout in 2016 so far, according to the governor.
More on this: Over 50 million Americans have already cast their general election ballots with a week and a half until Nov. 3, according to a survey of election officials by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.
Voters in the 48 states and DC with pre-election vote data available are already setting records as they seek to cast their ballots either by mail or in-person where available.
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott told reporters Friday that even though last night’s debate was better than the first, he is still not planning to vote for President Trump.
“I want to again reinforce the fact that I am not voting for President Trump,” said Scott, a Republican. “Who I am going to vote for, who I am going to write in, or vote for has yet to be determined.”
Scott said he hasn’t decided whether he will vote in person or drop off his ballot early.
He said he watched some of Thursday’s night debate and was “appreciative that it was much better than the first one, although that was a fairly low bar.”
“Nothing in the debate changed my perspective of my not going to vote for President Trump. I think it just reaffirmed why I’m not,” Scott said.
CNN previously reported that Scott announced in August he wouldn’t be voting for Trump.
President Trump commented on his calm performance at the final presidential debate, saying he “wanted to play by the rules.”
“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 is obviously a more popular way of doing it. And no, I think I wanted to play by the rules. They felt very strongly about it. It’s two different styles. I’m able to do different styles if you had to. This seemed to be much more popular,” he told reporters in the Oval Office Friday.
At one point during Thursday’s debate, the President said he “took responsibility” for his handling of the pandemic, before immediately saying it wasn’t his fault.
Asked Friday if he still took responsibility, Trump responded, “I always take responsibility and I’ve done a great job and the people around me have done a great job.”
He added that governors “had nothing on their shelves, and we stocked them. And those governors, if they’re honest they’ll tell you it was the best job they’ve ever seen. I’ve had governance say it’s one of the best jobs they’ve ever seen anybody doing anything.”
CNN’s Randi Kaye spoke to three undecided voters to get their reaction to last night’s debate.
The voters are from the key swing states of Ohio, Michigan and Florida, states that could be crucial for either candidate’s victory.
Watch their reactions below:
Nearly half of the mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have been returned, according to data provided by the secretary of state’s office.
As of Friday, 1,449,400 ballots have been returned out of 2,940,210 ballot applications that have been approved.
Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar noted the significant surge in voting by mail this year over previous elections.
In the 2016 general election, 266,208 absentee ballots were cast statewide, according to Boockvar.
The nearly 3 million mail-in applications the state has approved represents nearly a third of the roughly 9 million registered voters.
President Trump is “in a great mood” and “very happy with his debate performance,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday.
Asked if she felt it was enough to change the trajectory of the race, she responded that was never the President’s goal.
“The President doesn’t need to change the trajectory, excuse me, of the race because the trajectory of the race is strongly in his favor with a massive tailwind behind him,” she claimed to reporters at the White House.
The press secretary pointed to early voting numbers, claiming “Republicans don’t routinely match early vote of Democrats, and we’re seeing that in states, and we believe that’s more indicative of where the country stands.” McEnany was referring specifically to Michigan. Not every state releases the party affiliation of early voters.
She said that was a better indicator of the race than “any of the public polling out there that sometimes is designed to shape public opinion, rather than gauge it.”
Asked why the President continues to hold massive rallies with no social distancing and no mask requirement, McEnany said the American people “deserve to hear from their leaders,” and attacked Democratic rival Joe Biden for his lack of in-person campaign events.
“I think if you’re going to not fight for the vote of the American people, I don’t think you’re going to fight for the American people as President,” she said.
Sen. Kamala Harris praised her running mate’s debate performance after touching down in Atlanta for campaign events.
“We had a good debate last night. We had a good debate. Joe did really well, and I’m really happy to be back in Atlanta, Georgia,” Harris told reporters after walking off her plane.
Asked why she thinks her and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden can win Georgia when a Democratic nominee has not won the state since 1992, she said “the people of Georgia deserve to have a president who sees them, who cares about them. Georgia has been so hard hit by the pandemic.”
“You’re looking at, nationally, almost half of Black businesses have permanently closed because of the failure of this administration to address the pandemic,” she continued. “We’re looking at Atlanta which has a very significant Black community, and 1 in 1,000 Black people in America have died because of this pandemic. It is predicted as many as 1 in 500 by the end of the year. So we’re here to talk about what Joe and I are prepared to do.”
Much like Biden did in last night’s debate, Harris took a swipe at Trump and his response to the pandemic.
“We have a plan that’s about national testing, contact tracing. We have a plan that’s about supporting small businesses and supporting working families. The American people deserve to have a president who actually has a plan that’s about saving lives, saving businesses and helping our economy,” Harris said.
Asked about fracking, Harris said, “Let’s be really clear about this. Joe Biden is not going to ban fracking. He is going to deal with those subsidies, but the President likes to take everything out of context, so let’s be clear. What Joe was talking about was banning subsidies but he will not ban fracking in America.”
Minnesota has received at least 1,186,522 absentee ballots for the general election as of Friday, according to data posted by the secretary of state’s office.
The previous high was 689,722 ballots in the 2016 general election.
As of Friday, 1,765,327 ballot applications were requested, compared to 742,021 in 2016.
The state currently has a little over 3.5 million registered voters, but this could change as voters can register in person through election day.
Of those registered so far, approximately 34% have voted as of today.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and aligned Democratic committees maintained a substantial cash advantage of more than $107 million over President Trump and his political operation in the final weeks of the campaign, according to a new round of filings that capture last-minute fundraising and spending.
Here’s what the reports show:
The President’s political operation has struggled to compete financially with Biden in recent months, and Trump has headed to high-dollar fundraising events to shore up his cash position in the waning days of the presidential campaign.
On Thursday – just hours before the final confrontation on the debate stage – Trump made an appearance at a Nashville fundraiser that was expected to bring in $8 million for the campaign.
The President insists, however, he has enough funds to prevail on Nov. 3 – as he did four years ago, despite being outspent by his then-rival Hillary Clinton.
“We don’t need money,” Trump said during Thursday night’s debate. “We have plenty of money. In fact, we beat Hillary Clinton with a tiny fraction of the money that she was able” to raise.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio fired back at claims President Trump made during last night’s debate about the city being a “ghost town.”
De Blasio said his city is “fighting back” after once being the epicenter of the pandemic. He pointed out that 1,600 public schools are open and more than 10,000 restaurants are open and engaging in outdoor dining.
“Jobs are coming back” he said, but “it’s gonna be a long road.”
“I mean this is just a pitiful attempt by the President to undermine the notion that everyday people are going to fight back this disease because he failed to,” de Blasio added.
The mayor accused Trump of putting the “burden” and “onus” on the “people who are suffering but are still fighting back, rather than acknowledging his responsibility because he wasn’t here for us when we needed testing, when we needed a stimulus for our recovery.”
“He’s been missing in action,” de Blasio said.
The mayor said Trump’s “greatest fallacy” is that he “hasn’t lifted a finger for a stimulus.”
“He says ‘oh my old New York,’ he hasn’t helped New York, he hasn’t helped any other city or state in the country. If he called for a stimulus, the Republican Senate would have gone along, he never did the work that a president should have done in this crisis,” de Blasio said.
The mayor defended the city’s public school education protocols, saying the team looked globally at all the standards that worked and combined them into a “gold standard.”
“We test constantly in our schools. We found an incredibly low rate of positive cases in our schools,” de Blasio said.
But he added that operating schools safely requires a lot of resources, agreeing with Joe Biden’s comments on education needing funding.
Responding to a question about the colder months ahead and the possibility of a resurgence, de Blasio said, “no we’re not seeing a second wave in NYC and we are fighting back any indication that might even suggest even the beginning of them.”
“I’m feeling very good that we can get through this winter strong,” he said.
More than 6.3 million people have cast their vote in Texas so far, according to data posted on the Texas Secretary of State website Friday morning.
That represents 37.63% of registered voters.
On Thursday, 426,218 people voted in person, bringing the total in-person votes to 5,593,296. Cumulative ballots-by-mail so far this cycle were 787,388.
Comparing early voting data from 2016 can be complicated for multiple reasons, in addition to the pandemic. Texas has three weeks of in-person early voting this cycle compared to two weeks in 2016. The state is also tracking early voting data from all 254 counties this cycle, but it only collected data from the top 15 most populous counties in 2016.
Still, when looking at the data from the first 10 days of early voting in the top five most populous counties in both cycles, turnout has increased by 384,528 – an increase of about 16%. It’s worth noting that those counties represent 42% of all registered voters.
The last day of early voting in Texas is Oct. 30.
More than 50 million Americans have already cast their general election ballots with a week and a half until Nov. 3, according to a survey of election officials by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.
Voters in the 48 states and DC with pre-election vote data available are already setting records as they seek to cast their ballots either by mail or in-person where available.
Around 55% — more than half — of those pre-election votes come from CNN’s 16 most competitively-ranked states, which will most likely determine who will win the presidency next month.
The 50 million ballots cast so far represents more than 36% of the more than 136 million total ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election. Some voter information comes from Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and is giving new insights into who is voting before November.
President Trump disciplined himself for Thursday night’s presidential debate and dispensed with the interruptions. And with former Vice President Joe Biden able to talk this time, unlike in the first debate, there was a serious policy discussion.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the key issues:
Coronavirus: Trump continued to downplay the severity of the virus and defend his early reaction — restricting travel from China — and promising, despite the facts, that a vaccine will be ready shortly. Biden, pointing to the death toll from the virus, repeatedly held up a mask and said he’d push common-sense advice to states to encourage mask-wearing, social-distancing and restrictions on things like dining in restaurants if there are outbreaks in a state. Trump continues to argue he should be judged for the pre-Covid economy and the pre-Covid reality. He said millions could have died from Covid, as if that absolves him from having to deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands have died on his watch.
Health care: Trump still thinks that Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — should be invalidated. He has spent years promising a plan to replace it. But there is no plan, as of yet. Biden, on the other hand, wants to one-up the Affordable Care Act by adding the public health care option Democrats were unable to add to Obamacare 10 years ago. There’s a fundamental disagreement here about whether a public option equals socialized medicine. Trump says yes and Biden says no.
Policing, justice and racism: Biden called Trump the most racist president. Trump said he’s done more for Black Americans than any other president. What’s the truth? Trump did sign a sentencing reform bill. But it didn’t solve the problem of over-incarceration, no matter what he says. Biden did certainly mastermind the 1994 crime bill that helped create over-incarceration. The difference now is Trump wants to demonize protesters for racial justice and paint himself as the law and order President.
Immigration: Somehow Trump was accusing Biden of inhumanity on immigration, arguing that the Obama administration began the policy of family separation. There’s a kernel of truth there, but the Trump administration had institutionalized it before the outcry made them stop. There are still more than 500 kids whose parents can’t be found and, in a major moment, Trump said at the debate, “They are so well taken care of.”
CNN’s team watched the final presidential debate. Read the latest fact checks here.
President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden faced off in their second and final presidential debate of the 2020 election season last night, in Nashville, Tennessee.
The two men discussed various issues, including the coronavirus pandemic, health care, the economy and immigration.
You can watch the full debate here.
Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen Pence cast their ballots in their home state of Indiana today.
“Great honor,” Pence told cameras, “and great to be back home again.”
After voting this morning, Pence is expected to return to the campaign trail with a stop in Swanton, Ohio, at 1 p.m. ET.
Pence will later deliver remarks at a rally in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania.
President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden faced off in their second and final presidential debate last night.
With just 11 days to go until the election, we want to hear from you.
Tell us your thoughts on the debate and what impact it had on you using the form below.
The second and final showdown between President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden looked much more like a normal debate than their first meeting.
But it probably didn’t do anything to change the race’s trajectory.
Amid a plethora of lies, Trump hammered Biden for failing to solve problems like institutional racism during his time in the Senate and as vice president, casting him as a typical politician.
Biden lambasted Trump in policy terms, criticizing his handling of the pandemic and his approach to health care, the economy and immigration. But at times, the former vice president got personal — at one point calling Trump “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history.”
Here are some takeaways from the last 2020 presidential debate:
Trump lowers the temperature: Trump entered Thursday’s debate with near unanimous consent among his advisers: cool down. None could say with any confidence whether he would take the advice.
He did, mostly — aided, in part, by a new muting rule he lambasted ahead of the face-off.
Yes, he still issued falsehoods. Yes, he still lobbed personal attacks. Yes, he downplayed the coronavirus — the single biggest crisis facing the country — while taking no responsibility for it. Yes, he insisted that hundreds of migrant children separated from their parents are being well taken care of.
But for most of the face-off, he seemed more subdued and more intent on sticking to a plan. He was even courteous to moderator Kristen Welker of NBC, telling her at one point he approved of her performance.
Trump’s wishful thinking: Trump’s very first answer — which was meant to state how he would lead during the next stage of the coronavirus — relied instead on looking backward and wishful thinking about a vaccine.
And like many of his answers over the rest of the evening, Trump’s central argument seemed to be that things could be a lot worse. Thought it was delivered in a new, less aggressive style, Trump’s answer amounted to the same dismissal of the pandemic he’s been offering for months — one that voters have largely rejected.
Biden forecasts a “dark winter”: Biden offered a much bleaker view of the virus, predicting that a “dark winter” is coming as he accused Trump of denying responsibility for its spread in the United States and squandering months that he said should have been used to accelerate production of protective medical equipment and prepare schools and businesses for reopening.
“Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America,” Biden said.
Biden was much more measured than Trump in discussing how he’d handle the virus. He said he would establish national standards for opening schools and businesses and would seek stimulus money to prepare them.
Read more takeaways here.
