The Election: Full Guide - The New York Times - 0 views
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Nearly 100 million people cast their ballots early, more than two-thirds of the total number of votes cast in the 2016 election.
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Polls will begin closing at 6 p.m. Eastern in parts of Kentucky and Indiana, and the first results will begin rolling in soon after that. Both are securely in the Trump column.
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If Mr. Biden wins Georgia, Florida or North Carolina, Mr. Trump has an even slimmer path to victory.
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There will be a few later-night states out West that are worth keeping in mind: Nevada, which Mr. Trump has sought to pull back from the Democrats, and Arizona, which Mr. Biden has been trying to put into the Democratic column.
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If Mr. Biden does not win any of those three states (or Texas, where most of the state polls close at 8 p.m.), that will ratchet up the importance of the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which Mr. Trump flipped from Democrats in 2016 and where polls show Mr. Biden ahead.
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Florida officials have already processed the state’s record-breaking early vote, which has been almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.
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The White House has invited 400 people to the East Room and was planning for everyone attending to be tested for the coronavirus. There was no official invitation sent to many guests invited: The president’s secretary called them to extend the invitation personally. But officials said they expected a lot of attrition and were not certain how many people would show up.
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. A win in Florida would keep him in the race, but attention would then turn immediately to the Northern battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
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Now, with the president expecting no definitive winner on Tuesday night, and his campaign lawyers trying to use state rules to stop the counting of mail-in votes after Election Day, he has no plans to deliver any sort of concession.
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Many people in the president’s circle think he is likely to lose. A brief burst of optimism a few weeks ago has settled into concern about their own careers, post-Trump. Coupled with expectations of large protests around the White House, and the coronavirus, it was not seen by all invitees as the see-and-be-seen event of the year.
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Mr. Biden is expected to deliver remarks sometime late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning from Wilmington, Del., but if the result remains in flux he may wait.
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Mr. Biden, after a campaign premised largely on the idea of returning to presidential norms, would be stepping far out of character if he too called himself the winner before results were known in enough states.
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Control of the Senate is also among the biggest issues being decided Tuesday, with the result going a long way toward determining the contours of the federal government for at least the next two years.
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Polling suggests Democrats are favored to pick up seats held by Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona, and lose the one held by Senator Doug Jones of Alabama.The other big tossup contests are in Maine and North Carolina, where the Republican Senators Susan Collins and Thom Tillis face fierce challenges from the Democrats Sara Gideon and Cal Cunningham.
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With control of the House unlikely to change, the ability of Democratic candidates for Senate in these states to outrun Mr. Biden may determine the shape of Congress next year.
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If Mr. Trump holds on to Florida, watch out for the lawyers. There are likely to be legal challenges — mainly from Mr. Trump — to early votes cast across the country. Mr. Trump has laid the groundwork with his unfounded warnings about voter fraud and by dispatching lawyers ready to challenge the legitimacy of votes cast. And if Pennsylvania is close, expect that state to be ground zero for legal action that could keep this election unresolved right through Thanksgiving.