With only three days of campaigning left before Election Day in the United States, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden were focusing Saturday on battleground states, with Trump visiting Pennsylvania while the former vice president traveled to Michigan.Biden attended events alongside former President Barack Obama for the first time during the campaign season. The two were visiting the cities of Flint and Detroit on Saturday, the first of two days the campaign will spend in Michigan to garner voter support.Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks at a campaign drive-in mobilization event in Flint, Mich., Oct. 31, 2020.Biden focused Saturday in Flint, Michigan, on Trump’s handling of the pandemic.“We’re gonna beat this virus and get it under control, and the first step to doing that is beating Donald Trump,” Biden said.Obama spoke first, saying, “Joe Biden is my brother. I love Joe Biden, and he will be a great president.” On Monday, Obama will campaign in Florida and Georgia, Biden’s campaign announced.Musician Stevie Wonder was to join Biden and Obama in Detroit to perform at a drive-in rally. Wonder has previously performed at several Democratic events, including for Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012 as well as for Hillary Clinton in 2016.Trump planned four rallies Saturday in cities across Pennsylvania, where he narrowly won in 2016 and where recent polls showed Biden with a slight advantage.Court criticismTrump’s first rally was in Newtown, where he criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing a Republican Party effort to block a three-day extension for Pennsylvania election officials to receive absentee ballots, meaning the court would not intercede in the state’s vote count.“This is a horrible thing that the United States Supreme Court has done to our country,” he said. “We have to know who won.” President Donald Trump applauds during a campaign rally at Keith House-Washington’s Headquarters in Newtown, Pa., Oct. 31, 2020.On Friday, Trump and Biden campaigned in the Midwest, with Trump traveling to Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, while Biden held events in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.Fight against virus criticizedBiden told supporters at a drive-in rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines on Friday that the state had hit daily record numbers of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations this week, and he argued that Trump “has given up” on fighting the virus.National polls typically show Biden with a lead of 7 or 8 percentage points over Trump, although the margin is about half that in several key battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome in the Electoral College.According to an average of major polls compiled by the website Real Clear Politics, Biden and Trump are virtually tied in the battleground states of Florida, Arizona and North Carolina, while the president trails the former vice president in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Americans are voting early for Tuesday’s presidential election in unprecedented numbers, a product of strong feelings for or against the two main candidates and a desire to avoid large Election Day crowds at polling stations during the pandemic.More than 90 million people had already voted as of midday Saturday, well above half the overall 2016 vote count of 138.8 million, according to the U.S. Elections Project.
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