Anxiety, pandemic prelude US Election Day as candidates make final push

WASHINGTON - As the Election Day is around the corner amid anxiety over its implications, US presidential candidates are making final pitches to voters before ending a campaign season that has been largely reshaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sitting President Donald Trump, also Republican presidential nominee, held rallies in five states in a campaign blitz on Sunday, while his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, spent the day in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state where polls showed the former US vice president leading the incumbent.

The race between Trump and Biden is also tight in other battlegrounds, including Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Biden leads Trump only by 3.2 percentage points in these five states plus Pennsylvania.

Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at Washington, D.C.-based think tank Brookings Institution, told Xinhua that the battlegrounds will likely "determine the winner."

Nationally, Biden's support stands at 52 percent to Trump's 42 percent among registered voters, according to the final NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday.

"This is the 11th survey we've done in 2020, and so little has changed," Democratic pollster Peter Hart told NBC News. Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the survey with Hart, cautioned that Trump has the ability to outperform on Election Day.

"This is the most competitive election I could imagine if you're down 10 points nationally," said McInturff.

Speaking to a rally in Dubuque, Iowa on Sunday, Trump said he likes "Election Day, and most of you do too," while predicting that a "red wave" would occur, as Republicans supporters are more likely to vote in person on that day, while more Democratic voters have cast their ballots early, with a majority using mail-in voting.

Trump has told confidants that he will declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he's "ahead," according to US news website Axios, citing three sources familiar with his private comments.

His team is also reportedly preparing to claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov 3 -- a count expected to favor Democrats -- are evidence of election fraud, which has been repeatedly refuted by election experts and legal pundits.