US Presidential elections campaigns enters the decisive stage as both Trump and Biden intensifies calling for voters to vote early as the last debate approaches

US President Donald Trump appealed to his supporters in Nevada on Sunday to cast their votes early in the state, which he narrowly lost in the 2016 election, while his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, urged North Carolina residents to “go to vote today”.

Approaching the last presidential debate scheduled for Thursday.

The US Election Project at the University of Florida said that about 27.9 million Americans had already cast their ballots, either by mail or directly before the November 3 presidential election.

The reason for this record turnout for early voting is due to fears of large gatherings in polling stations on Election Day, with the spread of the Coronavirus epidemic that infected 8.1 million Americans and killed more than 218,000.

“Early voting is currently underway, so come out and vote,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada, where early voting began on Saturday.

Biden called on voters in North Carolina to cast their ballots as soon as possible. 

The rivalry between Trump and Biden is heating up in the “swing” North Carolina, which Trump won by 3.66 percentage points in the 2016 election.

Biden attacked Trump for saying over the weekend that the United States had “passed the danger stage” regarding the Corona pandemic, noting that the rate of new cases in the country rose to the highest level in several months.

“Things are getting worse and he is still lying to us about the epidemic situation,” he said.

Despite Trump’s infection with the Coronavirus and recovering from it recently, he mocked Biden in Nevada for his cautious approach to the epidemic.

Trump mocked those calling for him to listen to the opinions of scientists, saying, “If I had only listened to scientists, we would now be in a country facing a massive recession”.

The Biden campaign quickly responded, with spokesperson Andrew Bates saying, “Coronavirus cases are on the rise and layoffs are increasing”.

The two candidates meet in the last debate on Thursday in Nashville, Tennessee. 

The second debate, which was originally scheduled for last Thursday, was canceled after Trump withdrew after the organizers announced that it would be organized by default to reduce the risk of transmission of Covid-19 infection.

Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris has canceled plans to participate in events over the weekend as a precaution after an aide tested positive for the Coronavirus.

But the Democratic Camp campaign said on Sunday that Harris had not been tested positive for Coronavirus.

Harris will return to the race later Monday with a visit to Florida with the start of direct voting there.

Trump did not wear a muzzle while attending a church service in Las Vegas on Sunday.

The president participates in election events every day until Thursday’s debate, when he will visit Arizona and North Carolina, his campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said.

Democrats are significantly leading in early elections by mail.

Trump has slipped in nationwide polls, and his campaign data showed he also dipped in fundraising as the election race raged.

Biden campaign manager Gene O’Malley Dillon said in a note to contributors to donating to the campaign at the weekend that the overall data is misleading, “We should not be complacent because the simple truth is that Donald Trump can still win this election and all our indications are showing that the outcome will not resolved only at the last moment.

Presidential elections are decided by electoral college votes assigned to each US state and county based on their population, regardless of the nationwide voter turnout.

The Democratic candidate for the US presidential election, Joe Payne, speaks frequently of how faith helped him overcome many tragedies in his life. Biden, a Catholic, hopes that, on November 3, he will be able to convince the Catholic voters, who most voted for Donald Trump in 2016, to choose him this time.

Almost every week, the former vice president attends mass at Little St. Joseph’s Church in the posh suburb of his city of Wellington, Delaware.

Close to the church in a vast green cemetery, his parents and son Poe, who was an attorney general in Delaware and died of cancer in 2015, were buried, as were his first wife Nelia and daughter Naomi, who died in a traffic accident in 1972.

On Sunday morning, Biden went again with his wife Jill under the rare trees with red leaves, to visit the grave of his son Bo, which was decorated with small American flags.

In 2017, former Vice President Barack Obama said he was not giving up the rosary that was in his son’s hand the day he died.

Joe Biden, who was educated in a Catholic school, has always expressed his Christian affiliation. 

If he wins the election, he will become the second Catholic US president, after John F. Kennedy.

The 77-year-old Democratic candidate mentions Pope John Paul II’s sayings and religious writings and points to his Irish Catholic origins, and thus intends not to leave religiously observant voters to Republicans.

The challenge is huge, as Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 thanks to unconfirmed victories in several key states.

After two weeks, every vote counts. 

Catholics constitute those “pivotal”, “swing” voters from one party to the next between elections.

In 2016, 52% of them elected Trump compared to 45% who voted for Clinton, according to the Pew Research Institute.

But this group, which represents about a fifth of Americans, is far from monolithic: Six white Catholics out of ten voted for the Republican, compared to nearly seven out of ten Catholic voters with origins in Latin America, for the Democratic candidate. 

And there are prominent members of the Trump administration, Catholics.

“It is a core constituency for our candidacy,” says the official in charge of religious matters on the Democratic candidate’s team, Josh Dixon.

Yet the issue of abortion could be an obstacle for Joe Biden, even in the Democratic state of Delaware.

Biden supports the Supreme Court ruling known as “Roe v. Wade,” which recognized the right to have an abortion in the United States in 1973. 

The Democratic candidate promises that if elected president, he will perpetuate this decision by pushing Congress to include it in the law.

“Whether Joe Biden is a Jew, Catholic, Lutheran, or atheist, this does not matter to me,” John Dolan said during his leaving Mass at St. Joseph Church, which Biden frequents.

This 50-year-old engineer does not yet know who will vote in the elections. 

But he explains, “Since I am Catholic, it is difficult for me to support someone” who advocates for abortion rights.

For his part, 71-year-old Rudi Antonini Jr. decided that he would vote for Trump.

“I have nothing against Joe Biden, he is a good person (but he supports) an abortion… He is Catholic, I find it a contradiction,” says the American man of Italian descent, sitting in the autumn sun on the banks of the Christina River in Wilmington.

His positions led one day to refuse to receive Eucharist in an American church in 2019.

When asked about this potential obstacle, Josh Dixon noted that American Catholics “are very different in their views and origins” and take “many issues” into account when voting.

He considers that Biden and Democratic Vice President Candidate Kamala Harris “are the obvious moral choice in this election” against the Trump administration.

Former Democratic Senator and American University expert Capri Cafaro shares this analysis with Dickson. 

And she asserts that many Catholics will look beyond Biden’s position on abortion and “find themselves in the sincere struggle” that Biden wages to reconcile his beliefs with politics.

“I’m voting for Biden,” says Alexandra Johnson, 41. 

The real estate worker with four children added that her choice “has nothing to do with religion”.

“I think it will provide a better future for my children, that is all,” she continues.