The 2020 Battleground States: Updates on the Swing Voters

The path to the presidency runs through about a dozen key states. We’re bringing you dispatches from the battlegrounds to help explain how voters see the race.

The path to the presidency runs through about a dozen states that President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. are seriously contesting — battlegrounds that will decide who wins the Electoral College.

The New York Times is bringing you dispatches from the swing states to help explain how voters see the race and what issues are driving it.

Race ratings from the Cook Political Report.

Kay Nolan
Oct. 31, 2020, 11:00 p.m. ET

Wisconsin: The state’s older voters wield power, and many are choosing Biden.

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Marylouise Felhofer, a retired Navy nurse, said health care was a top priority. “The Affordable Care Act could be enhanced, but I don’t think it should be repealed,” she said.Credit...Lauren Justice for The New York Times
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Father Tom Suriano, 82, cited “children in cages,” “people dying homeless and hungry on the streets,” and “cutbacks to Obamacare” as other “pro-life” issues.

MILWAUKEE — In a state where Mr. Trump won by less than one percentage point in 2016, any bloc of voters could swing this year’s election, and in Wisconsin, older voters comprise a formidable group.

Not only does Wisconsin have a larger share of older adults than the national average — and in many counties, 30 percent or more of the population is age 60 and over — but the state’s older voters also head to the polls in big numbers.

In the 2018 midterm elections, 76 percent of Wisconsin citizens age 65 and older voted, according to census data — more than in all but six other states.

In interviews, many older Wisconsinites said they had already safely voted.

“My ballot was mailed to me and my son took me to City Hall to drop it off,” said Grace Clausen, 92, of Greenfield, a Milwaukee suburb. “The slot went right into the building like a mail slot, and it was marked with a great big sign.”

A poll of Wisconsin this month by The New York Times and Siena College showed Mr. Biden with a double-digit advantage among voters over 65, 53 percent to 42 percent.

Both candidates have campaigned in Wisconsin in the race’s final days. And television ads from both parties compete for senior voters in the state, each insisting that its candidate will protect Medicare and Social Security.

But many voters said their life experiences influenced their choices more than political ads. And the interviews suggested that Mr. Trump might be in trouble among this older demographic.

For two retired priests who, like Ms. Clausen, live in a Catholic senior community, Mr. Biden was an easy choice.

“For me, the environment is the biggest issue — if we don’t take care of that, there is no future,” said Father Ed Eschweiler, 99. “Certainly, no right to life is going to be effective if we can’t breathe or drink the water or eat the food from the soil. I don’t think our president has done anything significant on right-to-life, other than the appointment of three Supreme Court judges.”

Father Tom Suriano, 82, said there were other “pro-life” issues to be concerned about, like “children in cages,” “people dying homeless and hungry on the streets,” and “cutbacks to Obamacare.”

“First of all, Donald Trump is a newcomer to the pro-life camp, but secondly, once the baby is born, he seems to lose interest,” Father Suriano said. “I get angry at people who equate pro-life with being anti-abortion.”

“The president is not very well-liked,” observed Shirley Cohen, 92, a resident of a Jewish senior community in Milwaukee. Gun control is “absolutely” her top issue, she said, citing her disgust over images of “pro-Trump militias” carrying long guns at protests.

Memories of marching for civil rights during the 1960s influenced a vote for Mr. Biden by Cindy Labucki, 76, of Milwaukee. “I certainly condone the peaceful demonstrations for Black Lives Matter,” said Ms. Labucki, a retired teacher.

Marion Jaeger, 96, of Oconomowoc remembers the Great Depression and how grateful her father, an immigrant, was for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s social programs. Although she has voted over the years for both parties, Mr. Biden’s “respect” and “presentation” won her over.

“I don’t know that most people in this building appreciate some of the comments that Republicans have been making, whether their agenda is good or not,” said Ms. Jaeger, who lives in a Lutheran senior complex. “Mr. Trump’s demeanor is not presidential.”

And Health care was a top priority for Marylouise Felhofer, 68, a retired Navy nurse, also of Oconomowoc. “The Affordable Care Act could be enhanced, but I don’t think it should be repealed,” she said.

But Ms. Felhofer’s neighbor, Mickey Laughland, 83, cast her vote for Mr. Trump. “He’s not a politician — he doesn’t owe people favors,” Ms. Laughland said. “I wish he’d quit tweeting, but by gum, he’s done what he said he would do.”

Wesley Martin Jr., 77, president of the Great Lakes Native American Elders Association, predicted that most voters in Wisconsin’s Menominee and Oneida reservations would choose Mr. Biden, as he did. He cited environmental protections as a key issue, along with Mr. Trump’s history of clashing with tribal-run casinos.

In Wisconsin’s far north, tourists and wealthy people with lake homes belie the area’s rate of poverty, said Erv Teichmiller, 82, a Methodist minister and former Vilas County Board supervisor.

“Our area tends to be Republican, probably two to one,” said Mr. Teichmiller, who predicted that Mr. Trump would win in the region, but by a smaller margin than in 2016. “A fair number of people are tired of his bullying and lying and are concerned about Obamacare being taken away.”

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Manny Fernandez
Oct. 31, 2020, 9:00 p.m. ET

Texas: All of a sudden, a two-party election in the Lone Star State.

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Voters outside the Bedford Public Library in Bedford, Texas, last week. Texans have already cast more votes than they did in the entire 2016 election.Credit...Cooper Neill for The New York Times

Texas has 38 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 9.0 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated a Tossup.

BEDFORD, Texas — The Texas battlefield is more of a battle lot in one Fort Worth suburb: a library parking lot.

Masked men and women park outside the Bedford Public Library and join the back of a socially distanced line. The lot gets so full and the line gets so long at times that you’d think the library was offering plates of barbecue instead of principles of democracy.

Nearly 22,000 people cast their early-vote ballots at the library during the early voting period, some of the more than 700,000 who voted early in Tarrant County and the record-breaking 9.6 million who did so statewide.

Texas has, seemingly overnight, flicked an electoral switch.

In a state where one party has dominated for years, and where the Republican primary was once the bellwether election that determined winners and losers, Texas has been watching, slack-jawed, at what happens when a two-party state holds a general election during a presidential race.

Texans have already cast more votes early than they did in the entire 2016 election. There have been long lines at early voting sites in San Antonio, Houston and Austin, not because of polling-place glitches but simply because of demand.

Even the graffiti artists are riled up. One of Houston’s landmarks — a piece of block-letter graffiti reading “Be Someone” on Interstate 45 that has become a civic slogan — was painted over and now declares, “Vote or Die.”

More than 1.4 million people in Harris County, which includes Houston, voted in person and by mail during the early voting period ending Friday, out of a total of 2.4 million registered voters.

What that means is that Democrats, who have benefited from the state’s rising populations of college graduates, younger voters and minorities, are sure to loosen the Republican grip on power in Texas. The question no one knows the answer to is by how much.

“I’m not surprised to see turnout numbers that are going to exceed 2018 and will probably dwarf any previous Texas election,” said Ted Delisi, a Republican strategist in Austin who was the national field director for former Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign. “We have a pandemic. We have a presidential election. And we obviously have an activated Democratic Party, and spending on both sides that is completely unprecedented.”

The high turnout was not just a Democratic thing. Bedford is part of a chain of suburbs known more by their initials than a name: HEB, or Hurst-Euless-Bedford. This had been Tea Party country in the Obama era, but Democrats have chipped away at that support as the region has grown more diverse. And yet in recent days, many of those who have been standing six feet apart outside the library doors were fired-up suburban conservatives.

Many wore masks and gloves (that’s not just a Democratic thing, either). Some conservative voters were white, but several others were originally from India, including one man who said that he and his wife had rushed back home from overseas to make sure they had time to vote.

One retired electrical engineer who voted for Mr. Trump said he blamed the state’s changing politics on the young men and women who have moved to Texas from California.

And Bonita Herr, a retired pharmacist who lives in Euless and who voted for Mr. Trump, said that for her, it was all about the bottom line.

“I don’t want my taxes increased,” she said.

Richard Fausset
Oct. 31, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET

Georgia: Up and down the ballot, racism is an issue.

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Mokah Jasmine Johnson faced racist slurs in her bid for a State House seat.Credit...Joshua L. Jones/Athens Banner-Herald, via Associated Press

Georgia has 16 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 5.1 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated a Tossup.

ATLANTA — Mokah Jasmine Johnson, who is running for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives from Athens, was participating in an online candidate forum in October when a number of trolls began peppering her with a string of racist slurs and insults.

At the end of the forum Ms. Johnson, a Democrat and social justice activist who is Black, made a simple plea.

“I’m asking for you to look beyond my skin color,” she said, “and look at my work.”

This is a tense election season in Georgia, a Deep South state with a long history of segregation, a population that is 32 percent Black and a broader explosion of ethnic and racial diversity that is benefiting Democrats and moving the state from red to purple.

Mr. Trump, who in June retweeted a video of a supporter shouting “white power,” won the state in 2016 by five percentage points. Recent polls have Mr. Biden running neck-and-neck in the state.

Issues of racism — and assertions of who harbors it, who wields it, and why — have helped shape the state’s 2020 races up and down the ticket. The Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, a Democrat who is vying to become the first Black U.S. senator from Georgia, has been telling crowds that Trump-era Republicans engage in distraction by “convincing white sisters and brothers that their problem is the Black folk who might come to the suburbs.”

Earlier this year, the killings in Georgia of Rayshard Brooks and Ahmaud Arbery, both Black men, helped fuel protests around the state, some of which turned violent. Volunteers from Georgia voter-registration groups were at many of those protests, seeking to channel outrage into votes.

At the same time, Mr. Trump appears to have maintained the loyalty of some white, college-educated Georgians by convincing them that violent “antifa thugs” were coming to ruin the suburbs.

How these emotionally charged issues will end up affecting voter turnout is anyone’s guess. But Charles S. Bullock III, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, has established what he calls a “30-30” framework for understanding how racial voting patterns might influence this and other elections in Georgia. For a Democrat to win statewide, Mr. Bullock said, he or she must get 30 percent of white support, and African-Americans need to cast at least 30 percent of the total votes.

Georgia has been stung by criticism that it makes participating in elections more difficult for people of color. ProPublica recently reported that a statewide reduction in polling places had “primarily caused long lines in nonwhite neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day.”

Cooling Black voters’ enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket appears to be a goal for Mr. Trump and his allies. A flier delivered to homes in central Atlanta, paid for by the Georgia Republican Party, brings up Mr. Biden’s controversial statement from 2007 in which he said that Barack Obama was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.”

Mr. Biden had to drop out of the 2008 presidential race, the flier says, for “being racist.”

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Kathleen Gray
Oct. 31, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET

Michigan: Will the state’s Republican power center tilt away from Trump?

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Signs supporting President Trump and other Republicans in Grand Rapids, Mich.Credit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times

Michigan has 16 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 0.2 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Kent County, home to former President Gerald R. Ford and some of Michigan’s most generous Republican donors, has taken on a different political hue in the last few years.

And Steve Pestka, 69, a former Democratic state legislator and county judge from Cascade Township on the west side of Michigan, has some anecdotal proof. He’s been working his family’s land development business from home during the coronavirus pandemic and has had some extra time for walks with his dog and drives around the area.

He has taken to meticulously counting lawn signs in towns throughout the county, which is anchored by Grand Rapids, the state’s second largest city behind Detroit. In some areas, the signs for Mr. Biden and Kamala Harris outnumber signs for Mr. Trump and Mike Pence by 90 percent to 10 percent, Mr. Pestka said. Even in the more conservative areas of Kent County, the breakdown has been 50-50.

“In terms of lawn signs, it’s overwhelmingly Democratic,” he said. “I know signs don’t vote. But just from driving around, you’d think a Biden landslide was coming.”

When you think of West Michigan, a blue wave does not come to mind. Kent County is home to the Amway Corporation, created by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos, whose families have been Republican stalwarts and benefactors for decades. Their names grace parks, schools, convention centers and one of the fanciest hotels in the region. A daughter-in-law, Betsy DeVos, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and the current education secretary in the Trump administration.

And yet, the more diverse city of Grand Rapids and its close-in suburbs have been electing Democrats to the state legislature for the last 15 years. And after giving Mr. Trump a three-point victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, the county gave Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, a four-point win in her race for governor in 2018 against her Republican rival, Bill Schuette.

Bernie Porn, president of the Lansing polling firm EPIC-MRA, said Mr. Biden had a good shot of repeating those numbers in Kent County this year. The firm’s latest statewide poll had Mr. Biden leading by nine points over Mr. Trump.

“The level of support that turned the county blue two years ago, I think Biden is doing even better this year,” Mr. Porn said. “I’m not sure he’s going to win over all of Western Michigan, but Whitmer did well there in 2018, and Biden is doing better. The makings are there for a Democrat to win in Kent County.”

Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump saw Kent County as pivotal in 2016. Mrs. Clinton spoke at Grand Valley State University outside Grand Rapids on the day before the election, and Mr. Trump spoke to thousands of supporters at a plaza in the city at 1 a.m. on Election Day.

Mr. Trump will try to recreate his 2016 winning formula this year by ending his campaign with a scheduled late-night rally on Monday in Grand Rapids.

Lisa Posthumus Lyons, a Republican who is running for re-election as Kent County clerk, said she feels good about her race but knows the political dynamics are tricky this year. In the last four years, the county has gained 50,000 new registered voters, she said, and the 127,000 absentee ballots already returned this year are nearly double the number returned during the entire 2016 election cycle.

“This is a very unique election year because we’ve got a presidential-proportion turnout, coupled with the pandemic,” she said. “It just feels like the political winds are all over the place right now. Whitmer won Kent County in 2018, and Obama took it in 2008, but outside of those two, Kent County has always been Republican.”

Even against a Democratic challenger, Devin Ortega-Furgeson, who hasn’t reported raising money in the race, Ms. Lyons has already spent close to $50,000 on her campaign, nearly double the amount she spent in 2016.

“I think that’s indicative of the political winds not being what they used to be,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised at how this or any other race in Kent County turns out this year.”

Mr. Pestka, who has been watching campaigns for more than 50 years, said the 2020 cycle has been like no other.

“The suburbs have shifted,” he said. “You’ve got a high percentage of people with college degrees, so we were already moving in that direction to begin with, but the emergence of Donald Trump has moved that forward four to five years ahead of what it would have be otherwise.”

Jon Hurdle
Oct. 31, 2020, 3:00 p.m. ET

Pennsylvania: Bucks County was tight in 2016, and voters are split again.

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Supporters of President Trump greeted former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s motorcade last weekend in Bristol, Pa., part of Bucks County.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 0.7 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

NORTHAMPTON TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Jennifer Lippolis is tempted to vote for Mr. Trump again because she thinks he stands for the conservative ideals she believes in, but she has a problem with him.

“He is an idiot,” she said in an interview outside a supermarket here. “The way that he presents himself, the Twitter, the ‘China virus.’ I feel he does it on purpose to get a rise out of people because he is a celebrity. What he doesn’t realize he’s doing is that he’s just making himself look like a buffoon. So it’s hurting the Republican Party.”

Interviews with voters in the heart of Bucks County, a Philadelphia suburb, found a split between staunch Trump supporters, firm Biden voters, and others who previously voted Republican or Libertarian but, like Ms. Lippolis, are now wavering.

Voter registrations have risen for Democrats and declined for Republicans in all four of Philadelphia’s “collar” counties since 2000. But the Democratic advantage is less in Bucks than in neighboring Montgomery and Delaware Counties, and was reflected in Hillary Clinton’s victory in Bucks by less than one percentage point in 2016.

Still, a victory for Mr. Biden in Bucks County could help him offset the strong support for the president in many rural areas of the battleground state.

Days before the election, Ms. Lippolis, 40, said she still had not decided whom to vote for. She said she was torn between her belief that a Biden presidency would mean a “socialist” administration that paid for health care and college, and her qualms about supporting a president whose behavior makes her profoundly uncomfortable.

There were no such doubts for Kevin Smith, 54, a township resident and military veteran who voted for a Libertarian candidate in 2016 but said he would vote for a straight Democratic ticket this time.

Mr. Trump, he said, “doesn’t know how to tell the truth.”

Mr. Smith, who declined to state his occupation, said he couldn’t explain Mr. Trump’s popularity. “In 2016, people wanted something different, and I understand that, but if you do it again, I think there’s something wrong with you.”

Andrea Ballow, 56, formerly a registered Republican, said she had already voted for Mr. Biden. She became a registered Democrat in 2018 because she felt Mr. Trump was damaging the Republican Party.

But John Grace, 86, a retiree, said he would vote for Mr. Trump again because the president “puts America first.”

Still, he declined to predict a winner because he said voters were overwhelmed with conflicting information amid a faltering economy and a resurgent pandemic.

“I think the American public are so confused with all the scandals, all the virus,” he said. “I don’t think they know what the hell they want, and I think it’s going to be potluck who wins.”

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Hank Stephenson
Oct. 31, 2020, 1:00 p.m. ET

Arizona: Democrats eye victory, even in an unlikely district.

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Hiral Tipirneni, a Democrat, is attempting to unseat Representative David Schweikert and flip Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District.Credit...Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Arizona has 11 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 3.5 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — In a nondescript office building in Paradise Valley that serves as the headquarters for her campaign, Hiral Tipirneni attempted to rally her small army of virtual troops for a phone bank event. It was a final push about a week before the election from perhaps the most ambitious Democratic operation in Arizona.

Ms. Tipirneni, a medical doctor, is attempting to unseat Representative David Schweikert and flip Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District, which spans the wealthy, mostly white Phoenix suburbs of Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Fountain Hills and carries a Republican voter registration advantage of 12 percentage points.

“We have the power; we have the vote; we can fire him — and that’s the plan,” Ms. Tipirneni told the group of almost 50 volunteers in a video conference call. “Enthusiasm is there. We’re seeing a record number of early ballots coming back. Folks are excited to vote.”

If a “blue wave” washes over Arizona on Tuesday, as some expect, Mr. Trump could lose the state. It would take a blue tsunami for Ms. Tipirneni to pull off a victory against Mr. Schweikert, a four-term incumbent who won re-election in 2018 by more than 10 percentage points.

But Democrats have been voting early in droves, even among infrequent or first-time voters. As of Friday evening, Arizona Democrats had cast 38 percent of all ballots in the state, while Republicans accounted for 37 percent, turning historical voting patterns on their heads. (Republicans in the Sixth District, however, had a lead of about seven percentage points in ballots cast.) Usually, Republicans hold a huge advantage in early voting and mail balloting, and Democrats cut into that lead by dropping off mail ballots on Election Day.

Despite messages from the state Republican Party that voting by mail is safe and effective, Republicans are instead heeding Mr. Trump’s directive to go to the polls on Election Day. But some Republicans worry that banking on last-minute voters in a state where nearly 80 percent of voters receive ballots by mail could be a recipe for failure and will be at least in part to blame if Mr. Biden pulls off the first Democratic presidential victory in the state since 1996.

For Ms. Tipirneni, there are other signs that the district is within reach.

She is a prolific fund-raiser who cut her teeth in a neighboring congressional district two years ago, coming within five percentage points of defeating Debbie Lesko, now one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent defenders, in a district almost nobody thought a Democrat could win.

Mr. Schweikert’s campaign has its own problems. After a lengthy investigation by the House ethics committee, he admitted to violating 11 ethics rules and paid a $50,000 fine. The ethics battle drained his campaign coffers, with much of his money going straight to his team of lawyers.

Chuck Coughlin, a Republican political strategist in Arizona who served as chief of staff to former Gov. Jan Brewer, recalled running into Ms. Tipirneni at an event in 2019 and telling her she had no chance to win in the district. But a lot has changed in the past year, including the pandemic and the economic recession. Now, he believes she has an even chance and said that Republicans banking on a surge on Election Day might be sorely disappointed.

“I keep hearing the Kool-Aid from all my Republican friends,” he said. “I got a call from a Schweikert campaign member yesterday saying: ‘It looks good. We’re doing good.’ And Republicans might outperform Democrats on Election Day this time. It’s just never happened before.”

Michael Venutolo-Mantovani
Oct. 31, 2020, 11:02 a.m. ET

North Carolina: An invisible line cleaves a region into political camps.

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Waiting to vote in Durham, N.C., this month. No two adjacent areas better illustrate North Carolina’s political divide than Orange and Alamance Counties.Credit...Jonathan Drake/Reuters

North Carolina has 15 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 3.7 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated a Tossup.

CARRBORO, N.C. — Kara Hume found it odd that a caravan of at least 30 trucks was rolling slowly through the center of Carrboro, the liberal North Carolina enclave that sits adjacent to Chapel Hill, with Trump flags waving from the bed of most every vehicle.

Ms. Hume, a professor in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was on a town green, warming up the regular Saturday morning CrossFit class she coaches for young adults with autism when the parade started past her group.

“Given the nature of our community and how we’re likely to vote, I just wonder what was the intent,” Ms. Hume said. “It’s surprising to me for people to invest that kind of time and energy and resources in a town like Carrboro.”

North Carolina’s Research Triangle, with Raleigh to the east, Durham at its center, and Chapel Hill and Carrboro to the west, is a traditionally blue area, with most of its towns, cities and citizens existing at some point along the progressive scale.

However, there is an invisible line at the western edge of the Triangle, just past Carrboro, where the coterie of liberal voters ends and a swath of more traditionally Southern conservatives begins.

No two adjacent areas better illustrate North Carolina’s political divide than neighboring Orange and Alamance Counties, creating one of the most purple areas in what is arguably America’s most purple state.

As the tree-lined and quintessentially college-town streets of Orange County’s Chapel Hill and Carrboro give way to the rolling hills of rural Alamance County, Biden-Harris and Black Lives Matter signs become less ubiquitous in favor of Trump and thin blue line flags.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton received nearly 73 percent of the votes cast in Orange County. Mr. Trump won Alamance County with 54 percent of the vote.

Pamela Ransohoff, a member of the North Carolina Republican Party, was stationed outside a popular Chapel Hill voting location on Wednesday, offering early voters sample ballots, Trump-Pence stickers and facsimile hundred-dollar bills with the president’s face at their center.

She didn’t see the recent Trump parade that passed through perhaps the state’s most progressive area as a waste of energy and resources. Rather, she said, it was a vital exercise of Americans’ constitutional rights.

“You stand for what your values are,” Ms. Ransohoff said. “I think it’s important in a town like Carrboro to be able to say what you think and what you believe.”

For State Senator Jay Chaudhuri, a Democrat whose district includes part of Raleigh, it is the proximity in which these ideological divides exist that makes North Carolina one of the most interesting and important battleground states.

The outcome in North Carolina, he said, will be decided at the margins.

“The open question is what’s happening with the so-called purple areas,” Mr. Chaudhuri said. “We have no idea, and anybody predicting the outcome of the election in North Carolina just isn’t telling the truth.”

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Dionne Searcey
Oct. 31, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ET

Nebraska: Trump fights for a single electoral vote that could prove decisive.

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President Trump at a rally on Tuesday in Omaha. Some attendees were stranded in the cold as they waited for shuttle buses afterward.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Nebraska’s Second Congressional District has 1 electoral vote. In 2016, Trump won the district by 2.2 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

OMAHA — One congressional district in the middle of the country is getting a lot of attention from candidates and pundits in the days before the election: Nebraska’s Second District, which could play a decisive role in a close presidential race.

Unlike most other states, Nebraska awards Electoral College votes by congressional district instead of a winner-take-all system. The statewide winner receives two votes, and the winner of each district receives one. In a tight election, every electoral vote counts, and Nebraska has five up for grabs.

Recent polls have favored Mr. Biden in the Second District, which includes Omaha and many of its suburbs.

But on Tuesday night, thousands of Mr. Trump’s supporters attended his rally in a state where coronavirus cases are surging. Jane Kleeb, the chairwoman of the Nebraska Democratic Party, described the campaign rally as “a potential superspreader event.”

A few people who lined up for the event wore masks, but most did not. Most of the president’s supporters were subdued as a chilly wind whipped around them, yet they were confident polls that showed Mr. Trump trailing Mr. Biden were wrong.

They said Mr. Trump needed merely to keep showing up at events like this one in the final days of the election and voters would turn out for him.

“Most of the polls anymore, I think, are pushing an agenda,” said Dillon Bloedorn, a farmer who drove an hour and 15 minutes from his home in Wisner, Neb., to see the president.

He said he was certain Mr. Trump would win because of “stuff like this, when he’s pulling 5,000 or 10,000 people at a rally.”

When Mr. Trump arrived at the outdoor setup on an airport tarmac, he repeatedly emphasized the size of the crowd, which he claimed was 29,000 people. Estimates from local officials were far smaller.

He introduced several local Republican officials but otherwise offered only a few area-specific entreaties to the crowd, saying at one point, “As president, I will always defend ethanol,” referring to the gasoline additive that is made from corn and which has long been a political topic in neighboring Iowa.

Mr. Trump then said, “Does Nebraska like ethanol, too, by the way?” The crowd replied loudly that the answer was yes. “Good, I need that little assurance,” the president said.

At different points, he urged supporters to vote. “I’m standing here freezing,” he said of the frigid weather. “I ask you one little favor: Get the hell out and vote.”

After the rally, hundreds of attendees were left stranded for hours in the cold when a fleet of buses meant to shuttle them back to a parking lot couldn’t keep up with demand. At least six people were taken to a hospital, according to the local authorities.

For his part, Mr. Biden will most likely not appear in Nebraska in the final days of the election. He announced plans to visit Iowa, and in lieu of visiting Omaha, he gave a statement to the Omaha World-Herald, Nebraska’s largest newspaper.

Patricia Mazzei
Oct. 31, 2020, 7:02 a.m. ET

Florida: On the lookout for voting problems, but probably not this one.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis’s primary residence was changed in his voter registration file.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Florida has 29 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 1.2 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated a Tossup.

MIAMI — Elections in Florida have often gone something like this: Republicans return more mail ballots, Democrats turn out in force for in-person early voting, and then Republicans show up in higher numbers on Election Day.

This most unusual of pandemic elections has altered some of those patterns: Democrats have amassed a huge advantage in voting by mail, Republicans have in turn cut into that lead with in-person early votes, and more Republicans are still expected to go to the polls on Tuesday.

The margins, as always, are expected to be uncomfortably tight. And that has Republicans, Democrats and outside groups on high alert for any potential wrinkles that could lead to winning or losing a few thousand ballots and affect the election result.

No one, however, predicted that the governor himself might have a problem.

When Gov. Ron DeSantis went to cast his early ballot on Monday in Tallahassee, the state capital, a poll worker informed him of something unusual: His primary residence had been changed to an address in a small apartment complex in West Palm Beach, 400 miles away.

Mr. DeSantis, a Republican who lives full-time in the Governor’s Mansion, had not authorized any such change. He asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate.

By Wednesday, the authorities had made an arrest. Anthony Steven Guevara, a 20-year-old from Naples, Fla., was charged with unauthorized computer access and altering a voter registration without consent. Investigators said they traced the logs for the DeSantis address change to a web browser that led them to Mr. Guevara.

Mr. Guevara also gained access to the voter registrations of Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, and the basketball players LeBron James and Michael Jordan, “but made no changes,” the Department of Law Enforcement said in a statement.

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Daniel McGraw
Oct. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

Ohio: Trump faces a daunting gender gap in a changing state.

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Bowling Green, Ohio. Job growth in the state’s manufacturing sector was among the slowest in the country before the pandemic.Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Ohio has 18 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 8.1 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated a Tossup.

CLEVELAND — Ohio has been in economic upheaval for decades. In 2000, the state had about one million manufacturing jobs. Last month, that number stood at 660,000.

Mr. Trump’s success in Ohio four years ago had a lot to do with those lost jobs. He promised to bring them back, saying he was going to “make America wealthy again.”

Many of the jobs didn’t come back. General Motors idled and then sold off its giant plant in Lordstown in 2019. Job growth in Ohio’s manufacturing sector was among the slowest in the country before the pandemic; since then, it has hit negative territory.

Men work in roughly three-quarters of U.S. manufacturing jobs. But while Mr. Trump’s appeal in his first run may have been aimed at the men facing an uncertain economic future in Ohio, he is now beseeching a different demographic: suburban women.

“Suburban women, will you please like me?” he said at a rally in neighboring Pennsylvania this month. He told women at another rally in Michigan, “We’re getting your husbands back to work.”

Mr. Trump’s conception of “suburban housewives,” as he has written on Twitter, may be misplaced. As some men’s economic power has declined in Ohio, many women have gained. Jobs in the education and health services sectors, for example, where the work force is roughly three-quarters female, have increased by about 3 percent in Ohio over the last five years.

And many suburban women, turned off by Mr. Trump, have dived into political organizing.

“Ohio suburban women want some normalcy to return, but Trump seems to be advocating chaos,” said Robert Alexander, a political science professor at Ohio Northern University.

Mr. Trump now faces a daunting gender gap: He trailed Mr. Biden among Ohio women, 51 percent to 40 percent, in a New York Times/Siena College poll this month. He led among men, 49 percent to 39 percent.

Over all, the candidates were effectively tied in a state that Mr. Trump won by eight points in 2016. In exit polls then, Mr. Trump had a 23-point advantage among men and trailed Hillary Clinton among women by only three points.

If Mr. Trump loses Ohio, it will be partly because of his declining support among men. But the increasing economic and political power of women may have more to do with it.

Kay Nolan
Oct. 24, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET

Wisconsin: Trump’s approach to China stings a G.O.P. county known for ginseng.

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Ming Tao Jiang carrying a bag of harvested ginseng on Monday. He said he felt threatened because of President Trump’s rhetoric blaming China for the coronavirus.Credit...Lauren Justice for The New York Times

WAUSAU, Wis. — In China, ginseng is a popular gift prized for its healing powers, and surprisingly enough, Wisconsin-grown ginseng is considered the world’s best. In 2016, 590,000 pounds of the root, claimed to boost immunity and ease the effects of chemotherapy, was exported from the United States, most of it to China — with 98 percent coming from here in Marathon County.

But Mr. Trump’s trade war with China, along with the coronavirus pandemic, which has stymied air travel between the countries, has caused ginseng prices to plunge to 1970s levels, far below today’s production costs. Many farms, some of them generations old, are rapidly failing, according to Joe Heil, a longtime grower in Edgar, Wis., and a 20-year member of the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin.

In Marathon, Wisconsin’s largest county by area, voters traditionally lean Republican. Although Barack Obama won Marathon County in 2008, he lost it in 2012, and Mr. Trump enjoyed a sweeping win in 2016.

For local Chinese-American ginseng farmers like Ming Tao Jiang of Hatley, the pain of the downturn has been worsened by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric blaming China for the virus.

Mr. Jiang and his wife, Feng Lu, a physician at Marshfield Clinic, “feel physically threatened for the first time in our lives,” he said. He has gotten stares, he said, and heard echoes of Mr. Trump’s references to the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” Mr. Jiang, who holds a Ph.D. in physiology, has worked to placate neighbors by giving away masks and ginseng.

In Wausau, home to a large population of Hmong-Americans, residents have reported several racist attacks since the coronavirus outbreak, including being spat on, said Yee Leng Xiong, director of the city’s Hmong American Center.

The heightened tensions, along with Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, have energized local Asian-American voters in this election, Mr. Xiong said, adding, “This is the most active and engaged I’ve ever seen them.”

Throughout Wausau, competing Trump and Biden yard signs are evidence that Democrats are winning favor here. Along Highway 29, just outside Edgar, a dazzlingly bright LED billboard flashes “Trump,” but seconds later changes to a Biden ad.

Trump flags fly over many farm fields, including Mr. Jiang’s, but he has no say, because, like many farmers here, he rents the property.

Because the Trump administration’s trade war hurt local dairy farmers as well, “I’m sure 5 to 10 percent of them are not so sure anymore” about their Republican allegiances, Mr. Jiang said.

Mr. Jiang’s farm equipment still sports “Yang Gang” stickers in support of the former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, but he now hopes that Mr. Biden will win, fearing that Mr. Trump’s stubbornness could “boil over into war” with China.

“It started out as a business dispute,” he said. “Now it’s more ‘who’s the bigger guy on the block.’ It’s chilling.”

Mr. Heil, on the other hand, hopes Mr. Trump is re-elected and will play hardball with China until that nation backs down and rescinds tariffs as high as 41 percent on ginseng, or until U.S. tariffs on China’s exported ginseng match that level.

“We’ve always had to pay a tax and a duty to get ginseng into China — it’s never been a fair playing field for us,” he said. “Nobody will survive. There will be no ginseng industry in the U.S. if things don’t change soon. It’s sad.”

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Luke Broadwater
Oct. 24, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET

Iowa: This presidential race is enough to make two grown farmers cry.

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Supporters of President Trump attended a rally in Des Moines last week.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Iowa has 6 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 9.4 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated a Tossup.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Two Iowa farmers, separated by more than a hundred miles but by only a year in age, teared up while talking about the presidential race — for completely different reasons.

A supporter of Mr. Trump, Denny Gergen, a grain, corn and soybean farmer from northwest Iowa, got choked up thinking about how his way of life seemed to be slipping away, and how Mr. Trump seemed like the only politician who really cared.

“Trump supports the American farmer,” said Mr. Gergen, 69, who recently posted a large sign on his property that says “God Bless America and God Bless the American Farmer” next to signs encouraging passing drivers to vote to re-elect the president.

“There are farmers right now — they’re losing so much money, they cannot continue; they’re done,” Mr. Gergen said, speaking at a motorcycle rally in Sioux City to support Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa. “I’m just a small family farmer trying to make it.”

A three-hour drive away, near Iowa’s northern border with Minnesota, the other farmer became emotional, too.

Raymond Smith, 68, whose family has owned a farm in Buffalo Center for more than 100 years, is supporting Mr. Biden and the Democrats.

“We were not very well-off when we were growing up,” Mr. Smith said as he showed Ms. Ernst’s opponent, the businesswoman Theresa Greenfield, around his farm. “But because of the Democratic programs, I was able to go to college. I get choked up when I think about how somebody else put their money up there, just to help me get started. And now I feel it’s my responsibility to pay whatever I can.”

Mr. Smith said he likes and respects his neighbors who support Mr. Trump in his town of fewer than 900 people, but he believes “we have a responsibility for all of us to do what we can to make democracy work.”

“I have a lot of people that don’t agree with me in the neighborhood, but that’s never stopped me in the past,” he said.

Mr. Trump won Iowa by a comfortable margin four years ago, but Mr. Biden had a narrow lead over Mr. Trump in the state in a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Wednesday.

A perennial battleground state where voters are known for their political independence, Iowa, whose population is 90 percent white, has voted for the winner of the presidential race in six out of the past seven elections, including for Mr. Trump, Barack Obama twice and George W. Bush’s re-election.

Steven Peterson, 59, a Democrat who owns a greenhouse in Lake Mills, said he was supporting Mr. Biden in part because he was concerned about the future of the federal courts should Mr. Trump win a second term.

“They’ve loaded up the courts,” Mr. Peterson said, referring to the Republicans and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “Not only the Supreme Court, but all the other courts. When President Obama was in office, basically, McConnell made sure we didn’t get any judges in anywhere. He blocked everything out. And then the next Republican president comes in and he gets 300 judges. It was unfair. I don’t think they should be putting in a justice right now. I think they need to wait.”

Mr. Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate on Monday.

Jon Hurdle
Oct. 24, 2020, 3:00 p.m. ET

Pennsylvania: Residents see Biden faring better than Clinton in Philadelphia.

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Members of a drum squad listened as former President Barack Obama campaigned for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Philadelphia on Wednesday.Credit...Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 0.7 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

PHILADELPHIA — At 52nd and Market Streets in the heart of West Philadelphia, Black residents offered their predictions on the presidential race in interviews this week, with several saying that Mr. Biden had made more significant inroads with Black voters and might have better success than Hillary Clinton did here in 2016.

Linda Patterson, 20, said she thought there would be a greater turnout among this city’s Black voters this year than four years ago.

Ms. Patterson, a journalism student, said Mr. Biden had broad support because he is still linked in the minds of many Black voters with President Barack Obama; he accomplished a Democratic wish by choosing Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate; and he is seen as trying to fit in with Black people.

“Everyone wants to love Joe Biden because he was Barack Obama’s vice president,” Ms. Patterson said.

She has yet to decide whom to vote for because she doesn’t like Ms. Harris, who she says sought harsh prison terms for offenders when Ms. Harris was a prosecutor in California.

Jacqueline Pernell, a 72-year-old owner of a pots and pans business, also said Mr. Biden looked set to win more support from Black voters in Philadelphia than Mrs. Clinton did. After four years of Mr. Trump, Black voters are motivated to support his rival, who is more likely to represent their interests, she said.

“Biden, he’s giving us hope and not lying,” said Ms. Pernell, who voted for Mrs. Clinton and plans to vote for Mr. Biden. “I trust more what he’s saying than I do Trump.”

With more than 80 percent of the vote, Mrs. Clinton won Philadelphia handily. But her margin was smaller than Mr. Obama’s in 2012, a shift that some analysts attributed to lower turnout in majority-Black areas including West and North Philadelphia.

The reduced enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s biggest Democratic stronghold, contributed to the state electing a Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 1988 — albeit by less than one percentage point.

If Mr. Trump holds the crucial battleground state this time, it won’t be because of reduced turnout in places like West Philadelphia, predicted James Jones, 62, a retiree who was waiting for a bus at the busy intersection. He said he sees more yard signs and hears more talk of supporting Mr. Biden than he did for Mrs. Clinton, and argued that his neighbors are motivated by anger at Mr. Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic.

“He’s lied to us, he didn’t give us the supplies, he just didn’t look out for us,” Mr. Jones said.

Aaron Bowers, 30, a restaurant manager, said he too sees more Black support for Mr. Biden than for Mrs. Clinton, fueled by opposition to the president. But he doesn’t see anger against the incumbent as a good reason to vote for Mr. Biden, and he may not vote at all.

“I don’t just want to make the decision because I disagree with how somebody is handling the job,” he said. “Are we choosing the lesser of two evils? If that’s the case, then no, I don’t want to vote.”

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Matt Furber
Oct. 24, 2020, 1:01 p.m. ET

Minnesota: Early voting soars, including near the site of George Floyd’s killing.

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Voters filling out their ballots in Minneapolis in August.Credit...Nicole Neri/Reuters

Minnesota has 10 electoral votes. In 2016, Clinton won the state by 1.5 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — David Schultz, a professor at Hamline University here, this week gave the students in his introduction to American politics class a lecture on the history of voting rights.

In an interview outside class, he noted just how many Minnesotans were already exercising those rights — by Friday, more than 1.1 million early ballots had been accepted, far surpassing 2016 totals.

“Democrats have been heavily mobilizing to get out and vote this time,” Professor Schultz said. “Republicans show up more on Election Day, but high turnout should bode well for Joe Biden.”

The divide in Minnesota between those Democrats who are voting early and Republicans who plan to vote on Nov. 3 matches what has been seen in other states. Rates of returned ballots have been particularly high in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, home to the Democratic-leaning Twin Cities.

Jennifer Carnahan, the chairwoman of the Minnesota Republican Party, agreed in an interview that a large number of Republican voters would turn out on Election Day.

“For a lot of people it’s a matter of tradition,” she said. “I haven’t requested an absentee ballot. I’ve always voted in person. There are a lot of folks like me out there.”

Both parties hope a big turnout can help them in the state, which Hillary Clinton won by a surprisingly slim margin in 2016. “No one is taking anything for granted,” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Minnesota’s version of the Democratic Party. “We are not resting on our laurels.”

Many voters here, where snow has already blanketed parts of the state, have decided to vote early or by mail to avoid crowds during the coronavirus pandemic. Election officials said turnout would be further aided by Minnesota’s voting rules, including early voting that began on Sept. 18, expanded numbers of ballot drop-off sites and same-day registration on Election Day that requires little more than the word of a neighbor for approval.

Colleen Moriarty, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the League of Women Voters, said she was hoping that younger voters would turn out in high numbers, which would be a good indication that get-out-the-vote advocacy was making an impact. “I’m in my 60s and I don’t remember an election where there have been so many messages to vote from so many different sources,” she said.

The organization has made a special point to encourage voting in the city’s Eighth and Ninth Wards, which converge at the intersection where George Floyd was pinned beneath a Minneapolis police officer’s knee before he died. In the three voting precincts immediately surrounding the site, which many now call the George Floyd memorial, 42 percent of roughly 6,000 registered voters had already cast ballots by Friday — 20 percentage points higher than the total early turnout rate in 2016.

“We are the community that led to the murder of George Floyd, and we want to make sure that everyone has a voice and that those voices are protected,” Ms. Moriarty said. “Right away at the George Floyd site, we had voter registration tables and we focused in on areas where there was a lot of civil unrest.”

In Professor Schultz’s class, one student urged his classmates to cast their ballots.

“I cannot vote, but I would say that immigration is one of the top issues of this election,” said Bryan Rodriguez Andino, 21, an immigrant from Nicaragua who sat in the front row. He is trying to become a naturalized citizen so he can vote in future elections.

“I’m counting on you guys to make a good decision,” he told the class.

Kimberley McGee
Oct. 24, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ET

Nevada: As early voting begins, voters try to make sure their ballots are counted.

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Voters waiting in line to cast their ballots in Las Vegas last Saturday.Credit...Bridget Bennett for The New York Times

Nevada has 6 electoral votes. In 2016, Clinton won the state by 2.4 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

LAS VEGAS — Long lines and scorching temperatures didn’t stop Nevadans from showing up for the first full week of early voting in the state. Afternoon highs in the mid-90s in Las Vegas had some would-be voters sweating it out for two hours in lines that looped through blacktopped parking lots.

The good news: Early voting sites are placed within about two miles of one another throughout the Las Vegas Valley, and voters can choose any of the locations in Clark County.

Joelle Righetti, 53, a performer in a Las Vegas stage show, found an easy route: She strolled past the winding line at a voting site in the northwest Valley to drop off her mail-in ballot.

“It felt safer to bring it here with all the noise we’ve heard about voting,” she said, her face flecked with traces of show makeup. “They checked my signature, and I appreciate that. That makes me feel better.”

Nevadans have always shown a predilection for early voting. Many prefer to do it in person, but legislation passed in August also required election officials to send all active voters a mail-in ballot. More than 300,000 Nevadans have already voted by mail, compared with about 79,000 in 2016.

Mr. Trump lost Nevada by about 27,000 votes in 2016 and has targeted it as a potential pickup opportunity this year. Democrats are trying to turn out enough of their supporters to defend the state.

“Nevada leans blue because of its demography and the Democrats’ superior get-out-the-vote operation,” David Damore, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, wrote in an email.

But, he said, Mr. Biden may have trouble finding new converts in a state with a less-educated, more blue-collar work force. “There are fewer white suburban voters who are poised to flee the G.O.P. like in other swing state metros,” he said.

Many of the voters who chose to wait in lines instead of mailing ballots said they wanted to make sure their votes would be counted amid the confusion over the process this year.

Tammy Osborn, 46, rose early to get to a voting site before long lines formed, searching polling places near her home and workplace until she found a short line.

“I worried about the legitimacy of my vote being counted,” she said. “It has not been like that with any other election. I’ve always voted in person. I think our system works, but I wanted to make extra sure this year.”

Paul Bernstein, 60, said he had voted in person since moving to Las Vegas from Long Island 41 years ago. “This year, more than any other year, every one of us needs to get out and vote, long lines or whatever,” Mr. Bernstein, a craps dealer at a major casino, said. “If you can’t wait, come back. Whether you vote for Trump or Biden, it doesn’t matter.”

Damian Razo, 18, was voting for the first time. Mr. Razo, a chef at a local deli, received a ballot with his name spelled incorrectly. His attempts to fix it via phone and the internet were frustrating, so he came to a voting site and found a line of around 40 people.

“I’m generally a lazy person, so I would have voted by mail if I could have,” he said, “but this isn’t bad.”

Kathleen Gray
Sept. 26, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ET

Michigan: Enthusiasm runs high as early voting begins.

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Officials in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., prepared mail ballots on Thursday to be sent to voters.Credit...Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times

Michigan has 16 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by 0.2 percentage points. In 2020, it’s rated Lean Democratic.

DETROIT — Sarella Johnson is not one to curse, but she made an exception Thursday morning, the first day Michiganders could begin dropping off absentee ballots with local clerks.

“The last four years have been h-e-l-l,” she said, spelling out the profanity. “In every regard: in employment, in education, in the unity of the people in America. And the catalyst for all of the chaos is the president of the United States.”

That’s why Ms. Johnson, 61, a respiratory specialist, decided to get up early and stand in line with dozens of fellow Detroiters to drop off an absentee ballot at the Detroit Elections Department with a vote for Mr. Biden.

Joseph Lewis, 59, a Teamster from Detroit, brought his 18-year-old grandson Terrell Wells with him to vote for the first time.

“I wanted to be the first in line. We’ve got to vote him out,” Mr. Lewis said, referring to Mr. Trump. “It’s that simple.”

The coronavirus pandemic may be upending voting this year, and some voters have said they are wary of standing in long lines on Election Day, but that hasn’t stopped a surge of early voting and requests for absentee ballots in Michigan. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, has said the total number of votes cast could exceed five million and set a record.

In many of Detroit’s suburbs on Thursday, the lines were not as long, but the clerks were working just as hard to prepare and mail out some of the 2.4 million absentee ballots that have already been requested statewide.

“I mailed out 31,000 ballots on Monday and expect that it could get up to 40,000,” said Susan Nash, the clerk of Livonia, a suburb of Detroit that has 79,000 registered voters. “We knew coming into 2020 it was going to be busy because it’s a presidential election year. But now, with Covid and all the absentees, this presidential year is like we’re having the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Olympics all at the same time.”

Debbie Binder, West Bloomfield’s clerk, has already mailed out more than double the number of absentee ballots that she sent in all of 2016, and she expects total turnout to approach 90 percent.

“One important message we’re pushing is that we have had mail delays,” she said. “That’s a very real situation. We’re telling people if you’re going to return your ballot by mail, do it early.”

Ms. Benson has encouraged voters to take advantage of a new state law that allows anyone to vote by mail, and she expects three million absentee ballots, a record.

Meanwhile, a coalition of dozens of organizations is urging people to vote early.

“There is such eagerness to participate this year that we have to make sure people know that they can do this,” said Dave Noble, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Michigan. “Now that there are 40 days when people can vote early, it should make it easier. And then the lines shouldn’t be as long as they usually are on Election Day.”

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