100 days to go: America goes postal as pandemic alters 2020 Trump-Biden battlegrounds
- Voting is going to be harder than usual this year. The question is how much harder, and for whom
- President Donald Trump claims efforts were under way to ‘rig the election’
The political calendar says Joe Biden and Donald Trump have, as of Sunday, exactly 100 days left to convince Americans they’re the right man to be president.
In reality, both have far less time before many voters make their decision.
The 2020 election is widely expected to feature a higher concentration of votes cast before the November 3 Election Day than any modern presidential election, driven by rule changes that have loosened restrictions on early absentee voting and a pandemic that has scared many people from casting their ballots in person.
In many key battleground states, millions of voters are expected to submit their ballots in September – while nearly all of them could see a surge of votes as many as four weeks ahead of the big day.
The earlier voting will challenge campaigns for both Biden and Trump in unprecedented ways, testing their ability to adapt to the new-found conditions while reaching out and educating their voters about how to now cast ballots.
For Trump, trailing Biden by double-digits in some national polls of the race, early voting could truncate the amount of time he has left to stage a comeback, underscoring the need for him to begin making up ground on the former vice-president sooner rather than later.
“You don’t want to be peaking the fourth week of October,” said David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. “You want to make sure all the things you want to have said really are out by the end of September.”