WASHINGTON: With just 10 days left for the November 3 election, US President Donald Trump held back-to-back campaign rallies in the three battleground states of North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.
In the 2016 election, the three states all swung in Trump’s favour. In North Carolina, he won 49.83 per cent of the votes, while in Ohio and Wisconsin he garnered 51.69 per cent and 47.22 per cent, repectively.
All three rallies were held on Saturday, the first in Lumberton, North Carolina, followed by the second and third in Circleville, Ohio, and Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Some of the topics that took centre stage in all the three events were the Covid-19 pandemic, economy, law enforcement and continued attacks against his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
In Lumberton, Trump mocked the former Vice President’s simultaneous drive-in rally in Pennsylvania as “small” compared to his.
Regarding the pandemic, the President claimed that the reason why there were so many cases was because more tests were being administered on a daily basis.
“Turn on television: ‘covid, covid, covid, covid, covid’. A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it — ‘covid, covid, covid, covid.
“By the way, on November 4th, you won’t hear about it anymore,” The Hill news website quoted Trump as saying.
In the second rally in Circleville, Trump touted the return of the 2020 Big Ten college football league in Ohio after it was postponed due to Covid-19.
In the last rally of the day, the President pushed for states to reopen, while saying that the upcoming election was between “a Trump boom and a Biden lockdown”.
The three rallies came as a final push for the President ahead of Election Day.
A Quinnipiac University poll national released on October 23 showed Biden with a 10-point advantage, and a RealClearPolitics polling average revealed that the former Vice President was leading by 8.1 percentage points.
This coming week, Trump will stage more rallies in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska.