Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by a wide margin in a new poll of the battleground state of Wisconsin. The Washington Post/ABC poll also found Biden leading in Michigan but more narrowly. According to the Post, “Strong support among women powers Biden’s advantages in both states.” Trump is apparently failing to capture enough white voters to keep him in the White House. According to one analysis of the poll, “The Trumpian appeals that were supposed to work on Whites are failing, whether it’s his fanning of ‘populist’ rage against social distancing or his incitement of racial conflict.” A new Morning Consult poll released the same day as the Post/ABC poll found that 45% of voters blame Republicans and Trump for the stalled Congressional negotiations over economic Covid-related relief. About 40% blamed Democrats. Meanwhile Mr. Biden, who has outraised Trump’s campaign funding in the last weeks of the race, is blitzing voters with TV ads at a rate far higher than the incumbent. 

The pace of early voting continues to break records in the U.S. with more than 70 million people having cast ballots 6 days before the election. That figure is equivalent to about 51% of all ballots cast in the 2016 election. About 40% of early voters this year have cast ballots in battleground states where residents have disproportionate power to select the President. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling that disqualifies Michigan’s mailed-in ballots if they arrive after 8 pm on election night, election officials in that state are now urging voters to send them in immediately in order to be counted. Voters are also being advised to simply drop off absentee ballots to an official drop-box instead of mailing them in. The state Supreme Court in Texas has just ruled in favor of Gov. Greg Abbott’s blatantly suppressive tactic of limiting ballot drop box locations to only one per county. Meanwhile the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies released results of a poll showing widespread fears of election violence in the U.S. Specifically 44% of voters worry that there will be violence if the results are contested. 

Michigan’s State Secretary had enacted a ban on displaying weapons within 100 feet of polling places on Election Day in light of such fears and after a kidnapping plot aimed at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was foiled – but a judge has just overturned her rule. Whitmer just published a piece in The Atlantic saying, “Every time the president ramps up his violent rhetoric, every time he fires up Twitter to launch another broadside against me, my family and I see a surge of vicious attacks sent our way.” The