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CLEVELAND — They votedfrom cars and at outdoor tables.They stood in lines spaced farapart. They strapped on masksand pumped sanitizer into theirpalms. All across America onTuesday, voters cast ballots in apresidential election in which theuncontrolled coronavirus pan-demic was both a top issue and athreat.

As millions of Americansturned out to vote, the nation wasfacing a rapidly escalating pan-demic that is concentrated insome of the very states seen ascritical in determining the out-come of the presidential race.From Wisconsin to North Car-olina, infections were on the riseas the nation barreled toward 10million total cases.

The virus that has left millionsof people out of work and killedmore than 230,000 people in theUnited States will be one of themost significant challenges forthe winner of the presidentialrace, and it loomed over everychapter of the election, down tothe final ballots.

In the last hours of campaign-ing, President Trump — who, re-gardless of the election outcome,will be in charge of the nation’s re-sponse to the pandemic for thenext two and a half critical months

— was at odds with his own co-ronavirus advisers and suggestedthat he might fire Dr. Anthony S.Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert. Former Vice Pres-ident Joseph R. Biden Jr. told vot-ers in a final pitch that “the firststep to beating the virus is beatingDonald Trump.”

In Virginia, voters’ tempera-tures were taken at some pollingsites. In Wisconsin, the mayor ofWausau, a small city where casesare spiking and tensions are high,

issued an order banning guns atpolling places. And in Texas, anelection judge did not wear a facecovering, prompting accusationsof voter intimidation and such in-tense heckling that the judgecalled the local sheriff to reportthat she felt unsafe.

The pandemic, which droverecord numbers of Americans tovote early or by mail, rarelystrayed far from their minds.

“I just don’t want another shut-

By SARAH MERVOSHand MITCH SMITH

Continued on Page A23

Masks were Election Day attire on Tuesday in Las Vegas.BRIDGET BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

TURNOUT SOARS, ALONG WITH SUSPENSE, AS NATION IN TUMULT DELIVERS VERDICT

Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Election Day in Scranton, Pa. The state remained uncalled Tuesday night.ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

President Trump in Arlington, Va. Nationwide turnout was expected to top the record set in 2016.ANNA MONEYMAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Battleground states use different meth-ods to count the record number of mail-in ballots. Legal challenges may compli-cate the process. PAGE A11

CALCULATIONS

Adding It All Up Ross Douthat PAGE A31

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A30-31

From the start of his 2020campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr.insisted that President Trumpwas an aberration, his norm-breaking, race-baiting tenure

anathema to thenational character.

“It’s not who weare,” Mr. Biden

often said, “not what America is.”And at the end of the 2020

campaign, an anxious, quarrel-some country is turning a ques-tion back at him: Are you sure?

For millions of Trump support-ers, the last four years have beena time when things changed forthe better, when they felt theyhad a president who knew ex-actly who they were. Theycheered pre-virus jobs success,shifts in the tax code, trade fightswith China and the emergingrightward tilt of the SupremeCourt. But they often respondedmore viscerally to the fury thanthe finer points: Mr. Trump’seager brawls against elites andinstitutions, against threats toconservatives’ preferred socialorder, against shared enemies.

For many Democrats, the

Dueling IdeasOf a PresidentAnd a Country

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

Continued on Page A14

NEWSANALYSIS

The 2020 presidential race re-mained shrouded in uncertaintydeep into the night on Tuesday, asJoseph R. Biden Jr. failed toachieve any early breakthroughsthat would have made him astrong favorite in the race andPresident Trump clung to a lead ina number of Southern states thatDemocrats had hoped to flip intotheir column.

None of the major swing stateshad been called for either candi-date at 10:30 p.m., though Mr.Trump held a persistent edge inFlorida with nearly all of the votescounted. The television networksand wire services were proceed-ing with great caution, handingeach party only the most obviousvictories in deeply partisan stateslike New York and Tennessee.

The prolonged suspense was, atleast at the start, something of avictory for the president, who wasat risk of being eliminated fromcontention if one of the big, histori-cally Republican states of theSoutheast had defected to Mr. Bi-den, the Democratic nominee.That was still a possibility inNorth Carolina or Georgia, wherethe vote tally was closely divided.

Vote-counting was moving rela-tively slowly in some battle-ground states on Tuesday nightbecause of the scale of the turnout,a backlog of absentee ballots re-ceived by mail and scattered prob-lems with processing the vote.And each state handled the count-ing and releasing of their ballotsdifferently. Ohio, for example, re-leased the results of all of its mailballots after the polls closed —making the state seem to tilt to-ward Mr. Biden until more Elec-tion Day votes were cast. Simi-larly, Michigan released its day-of

votes in the first hours after pollsclosed, making it seem that Mr.Trump enjoyed a wide advantagein a hotly contested state.

The night unfolded after one ofthe most extraordinary electioncycles in the nation’s history, asAmericans overcame their fearsof the coronavirus, long lines atthe polls and the vexing chal-lenges of a transformed votingsystem to bring the race to a con-clusion, with the fate of Mr.

Trump’s tumultuous White Housereign hanging in the balance.

Turnout was expected to easilybreak the record of 139 millionvotes set in 2016, and the percent-age of eligible Americans whovoted might be the highest in

Key States Up for GrabsAs Trump-Biden Battle Extends Late Into Night

By ALEXANDER BURNS and JONATHAN MARTIN

Continued on Page A15

Urging turnout in Milwaukee.CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

ONLINE: ELECTION UPDATES

The worst fears about a chaoticend to a chaotic campaign failed tomaterialize on Tuesday as the fi-nal day of voting went off with lit-tle more than sporadic glitchesand confrontations even as thetension over the outcome and af-termath remained undiminished.

The most litigated, disruptedand polarized election in genera-tions came to a close with voterswho had not already cast their bal-lots by mail or in person duringearly voting trooping to the polls

on an Election Day redefined bythe coronavirus pandemic.

There were scattered problemsand hints of battles still to befought: The authorities in Michi-gan sought to hunt down thesource of robocalls that warnedvoters to “stay home.” A federaljudge ordered the Postal Serviceto make an intensive sweep formail-in ballots that had yet to bedelivered. And legal skirmishesbroke out in and around Philadel-phia as Republicans sought tochallenge votes in the criticalDemocratic stronghold.

With a record number of votesalready having been cast, election

officials across the country re-ported relatively smooth opera-tions on Tuesday, with nothingmore than the usual long lines atpolling places — made longer bysocial distancing — and machinemalfunctions.

The scale of the turnout and theshift to mail voting led to slow

counts in some major cities in bat-tleground states. In Philadelphia,about 20 percent of the absenteeballots had been counted by 9 p.m.In Milwaukee, election officialssaid they would not be done until 5a.m. on Wednesday at the earliest.

But much of what experts hadfeared might happen on a mostunusual Election Day did notcome to pass.

In the past several days andweeks, foreign countries inter-fered less than they had leading tothe 2018 midterm elections, the di-rector of the National SecurityAgency, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone,

Final Rush to the Ballot Box Is Smoother Than ForecastThis article is by Nick Corasaniti,

Jim Rutenberg and Stephanie Saul.Limited Disruption —

Counting Mail-InVotes Is Big Test

Continued on Page A12

With millions voting by mail in a pandemic, this election has beenlike no other. For the latest news and results, go to nytimes.com.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majorityleader, secured his seventh term, butDemocrats were battling to relegate hisparty to the minority. PAGE A24

THE BALANCE OF POWER

Nail-Biter for Edge in Senate

VOL. CLXX . . . No. 58,867 + © 2020 The New York Times Company WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2020

Democrats appeared close to attaininga veto-proof supermajority in the StateSenate, but vote results may be delayedbecause of mail-in ballots. PAGE A13

NEW YORK POLITICS

Incumbents Hold AdvantageLast year, researchers brought togethera diverse group of 526 voters to ex-change views. As the election neared,some minds changed. PAGE A26

IMMERSIVE DEMOCRACY

A Political Experiment

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Sunshine and some clouds. Breezyin areas. Highs in 60s to lower 70s.Partly cloudy tonight. Lows in 40s tolower 50s. Sunshine and clouds to-morrow. Weather map, Page B7.

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