US election roundup: Voting surge in Texas, poll shows majority will accept result & more

As the 2020 presidential election enters its final week, a majority of Americans appear ready to accept the result of an exhausting campaign even if their preferred candidate loses, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Its latest survey, conducted from Oct. 13-20, shows that 79% of all Americans, including 59% of those who want to re-elect President Donald Trump, will accept a win by Democratic challenger Joe Biden even if they may not support a Biden presidency.

Among those Trump supporters who said they would not accept a Biden victory, 16% said they would do something to challenge a Democratic win such as protesting in public or resorting to violence.

The poll also found that 73% of Americans, including 57% of Biden supporters, would similarly accept a Trump victory.

Texas has already cast nearly 7 million votes, more than anywhere in America, and Glen Murdoch couldn't get his ballot in fast enough after becoming a US citizen this summer.

“I was champing at the bit,” said Murdoch, who moved to Austin from Australia shortly after President Donald Trump took office, and cast a ballot last week to vote him out.

It's a rush to the polls in Texas like seldom seen before.

Ten days before Election Day, Texans have already cast as many early votes as they did in 2016 and are nearly 80% of the way toward hitting the total — both early and on Election Day — counted four years ago.

President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden gave starkly contrasting messages on Saturday about the coronavirus pandemic, taking their campaigns for the White House on the road to swing states where Covid-19 cases are surging again.

Trump addressed a few thousand supporters at a tightly packed, in-person, outdoor rally in North Carolina, one of the battleground states in the Nov. 3 election. He again said America was turning the corner in the fight against Covid-19 and mocked Biden's more cautious campaigning style.

Biden, a former vice president, addressed supporters in vehicles at two drive-in rallies in Pennsylvania and warned of a grim winter ahead unless the Trump administration did a better job of halting the disease, which has killed 224,000 Americans.

Opinion polls show Biden leading Trump nationally, but the race is much closer in the battleground states that will decide the election.

US President Donald Trump is seeking a second term to help himself and his wealthy friends, Barack Obama has alleged, as he tore into his successor for not having a plan to combat the Covid-19 pandemic and walking out of an interview.

Seeking support for former vice president Joe Biden, who is the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris, Obama at a drive-in car rally in the battle ground State of Florida on Saturday urged Americans not to give a second term to Trump.

Claiming that Trump has no empathy and no concern for average Americans, Obama, said the US president was seeking a second term only "to help himself" and his wealthy friends.

On the other hand, Biden and Harris are going to be in the fight, not for themselves, "but for you and us", he said.

Marc Short, Chief of Staff of US Vice President Mike Pence, has tested positive for the COVID-19, the White House has said, becoming the latest top official to have contracted the deadly disease.

The vice president and the second lady have tested negative, Pence's Press Secretary Devin O'Malley said in a statement on Saturday.

“Today, Marc Short, Chief of Staff to the Vice President, tested positive for COVID-19, began quarantine and assisting in the contact tracing process,” he said.

"Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence both tested negative for COVID-19 today, and remain in good health,” O'Malley said.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris has said her party's views on issues like healthcare and the coronavirus pandemic are shared by a majority of Americans, flaying President Donald Trump for an "utter failure" of leadership and refusing to condemn white supremacy.

Deflecting President Trump's remarks, who described her as a "female socialist", Harris, 56, said she and former vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, are proud American patriots.

"Joe Biden and I are proud American patriots. And the reality is that the values that we have, I think, are shared by the majority of the American people," Harris told reporters on Cleveland, where she was campaigning on Saturday.

Describing it as the most important election in the history of the country, US President Donald Trump has said his campaign is doing very well, particularly in some battleground states.

Trump, who is seeking re-election to the White House in the November 3 presidential polls, plans to address multiple rallies daily.

"I think we're doing very well. The numbers are coming in unbelievably well," Trump told reporters at Columbus in Ohio, a battleground state, during one of his campaign stops on Saturday.

Trump also rejected media reports and polls which show that he is trailing behind his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Popular Indian-American Republican politician Nikki Haley has revealed that Donald Trump, soon after winning the November 2016 US presidential election, wanted to talk to her about being his Secretary of State.

"I was the Governor of South Carolina, the best job serving the state that raised me. And then I got a phone call (after the 2016 elections,” Haley, 48, said during a fireside chat organised by Indian Voices for Trump in Norristown in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The important phone call, she said, was from Reince Priebus, the then chairman of the Republican National Committee who later went on to become Trump's first White House Chief of Staff.

Wary that polls showing Donald Trump behind could again be wrong, New Yorkers turned out massively Saturday to vote early as they hope to ensure a "really big win" for Joe Biden.

A long line stretched along 34th Street and then onto Seventh Avenue in Trump's strongly Democratic hometown on Saturday, the first day for early voting in New York, as people calmly waited to enter a specially organized polling station in the cavernous confines of Madison Square Garden arena.

With the normal schedule of concerts and sporting events canceled by the coronavirus pandemic, NBA players were able to persuade authorities -- following a series of enormous racial-justice demonstrations -- to transform several huge sporting arenas into polling stations.

In this once hard-hit city that has so far managed to fend off a resurgence of Covid-19, voters -- all in masks -- seemed ready to wait for hours if need be before passing through the metal detectors leading to the voting booths.