DORAL, Fla. – With just five days until Election Day, the presidential candidates are making a final push for votes in the Sunshine State.
Former Vice President Joe Biden made a stop at Broward College’s north campus in Coconut Creek Thursday afternoon.
This is his second visit to South Florida in just the past two weeks and was a last-ditch get out and vote effort in the heavily Democratic county.
“You hold the key. If Florida goes blue, it’s over. It’s over,” Biden told the crowd.
Those attending Thursday’s drive-in event were required to wear face masks.
“Over these past few months, there has been so much pain, so much suffering, so much loss in America,” Biden said. “More than 225,000 dead Americans because of COVID-19. More than 16,000 here in Florida.”
During his speech, Biden criticized Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
“At the debate last week, Donald Trump said, ‘We’re rounding the corner…it’s going away…we’re learning to live with it.’ But as I told him, ‘We’re not learning to live with it, we’re learning to die with it.’ Donald Trump has waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to this virus. But the American people don’t give up, they don’t give in and they surely don’t cower, and neither will I.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump left the Trump National Doral Thursday ahead of a Make America Great Again rally at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. He will then move on to North Carolina.
Both Trump’s and Biden’s campaigns are vying for Florida and other crucial battleground states.
“My plan will crush the virus and make us strong. We’re going to be stronger -- stronger than ever before,” Trump said during an event in Arizona.
The response to the coronavirus pandemic has been front and center during this election, and Arizona’s one of at least 45 states seeing rising cases of the virus.
Michigan is another, and the president credits the rise in number to a large amount of testing.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has Biden up seven points in Michigan and 17 points in Wisconsin.
Voters there are largely disapproving of the president’s pandemic response. The 538 poll average has Biden up by nearly nine points.
More than 75 million Americans have already voted early, either in person or through mail-in ballots. Florida already has more votes in than the president received in 2016.
While Biden is making a stop in Broward Thursday, his campaign is also focusing on Iowa. Farmers there were the crucial base Trump won in 2016.
Many are struggling from the president’s trade deals, devastating weather and COVID-19. The federal government has been pumping more than $37 billion dollars in aid to them.
Back in Florida, Republicans are making a surge.
On Monday, they trailed Democrats in early voter turnout by more than 350,000. That’s now down to less than 250,000 in just two days.