Across the United States on Tuesday, voters cast ballots in a presidential election in which the uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic was both a top issue and a threat.
As millions of Americans turned out to vote, the nation was facing a rapidly escalating pandemic that is concentrated in some of the very states seen as critical in determining the outcome of the presidential race. From Wisconsin to North Carolina, infections were on the rise as the nation barreled toward 10 million total cases.
More than 92,000 cases were announced across the country on Tuesday, one of the highest totals of the pandemic, along with more than 1,120 new deaths. Hospitalizations also topped 50,000 for the first time since Aug. 7.
The virus that has left millions of people out of work and killed more than 230,000 people in the United States will be one of the most significant challenges for the winner of the presidential race, and it loomed over every chapter of the election, down to the final ballots.
In the last hours of campaigning, President Trump — who, regardless of the election outcome, will be in charge of the nation’s response to the pandemic for the next two and a half critical months — was at odds with his own coronavirus advisers and suggested that he might fire Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told voters in a final pitch that “the first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump.”
In Virginia, voters’ temperatures were taken at some polling sites. In Wisconsin, the mayor of Wausau, a small city where cases are spiking and tensions are high, issued an order banning guns at polling places. And in Texas, an election judge did not wear a face covering, prompting accusations of voter intimidation and such intense heckling that the judge called the local sheriff to report that she felt unsafe.
On Tuesday, five states — Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania — set single-day state case records. And twenty-two states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.
On Wednesday, Maine and Minnesota set new state records for the highest number of new daily cases reported, as did Indiana.
The pandemic, which drove record numbers of Americans to cast ballots early or by mail, rarely strayed far from voters’ minds.
“I just don’t want another shutdown,” said Rachel Ausperk, 29, a first-time voter who said she chose Mr. Trump in Ohio.
— Sarah Mervosh, Mitch Smith and Julie Walton Shaver The New York Times