At the start of February, about 200 people gathered in a small venue in snowy Iowa to watch Joe Biden forcibly try to excite the Democratic base enough to make him the Democratic nominee for president. No one in the venue was excited about him, not even his supporters. But he stayed friendly to everyone who wanted to meet with him and gave it everything he had to try and convince them that he was a fitting choice, and didn't give up.

Less than a year later, he is the president elect and apparently much less accessible. At age 10, Biden moved from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Delaware, known as "the First State" because it was the first of the 13 colonies to ratify the Constitution, on Dec. 7, 1787. Now it looks like it is the state that has given the US its No. 1 citizen.

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Like back then, at a soporific rally in Des Moines, almost no people came on Saturday to celebrate the fact that in two months, one of their own will become the 46^th president of the United States.

Biden's neighborhood in Wilmington, the capital of Delaware, is beautiful. There is a sense of celebration, but no one is losing their minds. Maybe that's just how the people of Delaware are: everyone is calm, easygoing, polite. Rumor has it that he was home when the news was announced, but no one was able to confirm it for me, and the police cars on the street made it impossible to approach the house.

I encountered a very calm state, starting with the police and including Biden's neighborhood. There were two police cars on his street, and a few neighbors had gone out to celebrate quietly, among the colorful pastoral autumn leaves. One of the shopping centers next to the highway that leads to the city is called the Biden Visitors Center, having been renamed after the president-elect's son, Beau, died of cancer. People were excited there, too, but held themselves in check, with the calm that is so characteristic of the place.

It was as if Wilmington wanted to project to America that Biden would be the total opposite of the current president, without bells and whistles, for good or bad. America might not be fired up about Biden, but it looks like more than anything else it wanted calmer politics for a white. And along with COVID, that seems to be what gave Biden the victory.

The neighbors say they don't see him much in the neighborhood. In general, it's hard for people to see each other in this neighborhoods, because it's basically an area of estates that are hundreds of yards apart.

Biden's neighbor Liza tells me, "I'm very proud that my neighbor is going to be president of the US. It's a weight off our minds that [President] Trump won't stay on. He won't listen to experts on COVID. It's the COVID, stupid, like Clinton said. He dragged America down. My husband and I are over the moon. We're convinced he'll be an excellent president."

Another neighbor, Joe, adds, "It's very nice my neighbor is president, but mainly, that we've gotten rid of President Trump. That makes it all worth it."

One neighbor tells me that Jerusalem shouldn't be worried: "He's supported Israel since he was a senator, he will never abandon it, it would be against everything he believes. Please, Israelis, have faith in him, he won't disappoint you. He has good relations with [Prime Minister] Netanyahu. In my opinion, it's in the best interest of both countries."

I arrived in Wilmington on Friday, before the announcement. There were already police around Biden's house at 1209 Barley Mill Road. The very magnanimous police officers let me approach, but as I was close to the entrance, I was asked to turn around.

"Where are the journalists?" I asked.

"Among the trees," the police officer says, smiling. A local neighbor who drives up tells met that Biden likes outdoor sports, in nature.

"Mostly, I don't envy him," he says. "Think about what awaits him, the economy and COVID. It won't be easy."

I went on to the city's Chase Convention Center, where he spoke late Friday night and already predicted what would officially happen on Saturday. "We are going to win this race with a clear majority," he said, insisting that the vote count must not be stopped as the Trump campaign had demanded, claiming fraud. "Your voice will be heard," Biden promised, with his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris standing alongside him.

Outside the convention center, his supporters – half of them Black – were already gathering, carrying signs and even wooden Joe Biden figures. Shinay Davenport came with her son Troy Davis, both African American. They walked with their arms around each other.

"Yes, we're very happy with what's happening in America and the election result," she told me. "I don't agree that he wasn't an exciting candidate."

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Her son adds, "We supported him from the start. We knew him when he was a senator here in Delaware and we always liked what he did for the community. We always knew how to fight together and how to celebrate together, and that's how it will continue. Trump was a legitimate candidate, and we need to put the ideological differences aside. It was a battle between the Republicans and the Democrats, between two worldviews."

This weekend, after Biden's speech, I was sitting in a city bar. COVID is almost unfelt, and the bartender offered me several local beers. I ask her if she is excited about the election result: "Not really, Biden is only popular here because he beat Trump, not because he's Biden," she says.

Delmon, a young Black man who was born in Delaware, says, "There are a lot of people here who like Trump. They either hate him or they love him, but they're indifferent to Biden."

"But he's from your city," I press him.

Delmon, who works in a local hotel, tells me that his father, who works for the local railroad, knows the president-elect well: "When he was senator, he'd ride the train. He would talk to people, the passengers. My dad saw him all the time."

"Will America unite behind Biden?" I ask him.

"Let's be honest," he says. "The divide in America is nothing new. Maybe it got worse under Trump, but it's not new. When Obama was president, there wasn't a divide here?"

It seems as if this conversation at the bar, the lack of mass celebration in the street and the relative quiet of Biden's campaign these past few months close the circle of the same quiet rally in Iowa in the freezing cold, sometime back in February.

Then, almost no one thought that Biden, who will be the oldest president to take office, could become the party's nominee, but in the past two weeks, I've seen his convoy arrive twice, in Philadelphia, and I saw how he managed to market himself as presidential. That apparently made up for the lack of a campaign, and the voters' indifference.

After a quiet weekend, people were already planning a fireworks celebration of the announcement of Biden's victory, as he was about to give his victory speech. Across the entire US, spontaneous eruptions of joy could be seen, car horns honking and a general atmosphere of a street party – possibly the result of the sudden drop in tension, and of course for many it was a release after four years under Trump.

Trump himself isn't giving up, even after Biden supporters across the US went out to celebrate the announcement that he had been elected after securing more than 270 electoral votes. His supporters aren't giving up, either, and once again feel invisible to the elites, even if there still isn't proof of mass voter fraud. There was even a rumor that they came to Biden's speech in central Wilmington on Friday, and there had been concern about violence.

Trump's people, like the 45^th president himself, wonder why votes were allowed to arrive late, why people weren't allowed to correct their votes, and why – they claim – there was not full transparency of the vote counting process. They feel that they weren't counted and don't count. Some of the Trump campaign's petitions managed to secure temporary injunctions, and they truly believe there were irregularities.

On Saturday, Trump supporters were still demonstrating in some states at polling places where they claim there was suspicion of irregularities in the vote counting. The demonstrations became protests against the media, as well, and in Georgia they shouted, "It's not over, it's not ever, it's fake news!"

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On Election Day in Washington, it looked as if there were more police cars than places in the city, maybe 10 of the former to every one of the latter. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but not in terms of the feeling. It was clear that there had never been an election like this one. Partly because of COVID, but mainly because of the combination of an unpredictable pandemic and the most colorful candidate the US has ever known.

A divided America went to vote, but not necessarily to decide. It was a historic, tense, intriguing, fateful election day. The eyes of the world were on Washington, the White House, but were also turned to Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona.

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That is, Americans wanted to determine its character and its future, but had difficulty deciding whether or not the way forward would be to vote out a president after a single term for the first time in nearly 30 years. Generally, America likes to keep the sitting president, if only so he can correct his course. That's how it was with Clinton, when he was given a second term despite the unsuccessful moments of his first one, that even led him to be deeply humiliated; and of course, that's how it was with Ronald Reagan, who won a second term despite the major recession of his first one.

America, the eternal optimist, which likes to change the world for the better and make us all better versions of ourselves, didn't know what to decide on Tuesday, and when this column went to press, was split between the desire to give Trump another chance and putting the economy and the handling of COVID into the hands of the Left.

It was as if the police cars patrolling the streets of Washington were patrolling back and forth, like America went back and forth in thinking about whom to vote for. Because there was also a scenario in which despite the polls there wouldn't be a winner, when the exit polls began to come out in the evening, demonstrators started to go wild outside the White House. They saw it coming ahead of time. All but the results.

The pollsters repeated their error of 2016. One after another, even in key states, they gave us the sense that Biden was gaining momentum and pulling out ahead. Even when, toward the end of the race, the polls showed the lead narrowing, no one thought that Trump could repeat the size of the red wave that washed over the Midwest four years ago.

But that's exactly (or almost exactly) what happened – and Trump, as the week was ending, was still relevant – even if the projections from the TV networks showed that his chances of staying on at the White House were getting smaller by the hour. Trump was claiming, at least on Thursday, that everything was still open, both because the courts could still be convinced by suspicion of irregularities, and because there were votes that would change the picture if they were properly counted.

Either way, whether he has managed to clone the results of 2016 or not, he has gone above and beyond when it comes to the demographic that voted for him. His margins of victory in states were especially big compared to his win in 2016, and in Florida, he not only increased his margin of victory from that of four years ago, but also showed that Biden got less support among Hispanics than Hillary Clinton (and lost support among Hispanics not only in Florida, but across the United States).

Trump improved his position in several demographics, including minorities and women, and even kept his standing among educated white suburban voters. But all these demographic victories couldn't help him in his primary goal: to prevent the rebuilding of the Democrats' "blue wall" in the Midwest. Biden managed to rebuild it some of the way apparently because of who he is – a white man who grew up in Pennsylvania – but in a year in which he could have run an effective campaign against the president, he hid in the basement and found potential on his way to becoming the first president to be elected without a campaign, a default president (if, as we said, he wins).

The blue wall, insofar as it has been rebuilt, is fragile, and will probably come down easily in 2024 if Biden allows his party to keep moving farther to the Left.

The blitz proved itself

The polls, as we've said, misread the street again. During the campaign, we saw that the polls were with Biden, but the people weren't influenced by them – just like they were almost not influenced by the Democrats' attempts to promote tough policy on COVID (although they were disappointed by the president's inconsistent conduct regarding the pandemic).

Biden's remaining in the basement throughout the campaign, his preference for drive-by rallies and his being a candidate lacking in media energy, made Trump's work a lot easier. The president continued his constant campaign, which in effect turned COVID into a tribal issue rather than a medical one.

He held rally after rally in a daily blitz across the US, which proved itself. The early voting (100 million ballots) that the Democrats put their faith in were met with huge rallies day after day, which brought more and more voters into Trump's embrace and eventually to the polling places on election day.

Sometimes, he held five events a day, like he did last Saturday in Pennsylvania, or 14 rallies in the last three days of the campaign. Indeed, that blitz brought him millions of voices. Tens of thousands attended each event, while a few dozen cars attended Biden's drive-by events.

The journey of an ordinary man

Election night started out like a dream for Trump, who won in Florida by a large margin. Florida is a problematic state that in 2000 went down in American electoral history when the tiny difference in votes led to an unending count that was eventually cut off when a court stopped it, making George W. Bush president. Two years ago Florida was once again the focus of interest when it held a gubernatorial election, and then, too, a court intervened.

This year there was no doubt that no recount was needed in the Sunshine State: it stood behind Trump, led by the Cubans and Hispanics who see Trump as a successful president, both in terms of the economy and in foreign policy toward rogue regimes in Latin America. They didn't even blame him for COVID.

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But the night went on to become very problematic for the president. North Carolina and Arizona, which both voted for him four years ago, stuttered until even Fox News rushed to give Biden a historic victory in Arizona (the last Democrat to do that was Clinton); and even in North Carolina had a hard time deciding. Georgia did not automatically give its votes to the reds, the first time since 1992.

But as we've already said, the Midwest will decide, like it did in 2016. It's no coincidence we saw both candidates killing themselves over Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania has already declared that it won't be announcing its results until Friday.

On Tuesday America went to bed without a winner, without a sense of change, and without a sense of continuity; mainly, it went to bed with a feeling of uncertainty that fit in with the mood I sensed in my journey across America these past two weeks. A tour of America by an ordinary man who found himself in the heart of America, in its immense spaces.

But we woke up to a situation very similar to the one we had in 2016, with the Midwest once again deciding the American election. But unlike 2016, the Midwest is just the stage dressing. The star is COVID.

Republicans improved their position

Despite what people think, Trump actually liked the fact that the election was a referendum about him, because he knew that it would bring millions of "shy" voters to the polls, in spite of the predictions. But it never occurred to him that the referendum could end in a decision not to decide.

Trump could have been disappointed. We'll never know how the campaign would have gone if it hadn't been for COVID, whether or not the economy would have made him into a president who was guaranteed a second term. But in that case, would as many people have flocked to the polls as did this week? Would he have enthralled them if he had run a standard campaign on issues and substance, and not about style?

COVID upended everything and put America into a pessimistic mood, and a sense of helplessness. From a flourishing economy and extremely low unemployment, America suddenly found itself in deep trouble. The Democrats managed to pin the responsibility for the virus on Trump, even if that was totally wrong. It's no coincidence Trump called COVID "the Chinese virus."

His declarations mocking the virus and his attitude toward masks, despite the criticism of it, helped him maintain his base and once again position him as a representative of the common man vs. the elites and the doctors who he said wanted to shut down the economy and hurt the soul of America, which hold creativity, liberty, and adventurousness sacred.

With Trump, there is content and there is style. Many like the essence of his policy, but not his style. On Tuesday his base voted for the style, and left-wing voters voted against the content. But everyone voted wishing for something that doesn't exist anymore: America before COVID.

In two and a half weeks in America, I didn't see people going to vote for Biden out of joy, admiration, or love. For Trump, yes. Masses of them.

I also need to say that despite the talk about racial tension in America, I didn't feel that it was higher in Black neighborhoods like Liberty City in Miami, where I visited. On the other hand, I saw almost no Black people at Trump's rallies, unlike Jews, women, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. That's something to think about, too.

The question that could change Trump's situation is whether he will be able to prove that there was massive voter fraud against him. Trump's campaign mostly thinks that the distance voting system – in this year's enormous numbers because of COVID – is tainted by irregularities and in any case cannot be counted accurately and invites fraud (such as by stealing the identity of the dead). Trump is claiming that even confirming voters' identities by verifying signatures is problematic and inaccurate, as is tracking ballots from the moment they are sent out to the moment they are returned to the election officials.

Everything can go wrong, and Trump fears that many of the people who ordered mail-in ballots took advantage of their democratic right to tamper with the celebration of democracy on a large scale and vote in other people's names or for people who are not eligible to vote.

The fact that the court allows ballots to be counted without proof that they were filled out on time is just as problematic. But what is certain is that no blue wave washed over America. We didn't see the wave of radical leftism that is going to change the face of America. The Republicans even strengthened their position in the House of Representatives, although the Democrats are still in the majority.

In the Senate, Chuck Schumer is not going to be the majority leader. Mitch McConnell kept his seat, even though the Republican majority will be smaller in the upper house of Congress.

What does that actually mean? That if Biden becomes president, he will have a contrarian Senate. And the Supreme Court will continue to challenge him because of the conservative majority created by Trump. America certainly wasn't hoping for four years of paralysis.

Not an accident in the history of politics

If Trumpism continues to have its say thanks to the conservative bastion Trump has managed to leave behind him, Biden could find himself cooperating with the 45^th president's base, because at the end of the day, he tried – and failed – to appear like that same base when he marked himself in the election as a white man from Pennsylvania. But as this was being written, nothing was closed yet, not until the electors vote on Dec. 14 and until Congress counts those votes on Jan. 6.

We've learned on thing from this election. Trump is not an accident of American political history. He has a lot of supporters and he is leaving a legacy. He has a solid, strong political base, even though he was never given credit by the media, who hated him from day one. But Trump didn't need the media, he has the love of the audience, like I saw it at three different rallies in the US. "We love you," they shouted at one of the rallies. And he answered, "Don't make me cry."

Trump's success in taking America by storm and capturing the beating heart of rural America, America of the workers, the America that was left behind and forgotten as poor towns between the two liberal coasts, is the most impressive achievement in politics since Bill Clinton successfully rebranded the Democratic Party in the 1990s, and since a mediocre actor named Ronald Reagan managed to conquer America with a message of optimism about a new American purpose. The big question is what Biden has to offer and whether the voters were convinced, other than being anti-Trump. We might know in a few days.

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There's nothing new in the west. As of press time, Arizona and Nevada were still counting votes, and a few days after the election, Americans still don't know who won the 2020 presidential race.

Democratic challenger Joe Biden was closer to the White House after scooping up two Midwestern states – Wisconsin and Michigan – and was at 264 electoral votes (253 without Arizona, on which the news networks are in disagreement), but it seems that the uncertainty is enormous and the leads are tiny. A fitting end to a year that was all twists and turns.

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Trump, who has 214 electoral votes, knows there is only one way he can win, and that hangs on one state: Pennsylvania. Without the Keystone State, all the other states in play are irrelevant, unless a state that was already declared blue miraculously changes color.

Trump also knows that in the battle for public opinion, he has to go with the momentum. Just as the George W. Bush camp dictated the agenda in the Florida drama of 2000, Trump has tried in the past few days to dictate the agenda, including through lawsuits his campaign has filed against Clark County in Nevada, on the grounds that it allegedly allowed people who were ineligible to vote in the state to cast ballots. This is also why he is filing petitions against various counties in Pennsylvania – to ensure that they allow his observers access, including Philadelphia County, the area thanks to which he won the state, and the presidency, in 2016.

Despite all the controversy surrounding these actions, which are supposedly preventing counties from counting votes through familiar procedures, it must be said that Trump's lawsuits have had partial success – in one county in Pennsylvania a court ruled in his favor, and his observers have been given broader access; in another county, counting was suspended until Friday, because a court was persuaded that there were some tens of thousands of ballots that it wasn't clear whether or not should be counted, as many were sent out in error and then returned. Another 7,000 ballots were found to be faulty.

The wheel won't be turned back

No matter the results of the various lawsuits, at the moment Trump isn't showing signs that he intends to give up. The math and the count are still in Biden's favor, and if an atmosphere of the "president-elect" is created, it will be hard to turn the wheel back.

Trump also knows that it will be much harder to petition the courts after the states have finished the formal processes of awarding their electoral votes to the winning party. It's always easier to stop a count than to take away votes that have already been declared official – both legally and in terms of how it looks. And as bad as it looks right now, Trump believes that the courts will give him legitimacy if he proves he has a case. And he has, at least he appears to have, a number of serious cases.

We must remember that this isn't an unusual or anti-democratic move by Trump, but part of the way in which Trump has already branded himself and the unofficial movement he has created: an authentic and colorful candidate, who doesn't operate in the conventional mold.

For example, in the midst of the waves of COVID in the US in recent months, Trump continued to hold his rallies and at the end even called to step them up in an almost unprecedented blitz of intensity --- even though that created a problematic image and drew criticism about a lack of social distancing during COVID.

To the same extent, he has continued to make provocative remarks and give bombastic interviews to all media outlets these past few months (as he did throughout his presidency). Even when he caused uproars, he saw that as an advantage, because by doing so he could control the agenda. He had only one goal: to preserve his base in order to get them to go out and vote en masse. Trump knew that without firing up his base of supporters, he had no chance of repeating his success of 2016 and that without upholding his image as a different kind of candidate and branding the Democrats as "establishment," he had no change.

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Even though it might turn out that he hasn't won the election, he got very close to his 2016 achievement and beat all the polls' predictions. Exit polls show that in areas that are strongly red, Trump managed to convince voters that Biden is a socialist, would cozy up to the elites, strangle the economy, and severely hamper the lives of the citizens. The same went for the rallies: it's possible that they convinced the voters a second time to turn out in droves on Election Day, and even before it. It's possible that it wasn't enough, but his anti-establishment conduct managed to give Trump a chance for a second term, even during a pandemic.

In the city of Las Vegas, while Nevada was counting votes, people from the Trump campaign held a press conference at which they warned that there was real concern about voter fraud in the city. They claimed that at least 10,000 people had allegedly voted who didn't even live in the country. They got to that level of detail. Donald Trump doesn't mean to forgo the White House, and he will claim that the election was stolen until everyone hears him.

Lessons of 2000

In Washington, a quiet tension could be felt yesterday. Many businesses were boarded up, and ones that hadn't already done so called in workmen, fearing riots.

Trump himself continued to claim on Thursday that he had won in Pennsylvania. Mostly, his people don't understand why in the Midwest people stopped voting on the eve of the election. The way they see it, the foremost goal is to get to a situation in which the battle is over a single state in which he has a lead, small as it might be, like Pennsylvania.

It's clear to him that Bush's success in the battle for Florida stemmed from setting clear battle lines that allowed both a legal victory and a PR victory. Throughout the 2000 campaign, Bush had a clear message: only a single count of all ballots can be legitimate.

While the Republicans have held onto that catchy message, the Democrats, under Al Gore, made a strategic mistake – they tried to hold a recount, but only in counties where it was convenient for them, and only by a method that was convenient for them. In the end, the Supreme Court was forced to intervene, and ruled – because constitutionally time had run out to resolve the issue – that Bush would hold onto his lead, and would be the winner in Florida. This is why it's so important for Trump to hold onto his lead.

However, if there is anything encouraging in everything we saw yesterday and these past few days, it's the caution of the various networks. Even CNN isn't rushing to eulogize Trump. Fox News, which took a volley of criticism from Republicans for rushing to declare that Arizona had gone blue, warned about fraud, and said that concerns pointed out by the Trump campaign must be looked into.

Another White House?

Either way, while we wait for the results, diplomats in Washington have started to assess what America under Biden will look like. They think that the US will demonstrate openness toward Iran in order to renew the 2015 nuclear deal and will emphasize normalization with the Palestinians – which could even include reopening the PLO mission in Washington, as vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris promised to do in an interview she gave a month ago.

And, of course, there is the prevailing believe that Biden will allow the US's enemy a lot of room to maneuver in the world. But all that aside, the sense is that Trump's legacy is so strong that it will force Biden to toe a similar line in order to uphold the stature and prestige of the US against North Korea and Iran, at least at the start of his term in office.

Now many Americans are waiting for the winner to be declared, before America heads into a downward spiral, to say the least. What is certain – the post-election campaign will be no less base than the election itself.

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For the first time in almost 30 years, the US is facing the possibility of electing a new president after the previous one served only a single term, after Democratic Joe Biden moved closer to the golden 270 electoral votes when the count ended in a few key states where the election still hasn't been decided.

Although officially, everything is still open because while Donald Trump's campaign will be asking for a recount and trying to verify claims of mass fraud, and possibly even involved the courts, which would drag the final decision out until December, practically speaking, it looks like the big US networks like CNN and Fox News will be declaring a winner of the race, and chances are that Joe Biden will reach the necessary 270 electoral votes and be declared the next president of the United States.

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As of Wednesday evening, when vote counting ended in the Midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, the networks were announcing that these two states would be awarding their electoral votes to Joe Biden, which means he stands at 264 votes. On Thursday, counting was due to resume in Nevada, which gives six electoral votes to its winner. If Biden wins in the Silver State, as most pundits think he will given the state's years-long trend toward blue, he will make it to exactly the number of votes he needs to become president – 270 out of the 538 electors.

Other than Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania were left without a declared winner (as did Alaska, although not because of a close race, but because there isn't enough data, and it will certainly go to Trump). In other words, even if Biden doesn't win Nevada because of some delay in the counting process or because of legal appeals or other delays, he could get to 270 by winning any of the three other states – Pennsylvania, Georgia, or North Carolina. Right now, people think that he will come out on top when all the votes are counted in Georgia and Pennsylvania, once all the mail-in ballots arrive and are counted.

In theory, Trump could still get to 270 (right now he has 214), but to do that, he must win all the states where the race is still close: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina. It's hard to see a scenario in which he wins without intervention from the courts or a recount that would reveal massive fraud or widespread problems.

In political terms, it looks as if both sides are preparing for a war for public opinion. While Biden intends to market himself as the elected president starting in the next few days, to create momentum, and possibly even announce policy moves and appointments when he is sworn in in January, Trump's approach will be to use all the weight he has as president to create a narrative of the election having been "stolen" through widespread mail-in voting by Democrats, which he says is a method full of flaws because voting cannot be supervised from a distance.

Legally speaking, it seems that Trump is already taking steps to secure a recount, and also wants the courts to step in to prevent many ballots that are still in the mail from being counted, under the claim that there is no way of knowing when they were actually filled out. America is entering a "post-election" campaign that will be no less base and difficult than the actual campaign, but no matter the results, states will decide by the start of December to whom they will award their electoral votes, and on Dec. 14 they will vote in the new president. On Jan. 6, 2021, after Congress counts the electors, the president-elect will be formally declared, and he will swear allegiance to the US Constitution two weeks after that.

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A dramatic Election Day in the US: As of Tuesday morning (Israel time), it still wasn't clear who had won the presidential election, but it was already clear that voter turnout had amazed everyone and officials think that by the time all votes are counted, they will comprise the highest turnout in 100 years – with over 160 million people casting ballots.

None of the media networks was in a rush to declare the winner of purple swing states where neither party has a clear lead. At least at around 2:40 a.m., Biden had been declared the winner in Vermont and Virginia and a number of other predictable blue states, while Trump had been announced the winter in Indiana and Kentucky as well as in other predictable red states. Either way, in nationwide exit polls, voters said that the COVID crisis was more important than the economy, which could indicate an advantage for Biden nationally. The same can be said for most voters' support to keep former President Obama's health care reform in place. However, a national lead does not indicate a lead in electoral votes.

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All eyes are on Florida. According to pollster Nate Silver's site, Republicans voted in larger numbers than Democrats in Florida, but not as many as were expected.

Although I knew about and senses the tension in the air everywhere I visited in the US these past few days, it was still hard to see people in New York preparing themselves for riots over the election result.

When I got to town, after two days in the swing state Pennsylvania, which might decide the election, I hoped that blue New York wouldn't have the same tension. Because it was clear who would win New York State's 29 electoral votes: Joe Biden. But New York, as befits its stature, has been swept up in the election along with the rest of America from coast to coast, and from Hawaii to Alaska.

This election hasn't left a single American apathetic, because of COVID, but mainly because of the combination of COVID and Trump. As soon as I got to my hotel in New York, I felt like it was empty. At the reception desk, the clerk warned me it would be a difficult evening and gave me the telephone number of the hotel security guard so he could open the lobby door for me at night.

"We're expecting riots in the city," she explained, and for a moment I thought that I was in Iraq again, not the Big Apple, the beating heart of America and the western world.

For Trump, this election campaign has been a back-foot battle from the moment COVID erupted. It's doubtful he assessed the extent to which the pandemic would erase his inherent lead as an incumbent president. Because Americans almost never send the president home after only one term in office. Generally, that happens when unexpected events get out of control: like the major recession that caused George H.W. Bush to lose, or Jimmy Carter's helplessness in the hostage crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran. And of course, there was the Vietnam War, which caused Lyndon Johnson to leave.

But as of press time, despite the blows dealt by the COVID crisis, Trump is doing just the opposite of an alarmist campaign: he continued to campaign up to the very last minute, and said on Fox News that the situation was "excellent." As someone who was out in the field in a number of key states in the past few days – from Lititz, Pennsylvania in the east and to Nevada and Arizona in the west and Florida in the south – it's very possible that Trump wasn't wrong. Because if there's one thing that COVID didn't change, it's his connection to his base, a connection that Biden would do everything to duplicate on the left side of the map.

'Electric City'

The question is whether he will manage to reproduce the miracle from four years ago when he won thanks to a few tens of thousands of loyal supporters from that base, who made the difference. In effect, if four years ago we were asking if Trump would manage to break through the Blue Wall in the Midwest, this year we've been asking if the Democrats will be able to rebuild it. According to the polls as of Tuesday morning, it appeared as if they managed to repair the wall in Wisconsin and Michigan, but not in Pennsylvania. Which is why Pennsylvania is so critical. Because in so many models it is the difference between a victory and a loss for Trump.

Until the last minute, Biden was hoping to brand himself as a local in Pennsylvania because he grew up in Scranton until he was nine, and on Tuesday even went back to his childhood home as a symbolic act. I was in Scranton on Monday to attend a Trump rally at the local airport.

The town is known as Electric City, but it seems as if the only electricity running through the streets is the energy that Trump is bringing. I also noticed a lot more Trump signs. The city of miners and railway workers felt more comfortable with Trump, the New Yorker, than with the former Pennsylvanian Biden. It's a poor city, a workers' city, and you can almost smell the rust in the air, like in other parts of Pennsylvania I've visited in the past few days. Pennsylvania, like many people say, is three states: the industrial west, the conservative middle, and the liberal east. Trump managed to unite all three parts in 2016, by a tiny margin, and the question is whether he will do it again.

One possible scenario is Biden and Trump each winning 259 electoral votes, and Pennsylvania deciding the winner. Or Trump wins Pennsylvania but the Democrats flip three states for a tie. Either way, the big question is how many independent voters there were as of Tuesday, and whether or not a lot of them answered "Biden" in polls but at the last minute voted Trump. We still don't have a decision, but the tension in the air and the concern about violence are likely to remain.

I never thought I would have to experience a night in a barricaded, frightened New York. The 2020 election might be over 270 electoral votes, but it's mostly about how to handle the perfect storm that it's unlikely we'll see again: an election in the shadow of a pandemic along with a referendum on the least predictable, and least understood, president there has ever been.

'Gathering for victory'

Even before Election Day officially began, over 100 million Americans had cast ballots in early voting. The turnout in early voting in the days leading up to the election was no less than historic. According to most tallies, the number of Americans who had voted by Election Day stood at some 100 million, or 72% of the total voters in the 2016 election.

Trump ended his campaign events only early Tuesday morning in a blitz across a few states. On the day itself, the president opted to stay near the White House and the Republican Party headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. First Lady Melania Trump arrived in Florida to vote. In an early morning telephone interview with Fox News, President Trump claimed he had a very "solid chance of winning." Despite reports that he intended to declare victory before all the votes were counted, including mail-in votes, the president said he would declare victory "when there's victory if there's victory. I think we'll have victory."

"I think the polls are suppression polls. I think we'll have victory, but only when there's victory. There's no reason to play games," he said.

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Like the entire election itself, the last 24 hours for former Vice President Joe Biden were very different than for his opponent. The Democratic candidate spent Monday and Tuesday in Pennsylvania. "It's good to be home," the Democratic nominee said, accompanied by two of his grandchildren. On the wall of the living room, he wrote: "From this house to the White House with the grace of God."

"I have a feeling we're in for a big win tomorrow. we can put an end to a presidency that has left hard-working Americans out in the cold. Tomorrow we can put an end to a presidency that has fanned the flames of hatred. Tomorrow we can put at end to a presidency that has failed to protect this nation," Biden said.

Biden was expected to return home to Delaware. Trump, meanwhile, planned to hold a vote-counting party at the White House.

Yoni Hersch in new York contributed to this report.

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Two days from now, on Nov. 3, after some 90 million Americans cast ballots in early voting, the final decision will be made. In the shadow of a new wave of coronavirus, which on Saturday hit a record of several hundred thousand new cases, and a deep internal, societal, ideological, and cultural divide, tensions in the American street hit new levels this year. It's no surprise that voter turnout this time could break the 1960 record of 63%.

Indeed, we have before us an epic battle between two worldviews – liberal and conservative – that lead to very different action and policies about welfare, business horizons, and rights of the voting public vs. the state. Given this polarization, which the COVID crisis heightened, it would be appropriate to look at the current status of the White House among most of the demographics that gave the president his surprising win four years ago. Especially given the inherent contradiction between his desire to fulfill his commitment to his supporters, unconditionally, and the series of necessities and considerations that seem to have mandated he cut himself off, if partially, from that original commitment.

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The most tangible example of the dilemma Trump is now facing jumped onto center stage even before COVID. This was his strategic decision to remain loyal to his conservative views and not soften them, even around the edges, in an attempt to win more demographics, especially in the suburbs, no matter what political price he might have to pay for it. That is how the 45^th president worked tirelessly to appoint notably conservative judges to the Supreme Court when slots opened up. His recent appointment of the ultra-conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett is the latest, most dramatic testimony of the line Trump is taking to tighten his old on his Evangelical Christian followers and get them excited about the election.

The problem is that such a sweeping ideological change on the Supreme Court, which could be reflected in future rulings on sensitive, hot-button values, cultural, and economic issues, such as a woman's right to make decisions about her body or single-payer health care, has led to such a massive backlash among some demographics whose support the president desperately needs to win – mainly, educated white suburban women. Many of them already turned their backs on the Republican Party in the mid-term elections on those same grounds, and Trump's misogynist remarks have highlighted his contrarian approach.

The vast majority of the rest of the parameters that could decide the president's political future two days from now have to do with the COVID crisis and how it was handled. For example, we are seeing the White House lose stature among elderly Americans, especially in the key state of Florida, where no less than 20% of residents are over 65, who are dismayed at the hasty reopening of the economy. As a high-risk group, they are frightened by the spread of the merciless virus.

Similar things can be said about other social demographics who were badly hurt by the current crisis, including blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt (whose support helped him win in 2016), whose improved employment in the first three years of Trump's presidency was cut off in a single blow because of COVID; and a significant sector of African American voters, whose financial situation was transformed under Trump before they too became victim of the apocalypse.

As if that weren't enough, increasing voter turnout among young people age 29 and under, some of whom are simply anti-Trump, both because of his handling of the COVID crisis and his strong-arm policies against the protests in response to the killing of George Floyd, could make it difficult for him to recapture the public's faith.

Despite the huge hurdles he must clear to make it back into the White House, it's still too early to declare his chances over. Among other reasons, because we cannot know how many "quiet voters" will cast ballots for the president. It's also unclear whether or not some of his original supporters will decide, just before the final bell rings, to come home despite their disappointment at how he handled COVID. So rather than making predictions, it would be better to be patient and wait for the decision itself, rather than statistics.

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Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State due to the key role it played in the original 13 colonies. The 2020 election has put Pennsylvania, where the US declared independence on July 4, 1776, back on center stage.

Both sides are focusing on it as if it were Florida in 2000, and rightfully so. In 2016 Trump managed to "steal" it from the Democrats after it voted for them for 28 years, and now he's trying to do it again by emphasizing coal and oil shale and the rest of the industries that would have to close under Joe Biden's green policies.

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Pennsylvania is purple in the classic sense of the word: the eastern part of the state is liberal, like new York, the western part leans Democratic, like Ohio, but is not liberal, and in the middle, it's as conservative as Alabama. As if that weren't enough, the Philadelphia suburbs are unpredictable, as is appropriate for a city where independence was declared. So Trump arrived Monday and held three massive rallies.

Biden is leading in the polls, and apparently in early voting, too. The number of early votes sent in this year has already surpassed all early votes cast four years ago, and stands at over 60 million. But Trump has the energy and the momentum, as well as a fired-up base that has started to flock to the polls in recent days, including in Florida. One thing that is surprising is that young Black men are voting for him in disproportionate numbers, compared to other sectors of Black voters.

Polls in key states which will decide the election show Biden with a small lead in most of them, but also point to a statistical tie, especially in Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina. So the experts can't agree about the range of possibilities for the election, which could be anything from a runaway victory for Biden with far in excess of 270 electoral votes, or a surprising win for Trump in the style of 2016.

Trump, who hasn't stopped running around, arrived at the pleasant small town of Lititz, in the heart of conservative Pennsylvania, on Monday. It's a rural, religious area that is home to a large Amish community whose members use horses and carts to get around and have become an inseparable part of nearby Lancaster. There, I met a woman named Debbie. She lives in a very "red" area but she, like all her friends, is liberal and is voting for the Democrats.

"Are you optimistic?" I ask here.

"I'm really scared … there are days when I feel like Biden will win, and days when I don't," she replies.

Trump is fighting for every vote in Pennsylvania's conservative districts, because Biden is still more down-to-earth and warmer than Hillary Clinton. But at the rally in Lititz on Monday, it appeared as if all Pennsylvania was red. There were a lot of Amish (who do not believe in COVID and insist on not wearing masks), and they all – at least according to a loudspeaker that announced their arrival – are voting for Trump. Everyone was in a good mood, as if it was a football game, and showed up wearing Trump flags.

It's the growth, stupid

In his speech, Trump reminded them of the economic growth during his presidency. He stressed that Biden was in the hands of environmental activists who wanted to prevent the residents from enjoying that growth. He stressed that the COVID crisis would pass.

We'll make a comeback, no one can make a comeback better than us, he told the audience. "We're the greatest country in the world," he said, to chants of "USA!"

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Trump also needled Biden, who isn't making public appearances: "I can't lock myself in the White House basement, because I have work to do."

Trump doesn't believe the polls. He is certain that he is a true son of the Keystone State. Trump has to win as many votes as possible in the heart of red Pennsylvania, as well as split the suburban vote, as he did in 2016, especially around Philadelphia.

I also met Jim. He grew up in Pennsylvania but went to college in Nashville, Tennessee. He is a libertarian – in other words, does not believe in either party and wants the government to stay out of all areas of life, so he isn't supporting anyone. He says that the Second Amendment, which guarantees Americans the right to bear arms, is the one of the most important things, which is why Trump has so much support in this part of the state, where many residents hunt.

"Sure, he has a chance. I'm a retired educator. A lot of teachers I know think Trump's a clown, but Biden isn't getting them fired up," Jim says.

A politician, not a local

The fact that Trump fought a battle here and won four years ago is making us think he might do it again. He could definitely win. Biden is not loved here, even though he talks about being from here and growing up some 80 miles away. The way they see it, he isn't a local any more, he's a politician, whereas Trump is like them.

All of a sudden, as I'm driving, I see a lovely black horse and an Amish man driving along in a cart. And on the subject of carts, it seems like the Democrats have theirs before the horse and are counting on a sure win. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already treating Biden like the president. Her attitude reflects the growing Democratic opinion that a Biden victory will lead the Democrats to re-take the Senate, as well. Indeed, a few Republican senators, especially in Maine and Iowa, are in trouble.

Either way, the hardest week for both sides has begun, and Trump isn't letting up. On Monday, it was announced that he will be holding 11 rallies in the last 48 hours of the campaign. That is his way of scoring free media coverage and pushing back the massive enlistment for Biden, who might not be holding rallies, but is blasting the media with campaign ads. On Monday, Trump racked up a huge victory: the appointment of Judge Amy Coney Bennett, his third to the Supreme Court. Vice President Mike Pence, who was exposed to COVID through his team, did not self-isolate and remained in charge of the Senate for the vote. The appointment guarantees a solid conservative majority on the court that could also decide the result of the election, if it's close.

Everything is hanging in the balance for another week, but it appears as if the election is for or against one figure: a person named Trump.

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"I don't know what the real numbers are, but I know for a fact that what is currently being presented is wrong; this is 2016 all over again," one senior US officials said. The official added that it was unclear whether US President Donald Trump would get more than 50% of support, but added that in both national and state polls inaccurately gauge the support he has among voters.

"I have experienced this situation firsthand," the official said, adding, "I don't know if the polling institutes and the media are deliberately putting forth wrong numbers, but it is clear that they do not reflect the situation on the ground. The US is a big country; accurate polling is hard to do."

Trump campaign officials, both senior and low-level staffers, believe many respondents do not publicly share their actual intent to vote or simply refuse to answer pollsters.

They noted that the anti-Trump sentiment in the media has created an atmosphere that has had many of his supporters choose not to share their views. The operatives predicted that on election day, it was very likely that his will outperform his own showing from 2016, where he defied virtually every battleground-state poll and won the electoral college thanks to three states that broke his way.

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The New York Times exposé on Trump's income taxes in recent years will no doubt cause the issue to be the subject of discussion in the debate, and Trump will again have to respond to claims that he is hiding the numbers about his true financial situation. However, US tax experts are saying that the parts of Trump's tax returns that have been made public do not indicate any criminal activity, and that the returns show that Trump has managed to use tax laws to receive the tax cuts and write-offs that are customary in the business world.

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Either way, the debate momentum is the most important thing a candidate, incumbent or not, can take away. In 1960, the young senator John F. Kennedy got what he wanted from the debate, becoming the political equal of then-Vice President Richard Nixon (in part because Nixon ignored the need to shave and put on TV makeup before the historic televised debate). At the moment of truth, Nixon lost by a few electoral votes and a tiny gap in the popular vote.

Ultimately, when a sitting president is seeking reelection, the race is always a referendum, and the presidential debates are a preview of that referendum and his chance to prove that he deserves to be given another term.

Bill Clinton also took advantage of the debates with George H.W. Bush to prove how well he could talk directly to voters. Bush Sr., despite the halo of the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War, didn't come across well on camera.

Either way, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden know that the debates won't decide the election, but on the other hand, they know that every remark, now matter how minor, every slip – however momentary – and every unsuccessful soundbite and facial expression can make headlines and hijack the agenda for several hours or days. When Bush Sr. snuck a look at his watch in the 1992 debate, he became a punching bag for days.

How important are this year's debates? It seems as if they aren't, because most of the election events thus far haven't caused any movement in the polls. The voters have already made up their minds and are deeply involved in the campaign, and there is an unusually small number of undecideds. What will decide the election is not what promises Trump or Biden make, or even some pathetic comment by either of them – expectations of both are so low that nothing will faze voters.

What will determine the election is whether or not one of the candidates will manage to set America's imagination on fire and ride a wave of optimism, hope and energy, as Trump did in the last two weeks of the 2016 election. This year, Trump is facing a tough challenge – among other things, he is no longer an outsider. But beyond that, there is the electoral math: his voters are very passionate, but they comprise a smaller sector of the population than they did in 2016 and his coalition is gradually losing the votes that will decide the election: non-college educated white voters.

But Biden isn't facing an easy task, either. His voters are not over enthused, and even the ones who are disappointed in Trump could stay home or vote for Trump again for economic reasons, as Trump is consistently seen – even during the COVID pandemic – as the best qualified person to run the economy, which until recently was breaking records. Both candidates are hoping that the debates will put the wind back into the sails of their campaigns. But like every campaign, this race has its own dynamic. And the deciding event of the 2020 election could come out of nowhere, a moment before Judgment Day.

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The Aug. 11-12 public opinion survey also found that 60% of Americans, including 87% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans, considered the selection of Harris – the first Black woman and Asian American nominated for vice presidency – to be a "major milestone" for the United States.

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The US Senator from California is viewed about as favorably or better than Biden in most major demographic groups, the poll showed, highlighting her potential to help the former vice president expand his support in November's election.

Harris, 55, is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants and made her own bid for the White House. She was a former prosecutor and state attorney general in California, and became only the second Black female US senator in history when elected in 2016.

The poll showed Biden's lead over Republican President Donald Trump was effectively unchanged after he announced his running mate choice, increasing by 1 percentage point among all Americans to an 8-point advantage – well within the poll's credibility interval - when compared with a similar poll that ran on Monday and Tuesday.

Forty-six percent of US adults said they would vote for a Biden/Harris ticket, while 38% would vote for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. A similar poll that ran on Monday and Tuesday showed that 44% would vote for Biden while 37% would back Trump.

The latest poll also found that 56% of Americans have a favorable impression of Harris, which is about the same as the number who favor Biden. Forty-two percent of US adults say they have a favorable view of Trump and 47% said the same of Pence.

Among women, 60% said they have a favorable view of Harris, compared with 53% who felt the same way about Biden. Women are the dominant force in American elections: they make up a bigger proportion of the US electorate than men, and a surge in support for Democrats among white, college-educated women helped the party retake the US House of Representatives in 2018.

Biden already has an advantage over Trump among women overall, but he has not improved his standing among black women in recent months, while white women without college degrees still largely favor Trump.

In addition, about 25% of Republicans said they had a favorable view of Harris and approve of her choice as Biden's running mate. Only about 20% of Republicans said they have a similarly favorable view of Biden.

In a close election, peeling off even a small number of voters from the Republican Party could make a difference to the Democrats, political analysts said.

Harris also is a little more popular among American adults who are younger than 35 years old: 62% said they view Harris favorably, while 60% said the same of Biden.

Public opinion could change and Trump's re-election campaign sharpens its criticism of the Democratic challengers. Within minutes of Biden's announcement on Tuesday, Trump had called Harris "nasty," "horrible" and "disrespectful," while his campaign painted her as an extremist who would yank the moderate Biden to the left.

In choosing Harris, Biden heeded calls from Black leaders and activists to choose a woman of color as a running mate and avoid a repeat of 2016, when the first decline of Black voter turnout in 20 years helped Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton. Black Americans – and  Black women particularly – are the most loyal Democratic constituencies.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,000 adults, including 389 Republicans and 419 Democrats. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 3 percentage points.

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