FBD Desk:

President Donald Trump won Florida, the nation’s most prized battleground state, as he and Democrat Joe Biden on Tuesday battled to the finish of an epic campaign that will shape America’s response to the surging pandemic and foundational questions of economic fairness and racial justice.

The two men were locked in tight races across the country, with Trump also claiming the battlegrounds of Ohio and Iowa while Biden won Minnesota and Iowa, two modest prizes the president had hoped to steal.

Races were too early to call in some of other fiercely contested and critical states on the map, including North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The president, by early Wednesday, had retained many states he won in 2016 and, as long predicted, the race in part seemed to rest on the three northern industrial states where Trump most surprised the Democrats four year ago Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Biden, briefly appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election “ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”

“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won this election,” Biden said. “That’s the decision of the American people.”Trump also tweeted that he was going to make a statement.

Election worker Kristen Mun from Portland empties ballots from a ballot box at the Multnomah County Elections Division, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 3030 in Portland, Ore.

No major problems arose on Tuesday, outside the typical glitches of a presidential election: Some polling places opened late, robocalls provided false information to voters in Iowa and Michigan, and machines or software malfunctioned in some counties in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.

The cybersecurity agency at the Department of Homeland Security said there were no outward signs by midday of any malicious activity.

The record-setting early vote — and legal skirmishing over how it would be counted — drew unsupported allegations of fraud from Trump, who had repeatedly refused to guarantee he would honor the election’s result.

With the coronavirus now surging anew, voters ranked the pandemic and the economy as top concerns in the race between Trump and Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

Voters were especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind. Fewer named health care, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change

The survey found that Trump’s leadership loomed large in voters’ decision-making. Nearly two-thirds of voters said their vote was about Trump — either for him or against him.(Source: Online)