2020 Elections Live Updates: Biden Campaigns in North Carolina, as Trump Plans a Rally in Nevada

“I’m running as a proud Democrat, but I will govern as an American president. No red states, no blue states, just the United States. I promise you. I’ll work as hard for those who don’t support me as those who did. That’s the job of a president: A duty to care, to care for everyone in America. Folks, and you too have a sacred duty: to vote. And it matters. North Carolina matters. And Senator Harris and I are asking you for your trust and support. We will always have your back. I promise you. So please, please vote. And help get out the vote.” “We got to keep the incredible momentum going. We can’t let up. You can vote early in person until the 31, but don’t wait. Go vote today and don’t just vote for me and Senator Harris. You’ve got a governor’s race, a Senate race, a record number of Black women on the ballot. Congress and lieutenant governor, labor commissioner and the courts. Folks, they are ready to deliver for North Carolina families. So vote. Vote. It’s time.”

With just over two weeks until Election Day, Joseph R. Biden Jr. held a drive-in rally in North Carolina on Sunday, a state that could be crucial both to the presidential contest and the battle for control of the Senate.

At a high school in Durham, part of the Research Triangle region that is an area of strength for Democrats, supporters cheered him by beeping their car horns as he spoke.

The event was the latest in a string of drive-in rallies that Mr. Biden has held in battleground states. His campaign has stressed the importance of following health precautions, and the drive-in events reflect a starkly different approach to campaigning during a pandemic compared with the large rallies that President Trump is holding.

Early in-person voting is underway in North Carolina, which Democrats have not won in a presidential election since Barack Obama narrowly carried the state in 2008. At the rally, Mr. Biden urged people not to wait to vote.

“Go vote today, and don’t just vote for me and Senator Harris,” he said, listing a number of other races in the state, including contests for governor and senator.

Polls in North Carolina show a close race between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found Mr. Biden with the support of 46 percent of likely voters, compared with 42 percent for Mr. Trump.

For the president, keeping the state in his column is critically important.

“Without North Carolina, it’s very hard to imagine Donald Trump winning,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, said during a virtual event with supporters on Friday.

North Carolina is also a crucial state in the fight for control of the Senate, where Republicans are hoping to hold on to their majority. Senator Thom Tillis is trying to keep his seat in a close and expensive race against Cal Cunningham, his Democratic challenger.

Mr. Cunningham has been embroiled in a scandal over exchanging romantic text messages with a woman who is not his wife, and he did not have a speaking slot at Mr.

President Trump on Sunday is campaigning in the crucial battleground of Nevada, where early voting began this weekend.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. maintains a steady lead in polls of the state, which Hillary Clinton won by less than 3 percentage points in 2016. According to a recent Times/Siena College poll, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump 48 percent to 42 percent, with six percent of the state’s voters saying they remain undecided.

But even if Mr. Trump is behind in the polls, he did get encouragement, and a blessing, from some evangelical leaders: early Sunday, he attended services at the International Church of Las Vegas, where a church leader said that she had a prophecy that God would give the president “a second wind” to carry him through the campaign, and “that he will be the president again.”

Mr. Trump planned to attend a fund-raiser in Newport Beach, Calif. on Sunday afternoon, and then to return to Nevada for a rally at an airport in Carson City.

Sunday’s events mark the president’s second swing through Nevada in the last two months — in September he hosted two rallies, including one indoors. The business that hosted the indoor rally in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb, was later fined, because thousands of people were present,despite state health regulations limiting gatherings to 50 people.

Current state guidelines say gathering should be limited to more than 250 people, which Sunday’s Carson City rally is also certain to exceed. Mr. Trump has described his campaign events as “protests,” which he says should exempt them from limits on large gatherings.

Over the past decade, Democrats in Nevada have notched one hard-fought victory after another. In 2010, Senator Harry Reid won his hotly contested re-election campaign, even as the party lost other battles all over the country. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the state, though with a smaller margin of victory than Democrats garnered in the previous two presidential contests. And in 2018, the Democrats managed to capture the governor’s office and the state Senate.

The state has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, which brought tourism to a halt and left 90 percent of members of the powerful Culinary Union, which represents tens of thousands of workers in Las Vegas and Reno, unemployed. The union has long been credited with helping Democrats win in the state.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan on Sunday condemned President Trump after his supporters at a Saturday rally in the state broke out in a chant to “lock her up,” just a week after she was the target of a kidnapping plot, even as Trump surrogates sought to downplay his remarks.

Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Ms. Whitmer said, “It’s incredibly disturbing that the president of the United States, 10 days after a plot to kidnap, put me on trial and execute me — 10 days after that was uncovered — the president is at it again and inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism.”

Ms. Whitmer has been the target of conservative criticism for her strict policies in the spring to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and Michigan’s Supreme Court recently ruled that her use of executive orders to extend the state’s emergency declaration order was unconstitutional. Since a peak in the spring, Michigan had successfully kept coronavirus cases from climbing until the last few weeks, which have seen a sharp rise.

“I’m not going to get distracted by attacks from the White House or a Supreme Court here in the state that is undermining my work,” Ms. Whitmer said on Sunday. “I’m going to keep going forward and doing everything I can to protect my people.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday also condemned President Trump for joining the chants at the rally, while Trump campaign surrogates played down the president’s remarks.

Ms. Pelosi, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” said Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was “irresponsible,” particularly targeting a female governor.

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