AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EST

Biden, Trump score wins, but battlegrounds too early to call

WASHINGTON (AP) — Polls closed across the East Coast Tuesday night as President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden concluded an epic campaign that will shape America's response to the surging pandemic and foundational questions of economic fairness and racial justice.

The night opened with predictable victories for each candidate, with Trump taking Alabama and Oklahoma and Biden winning his home state of Delaware and Virginia, a former battleground that has become a Democratic stronghold. It was too early to call, in a tight race, the 2020 battleground of Florida as well as Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Americans made their choice as the nation faced a confluence of historic crises with each candidate declaring the other fundamentally unfit to navigate the challenges. Daily life has been upended by the coronavirus, which has killed more than 232,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs.

Millions of voters put aside worries about the virus — and some long lines — to turn out in person, joining 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73% of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election.

Biden entered Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump, playing catch-up in a number of battleground states, had a narrower but still feasible road to clinch 270 Electoral College votes.

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2020 Latest: Trump wins 5 more states, Biden adds 2 states

The Latest on the presidential campaign (all times local):

9 p.m.

President Donald Trump has won Louisiana, Nebraska, Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, while Democrat Joe Biden has won New Mexico and New York.

Nebraska, one of two states that divides its electoral votes, has five total electoral votes up for grabs. Trump won the statewide vote, which is good for two electoral votes. He also won the 3rd Congressional District, which nets him a third vote.

Nebraska’s 1st and 2nd congressional districts haven’t yet been called.

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McConnell wins reelection, but control of Senate at stake

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans fought to keep control of the Senate on Tuesday in a razor-close contest against a surge of Democrats challenging President Donald Trump's allies across a vast political map.

Polls started closing in key states where some of the nation’s most well-known senators were on the ballot. In Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell fended off Democrat Amy McGrath, a former fighter pilot in a costly campaign, but he acknowledged his GOP colleagues face tougher races.

It could be a long wait, as both parties saw paths to victory, and the outcome might not be known on election night.

From New England to the Deep South and the Midwest to the Mountain West, Republicans are defending seats in states once considered long shots for Democrats. The Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 crisis, its economic fallout and the nation's uneasy mood all seemed to be on the ballot.

Trump loomed large over the Senate races as did Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. They swooped into key states, including Iowa, Georgia and Michigan, in the final days of the campaigns. Voters ranked the pandemic and the economy as top concerns, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

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AP VoteCast: Voters favor Biden on virus, Trump on economy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in the U.S. presidential election faced a public health crisis and a wounded economy, but neither candidate emerged as the clear choice to handle both of those issues, according to AP Votecast.

More voters — both nationwide and in key battlegrounds — said former Vice President Joe Biden would be better able to handle the coronavirus pandemic, the top concern for about 4 in 10 voters. But President Donald Trump edged out Biden on the question of who would be better to rebuild an economy besieged by nearly 11 million job losses and small businesses staring down a bleak winter. About 3 in 10 voters nationally ranked the economy as the most pressing issue.

The question of whether the pandemic or the economy mattered more to voters was a heated debate in the campaign. Trump argued that the economy should not be a casualty of the disease and maintained, without evidence, that the nation was “rounding the turn." Biden has warned that the economy can never fully heal unless the coronavirus is first contained and businesses can fully reopen.

A majority of voters were receptive to that argument. About 6 in 10 voters said the government’s higher priority should be limiting the spread of the coronavirus, even if it damages the economy.

AP VoteCast is a nationwide survey of more than 132,000 voters and nonvoters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

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EXPLAINER: 1876 election holds record for highest turnout

The voter turnout for the 2020 presidential election was massive by recent standards. But it didn't come close to surpassing the record set in 1876.

That year, 81.8% of eligible American voters went to the polls.

The winner was Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, though he received fewer votes than his Democratic opponent, Samuel Tilden. Because 20 electoral votes were disputed, neither won a majority of the Electoral College, the election went to the House of Representatives, and it set up a commission that awarded the presidency to Hayes.

No reliable data is available until 1828. But during the last two-thirds of the 19th century, voter turnout of more than 70 percent of those eligible was common — often reflecting sharp discord. The second highest turnout — 81.2 percent — was in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln defeated Stephen Douglas. Even before Lincoln took office, seven Southern states seceded.

In 1920 and 1924, turnout dropped to 49.2 percent and 48.9 percent, respectively, as women gained suffrage and the number of eligible voters doubled. In most years since, somewhere between 50 percent and 60 percent voted; the last time more than 60 percent voted was 1968, when Richard M. Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey and turnout was 60.7 percent.

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George Floyd’s brother rallies voters on Election Day

NEW YORK (AP) — The murmurs spread quickly among the poll workers late Tuesday morning at a Brooklyn neighborhood station: George Floyd’s brother was present.

A few came up to Terrence Floyd, whose brother George died at the hands of Minneapolis police, sparking protests for racial justice across the nation. “Keep the fight going,” one Black woman urged. Others asked to take their photos with Terrence.

Since the death of his older brother on May 25, Terrence has been thrust into a spotlight he did not seek. A 42-year-old school bus driver in New York, Terrence is normally a quiet man, deeply attached to his three children. But now, he feels under constant pressure to relay his brother’s voice — especially on this Election Day, when, as he sees it, race and racial justice are on the ballot.

“Ever since then, I’ve felt like he was talking to me,” he says of George’s death. “He was saying, ‘Little bro, just speak for me. Walk for me. Love for me. Get these people to understand what happened to me can happen to anybody.'"

On Tuesday, Terrence’s black hoodie and face mask included the words “I can’t breathe,” “Justice for George,” and “8:46,” the number of minutes and seconds authorities initially said a white officer held a knee to his brother’s neck until he became unresponsive.

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AP PHOTOS: At churches, schools and stadiums, America votes

Americans are choosing between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden in what many are calling the most consequential presidential election in a lifetime, with the balloting shadowed by the coronavirus outbreak, economic downturn, racial tension and a sense that the future of democracy itself is at stake.

Voters flocked to polling places around the country before sunrise to cast their ballots on Election Day. They stood at a safe distance from one another in lines that snaked around schools, stadiums and churches.

Because of the huge volume of mail-in votes, the outcome may not be known for days or even weeks and could wind up in in court.

In downtowns ranging from New York to Denver to Minneapolis, workers boarded up businesses lest the vote — or uncertainty about the winner — lead to unrest of the sort that broke out earlier this year amid protests over racial inequality.

Associated Press photographers fanned out across the U.S. to capture voting on Election Day.

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News outlets preach caution as first election results arrive

Media outlets preached patience as the first Election Day results in the hard-fought campaign between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden came in, even as it ran counter to their instincts.

A stressed populace and flood of early voting had many observers worried about a chaotic counting process, leading news organizations to warn against jumping to conclusions.

“Counting could take some time this year, and that's OK,” ABC's George Stephanopoulos said at the top of his network's coverage. “Not knowing the outcome tonight does not mean the process is broken. It does not mean the election is unfair. What's most important is that every citizen who casts a valid vote gets that vote counted, however long it takes.”

Because different states will report the early vote at different times — and maybe not even Tuesday night — the tallies “could look significantly weird,” said Fox News Channel's Martha MacCallum.

“We are tonight putting together an enormous jigsaw puzzle but we don’t have the box that has the picture on it,” said John Dickerson, CBS News analyst.

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EXPLAINING RACE CALLS: Arkansas for Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Here is an alphabetical state-by-state look at how and why The Associated Press is calling U.S. states in the 2020 presidential election. States will be added throughout Election Night.

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WHY AP CALLED ALABAMA FOR TRUMP:

The AP declared President Donald Trump the winner of Alabama as soon as polls closed in the state, even though election officials there had yet to release results from Tuesday’s presidential contest.

The news agency did so after results from AP VoteCast and an analysis of voting statistics confirmed expectations that the state’s longstanding political trend of favoring Republican presidential candidates will hold.

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Virus hospitalizations surge as pandemic shadows US election

Americans went to the polls Tuesday under the shadow of a resurging pandemic, with an alarming increase in cases nationwide and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 reaching record highs in a growing number of states.

While daily infections were rising in all but three states, the surge was most pronounced in the Midwest and Southwest.

Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota and New Mexico all reported record high hospitalizations this week. Nebraska’s largest hospitals started limiting elective surgeries and looked to bring in nurses from other states to cope with the surge. Hospital officials in Iowa and Missouri warned bed capacity could soon be overwhelmed.

The resurgence loomed over candidates and voters, fearful of both the virus itself and the economic toll of any new shutdowns to control its spread. The debate over how far to take economically costly measures has divided a country already sharply polarized over President Donald Trump’s turbulent four years in office.

The pandemic colored who voters chose at the ballot box and how they did it. While many Americans took advantage of expanded access to mail-in voting, lines were long in many polling places, with record turnout expected and reminders of the pandemic everywhere.