From BBC
IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGES / BBCPresident Donald Trump, 74, and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, 77, each have more than seven decades of personal and professional experience behind them.
Here is a selection of photos that span their lives.
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IMAGE COPYRIGHTCARLOS BARRIA / REUTERSIt was not until June 2015 that Mr Trump formally announced his entrance into the race for the White House. His campaign for the presidency was rocked by controversies, including the emergence of a recording from 2005 of him making lewd remarks about women, and claims, including from members of his own party, that he was not fit for office.
But he consistently told his army of supporters that he would defy the opinion polls, which mostly had him trailing his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. He said his presidency would strike a blow against the political establishment and “drain the swamp” in Washington.
He took inspiration from the successful campaign to get Britain out of the European Union, saying he would pull off “Brexit times 10”. Despite almost all the predictions, Mr Trump was victorious in the 2016 election. He was inaugurated as the 45th US president on 20 January 2017.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTMICHAEL REYNOLDS / GETTY IMAGESIn a surprise ceremony in the final days of his presidency, Mr Obama awarded Mr Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian honour.
“To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretence, services without self-regard and to live life fully,” the then president said.
It had been a successful partnership, but a period not without trauma for Mr Biden, whose son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. The younger Biden was seen as a rising star of US politics and had intended to run for Delaware state governor in 2016.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTWIN MCNAMEE / GETTY IMAGESMr Trump’s re-election campaign has been conducted against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, in which 230,000 Americans have died, and seen the president himself become infected. First Lady Melania Trump and their son Barron caught the virus too, along with a number of staff at the White House.
In the days before the election on 3 November, Trump urged states to shun lockdowns, whilst continuing his schedule of rallies in battleground states.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTROBERTO SCHMIDT / GETTY IMAGESThe two presidential rivals’ divisions over the coronavirus have been deep, with Mr Biden having said the president’s handling of the worsening coronavirus crisis was an “insult” to its victims.
“Even if I win, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic,” he said. “I do promise this – we will start on day one doing the right things.”
More than 90 million Americans have voted early, many of them by post, in a record-breaking voting surge driven by the pandemic.
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