Close polls and encouraging early vote numbers have caused Biden to spend time and resources challenging a state that Trump must win to secure re-election.
WITH JUST EIGHT DAYS TO THE ELECTION, Biden’s campaign plays an aggressive game for Florida, a must for President Donald Trump, who suddenly finds himself underwater in his adopted state.
Biden’s most potent surrogate, former President Barack Obama, will head to Orlando on Tuesday, where he will rally voters to support Biden and vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Biden himself will make two stops in Florida on Thursday, one in Broward County and the other in Tampa.
Obama’s event will be his second time to visit the Sunshine State in less than one week.
He was in North Miami on Saturday, where he spoke at a drive-thru rally and set the president’s behavior on fire, claiming Biden as a man of character.
“You wouldn’t tolerate it from a co-worker,” Obama said about Trump’s decisions to retweet conspiracy theories and lousy mouth his public health experts. “You wouldn’t tolerate it from a high school principal. You wouldn’t tolerate it from a coach. You wouldn’t tolerate it from a family member. ‘Florida man’ wouldn’t even do this stuff. Why are we accepting it from the president of the United States?”
Near-consecutive events in Florida for Obama, along with Biden’s scheduled performances there on Thursday, underscore the aggressive play Biden’s campaign is sparking for a state that political strategists see as a must-win for Trump to secure re-election.
Nationally, polls have been in favor of Biden for months. But in the past two weeks, a new state poll suggests Biden has expanded its lead in central swing states, including Florida.
The most recent poll from CBS News shows that Biden is 50-48 ahead of Trump in Florida, and 61% of those surveyed who already voted said they voted for Biden.
The former vice president’s narrow lead reflects most of the surveys in Florida conducted in October except for two: an Oct. 11-20 Morning Consult poll from Oct. 11-20 that found Biden had a 52-45 lead over Trump an October Rasmussen poll. 20-21, which showed Trump on Biden 50-46.
While not a barometer of a president’s performance in the election, the poll remains an important indicator of how voters are feeling in the pivotal weeks leading up to November 3.
The pollsters immediately warn that, as always, anything can happen. At that point in 2016, Hillary Clinton consistently outperformed Trump in the polls – though she wasn’t breaking 50% or showing the kinds of gains Biden is currently.
Biden’s aggressive campaign play and favorable polls follow the heels of New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg who injected $ 100 million in advertising and another land-based game spending to defeat Trump in Florida – a move that freed up a significant amount of money. For the democratic campaign, funds are used in other states and put the president in defense in a country with the long considered safe territory.
Of course, Trump’s campaign is a long way from waving the white flag, particularly in the president’s adoptive home state of Florida.
After the last presidential debate last week, Trump conducted two rallies in Florida on Friday. The president and vice president will almost certainly return by November 3 – although, according to current campaign schedules, they will hit Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other battlefield states.
Since winning the Democratic nomination, Biden has not only garnered support from younger voters, but he has become more popular among them.
Joe Biden was not the first choice of young voters, but kids between the ages of 18 and 29 are striving to show up in record numbers to make him the next president, according to a poll released Monday by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.
The survey of both university and non-university youth found that 63% say they “will definitely vote” in these elections, a level of interest that could mean higher youth participation than Barack Obama. in 2008. Additionally, Biden has a 65% to 25% advantage over President Donald Trump, making high voter turnout among young people potentially crucial.
“Settling for Joe has given way to voting for Joe,” Justin Tseng, a junior and chairman of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, told reporters on a conference call. “I would say that young voters started out supporting Biden mostly because of antipathy towards Donald Trump.” But as the campaign progressed, the 77-year-old former vice president has grown on young people, who love his politics but also warmed up personally, Tseng said.
