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DES MOINES – President Trump stunned the political universe in 2016 with a sweep of critical critical states from the north, winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than one percentage point and forcing Democrats into four years of introspection about what went wrong in its historical geographical location. base.
Four years later, the cold Midwest looms again as the main battlefield of the elections, and on Friday Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. toured the region campaigning in states that are not only essential for the president but also it is also critical to the identities of both parties.
For Democrats, their blue wall in the Midwest was for years their only defense against the Republican Party stronghold in the South, a demonstration that they remained predominantly the workers’ party, working-class families, and urban centers. blacks. For Republicans, these states are a key part of their rural base, and Trump has targeted farmers and white working-class voters here.
As the country reported a record number of coronavirus cases last week, Trump continued to insist on Friday that the illness caused by the virus was not serious. At a rally in Michigan, a state that reported a 91 percent increase in new cases from the average of two weeks earlier, he made the extraordinary and unfounded allegation that American doctors were profiting from coronavirus deaths, claiming they were being paid more if patients die. He also mocked Laura Ingraham, the Fox News anchor who attended the rally, for wearing a mask. “I’ve never seen her with a mask,” he said. “Laura, you are being very politically correct.”
Biden, in Iowa, took the opposite approach, pointing to the record number of new cases in the state and noting that the Iowa State Fair had been canceled this year for the first time since World War II. “And Donald Trump has given up,” Biden said.
Later in Minnesota, Biden lashed out at Trump for his comment about doctors profiting from virus deaths. “Doctors and nurses go to work every day to save lives,” he said. “They do their job. Donald Trump should stop attacking them and do his job. “
If Round 1 of Election Night will be played on the Sun Belt in southeastern states like Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, Round 2 will be played in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. Trailing in most polls and with an increasingly narrow path to victory, Trump has been forced to hold a series of large rallies in states he cannot afford to lose.
That pressure was reflected in the final race of Trump’s campaign, which began with stops in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota on Friday. Just before Trump took the stage at his first rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, dressed in a black coat and black leather gloves, his campaign announced that he would be back in state for two more rallies on Monday, with additional stops. in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on the same day.
“He’s trying to repeat the 2016 playbook,” said Charles Franklin, survey director for Marquette Law School. “It will return to these three states. He did it effectively, he surprised us all and he won with that strategy. “
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But this time, the landscape is more challenging. Biden outscored Trump by eight percentage points in Michigan in a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College, underscoring his troubled position in the battle states of the Midwest, where his white voter base without college degrees appears to be retreating. of the. . In Wisconsin, an average of polls shows Biden with a 10-point advantage.
Overall, in the four states the candidates visited on Friday, Biden’s campaign spent more than Trump on the airwaves, from $ 2.1 million to $ 1.4 million, in the past 24 hours, according to Advertising Analytics. . The message most carried by Trump’s meager campaign seemed to come from his 2016 White House run: a promise to “bring jobs home.”
Biden, brimming with money, is running a much more complex ad campaign with 27 different spots on air in all four states; its most frequently aired ad focused on virus control.
Neither campaign made major changes to its paid media strategy on Friday, although the Trump campaign added $ 1.8 million to its national cable purchase, which runs on channels with a conservative audience such as Fox News and the History Channel.
Trump’s campaign aides, while expressing confidence in the president’s prospects, have pointed to a number of external factors that make this year more challenging on the battlefields of the north. The governorates of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are now in the hands of lawmakers referred to as “anti-Trump Democrats.” Early voting, they acknowledge, is an important “X factor”, the impact of which is not yet fully understood.
And the pandemic remains a top voter concern, undermining to some extent the economic gains Trump hoped to achieve.
Campaign officials point to the Milwaukee suburbs as one of the few suburbs in the country to have moved in Trump’s direction since the summer. Unlike other regions, where the issue of law and order has fallen as a top priority, they said it had remained a top priority there, since the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha, Wis.
But Franklin, who conducts the most respected political poll in the state, said his polls did not show the president was winning new voters with his law-and-order speech. After the president’s visit to Kenosha in September, Franklin said, Republican approval of his response to the protests rose by 21 points. But the independents rose only about three points.
“It’s preaching to the choir and he gets a strong amen, but that doesn’t add more people to the pews,” Franklin said.
In this week’s election campaign, the president has focused more on personal disputes than policy contrasts, insisting that the country was turning the corner from the virus while disregarding public health precautions. On Friday, in his first of three demonstrations, Trump slammed one of his favorite contrasts, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Michigan, and the crowd shouted in response, “Lock her up.”
“Not me, not me, not me,” Trump said of the chant, doing nothing to dissuade him. “See? They blame me every time that happens.”
At his last stop of the day in Rochester, Minnesota, the president left the stage after less than 30 minutes, visibly angered by state restrictions that denied him the large crowd of fans he prefers. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Friday limited meetings in his state to fewer than 250 people.
Trump claimed there were “25,000 people who wanted to be here tonight” and blamed Democratic leaders like Keith Ellison, the state attorney general, for preventing his supporters from gathering. Trump claimed that his supporters “were barred from entry by radical Democrats.”
He walked off stage without his usual final flourishes, where he talks about “win, win, win” and dances to the rhythm of the Village People YMCA.
Biden’s midwestern twist on Friday included stops in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, an itinerary that showed both the promise and danger of the electoral map for his campaign, with the former vice president playing both offense and defense in question. hours.
Iowa gave Biden a “punch to the stomach” earlier this year, as he later put it after finishing fourth in state caucuses, and it has not been one of the battlefield states in which the campaign Biden’s has been more closely focused. Although Iowa voted twice for Barack Obama, it veered sharply to the right in 2016, when Trump won by nine percentage points.
But polls have shown a close race between Trump and Biden this time, and Trump is scheduled to travel to the state on Sunday for a rally in Dubuque. Biden’s visit also had the potential to boost a Democratic Senate candidate, Theresa Greenfield, who is challenging incumbent Joni Ernst in a tight race.
On a bright fall day, Biden held a car rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, where supporters decorated their cars with Biden posters and honked to show their support. Others were next to their cars waving American flags.
Standing in front of her minivan, Linda Garlinghouse, 69, was expecting a big victory from Biden, an outcome that would be more likely if Biden wins a state like Iowa. “I just hope for a landslide,” she said, lest there be “no doubt about the elections.”
Iowa is in the midst of a surge in coronavirus cases, and Biden was introduced by an Iowa man whose 92-year-old father died from the virus, underscoring the personal pain the pandemic has inflicted on so many families. In a heavily agricultural state, Biden also criticized Trump for trade, blaming the president’s “weak and chaotic trade policy” for having hurt farmers and manufacturers.
During his shift in the Midwest on Friday, Biden also spent precious time stopping off in Minnesota, a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972. But Trump has long set Minnesota as one to be. it escaped in 2016, when it lost by just 1.5 percentage points.
Polls have shown that Biden has a bigger lead this year, despite Trump’s efforts to change the state, and Biden told reporters Friday morning that he wasn’t worried about that. “I don’t take anything for granted,” he said before leaving Delaware. “We will work for every vote until the last minute.”
Thomas Kaplan reported from Des Moines and Annie Karni from Washington. Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from Philadelphia and Sydney Ember from Connecticut.
