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Joe Biden and Kamala Harris traverse the United States in the closing days of the election campaign with a travel schedule that underscores their hopes of “switching” to Republican states like Georgia, Iowa and Texas, which were initially considered uncompetitive. of the career.
In a sign of his campaign’s growing confidence, Biden made his first stop Tuesday in Georgia, a southern state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992. On Friday, he will travel to Iowa, a state that he President Donald Trump won by more than nine points in 2016.
Analysts said the Democrat’s visits to states that were thought to be out of reach early in the election campaign underscored how optimistic Biden’s team was about their chances of victory in the final days of the race.
Biden is just 1.7 percent ahead in Iowa, according to an FT analysis of RealClearPolitics poll data, while Jodi Ernst, the state’s incumbent Republican senator, is behind Democratic rival Theresa Greenfield in the surveys. In Georgia, Biden and President Donald Trump are statistically tied.
“It’s a recognition of the Biden campaign that they believe those states can win,” said Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Ultimately, the candidate’s time is your most valuable resource and send [Biden] for Georgia and Iowa it is recognition that they are competitive. “
Andra Gillespie, professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, said: “From a strategic point of view, if Joe Biden is feeling comfortable enough, and now he’s forcing the Trump campaign to spend resources to maintain [Georgia]Those are resources that cannot be spent elsewhere. “
Harris, Biden’s running mate, is expected to make her first campaign visit to Texas, a Republican stronghold, on Friday. Biden is losing nearly 3 points in the polls there, but some recent polls and an explosion in early voting have left Democrats cautiously optimistic about his chances.
Biden has a national advantage of 8.6 points over Trump, according to a Financial Times analysis of Real Clear Politics data. But his margins are lower in several changing states that hold the key to winning the electoral college, including Pennsylvania, where FT’s analysis shows Biden to have a 5.6-point lead.
The former vice president of the United States has made more trips to Pennsylvania than any other state since the Democratic National Convention in August.
Trump is also visiting some battlefield states that he lost to Clinton in 2016, but where his campaign says he can win this time, such as Nevada and New Hampshire. But his hectic travel schedule has focused more on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which were crucial to his victory four years ago.
The president stopped by Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska on Tuesday and will visit Arizona and Nevada on Wednesday. On Thursday he will hold a rally in North Carolina, a state that won by 3 points in 2016 but now appears to be tied with Biden.
Biden’s visits to Georgia and Iowa were also intended to provide a boost to Democrats competing in US Senate races against the Republican rulers. Democrats seek to regain control of the 100-member Senate from Republicans, and Georgia is the only state in the United States where both seats are being contested.
“Friends, I can’t tell you how important it is that we change the United States Senate,” Biden said Tuesday night at a rally in Atlanta. “There is no state more important in that fight than Georgia. You have two competitive positions at stake and you have two great candidates. “
Trump vs Biden: who is leading the 2020 election polls?
Use FT’s interactive calculator to see which states are most important to winning the presidency
Democrats’ campaigning efforts have also received a boost in recent days with the return of Barack Obama, the former US president, to the election campaign. Obama is the second most popular Democrat in the United States, according to YouGov, behind Jimmy Carter, another former president.
Obama campaigned for Biden on Tuesday in Florida, the second time he has visited the state in less than a week. He repeated his attacks on Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying: “If he had focused on Covid from the beginning, cases would not reach new all-time highs.”
Several US states are dealing with sudden increases in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations as temperatures drop and Americans spend more time indoors. More than 217,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus this year, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Swamp notes
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