Joe BidenThe campaign sent a memo to all staff on Wednesday morning, detailing internal polls that show a still-close race with Donald Trumpthe latest attempt by Biden’s advisers to calm staff after the president’s poor performance during debates.
The memo, obtained by POLITICO, highlights internal polling from Battleground State tracking before and after the debate, which shows Biden down half a percentage point during that period. Biden received 43 percent of the vote, compared to Trump’s 43 percent before the debate, and Biden was at 42 percent as of Tuesday. Trump improved his vote share by 0.2 percentage points on Tuesday, the memo said.
The outreach was trying to preempt an expected new poll from The New York Times/Siena College on Wednesday that “will likely show a slightly larger swing in the race,” according to the memo, signed by campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. Neither the Times nor Siena College has publicly acknowledged that a poll is coming, but rumors about its results have been swirling through Democratic circles for the past 24 hours.
“We should all keep in mind that the NYT itself acknowledged last week that it is often an outlier in the polls,” the memo said.
The memo and an all-staff call scheduled for Wednesday afternoon mark a new round of efforts to calm internal fears about the state of the race, after Biden’s poor performance prompted calls for him to step aside and sent panic through the Democratic Party.
The campaign is clearly bracing itself for a wave of polls over the next two weeks, which are already trickling in. CBS News released a poll Wednesday morning showing Trump with a 3-point lead in all of the hard-fought states and a 2-point lead nationally in a head-to-head race.
“We’re going to see some polls today and we want you all to hear from us what we know internally and what we expect externally,” the memo reads. “Polls are a snapshot in time and we all need to be aware that they will continue to fluctuate. It will take a few weeks, not a few days, to get a full picture of the race.”
