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President Joe Biden already had a narrow path to re-election before his disastrous debate.
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But if the bottom falls out, Democrats could find themselves fighting to defend states like New Mexico or Virginia.
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At that point, TrumpVictory would be virtually certain.
President Joe Biden’s already narrow path to re-election is now getting even more difficult.
Biden’s best-case scenario before last week’s disastrous debate likely required him to carry the floor in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, while holding onto Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District. Trump, as Nate Silver has pointed out, had far more flexibility to reach 270 electoral votes and possibly even higher.
Four years ago, Biden had the luxury of deciding whether to base his campaign in the Upper Midwest or go after Sun Belt states like Arizona and Georgia that hadn’t gone Democratic in decades. Trump holds stable leads in both states, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages.
Biden’s underdog status could get much worse. In its latest update Wednesday, Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved Michigan and Minnesota closer to Trump. As Crystal Ball editor Kyle Kondik warned, this is not the bottom.
“The polls show Biden has had a little bit of a setback, but he should have been catching up instead of falling back,” Kondik told Business Insider.
The Crystal Ball moved Michigan from “Lean Democratic” to “Toss Up” and Minnesota from “Likely Democratic” to “Lean Democratic.” According to current projections from the University of Virginia Center for Politics, there are five true toss-up states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada.
If Biden continues to drop out, Virginia, New Mexico and Maine (statewide) could all come into play.
A Republican hasn’t won Virginia or New Mexico in 20 years. Maine, which like Nebraska awards only two of its electoral college votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote, hasn’t had a Republican crowned the winner since then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1988.
“There is a possibility that Trump could maybe win the popular vote, which is about a five-point improvement over 2020, and if that happens, you would expect Trump to win the states that Biden won in 2020 but did worse than the national popular vote,” Kondik said. “That’s also the situation where you would see a Minnesota or a New Hampshire or maybe even a Virginia or Maine getting closer, certainly like they did in 2016 and certainly closer than that.”
A post-debate poll in New Hampshire showed the race too close to call there. According to a Saint Anselm College poll, Trump leads Biden 44% to 42%. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at 4% in the state. Biden won the Granite State four years ago by just over 7 points.
In a post-debate memo, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said data showed the showdown had not changed the opinions of voters in swing states. She also argued that if polls showed a drop, it would be a temporary blip due to media coverage.
“If we do see changes in the polls in the coming weeks, it would not be the first time that exaggerated media stories have caused temporary drops in the polls,” O’Malley Dillon wrote in the June 29 memo.
Kondik stressed that Biden still has time to turn the tide and that one possibility for a post-debate slump is that Democrats remain depressed about the president’s performance. He pointed out that both the Democratic National Convention and the second debate are still on. There’s also a chance that Biden could be pushed out of the race before either of those things happen. The president could also stay in the race and struggle to mount the comeback campaign he needs.
It wasn’t meant to be. In April, the president’s campaign boasted that it could win in Florida, Trump’s adopted home and a state that has turned away from Democrats. Now even a senior Biden official has said that Florida is not a battleground.
The problem for Biden is that he needed the debate to start his resurgence. Instead, his confrontation with Trump could lead to the president dropping out of the race altogether. Biden himself has acknowledged that he did not debate well.
As CNN’s Harry Enten has detailed, every sitting president who went into the first debate behind and was deemed to have lost lost re-election. Biden’s only saving grace is the early timing of the debate on the schedule.
Any incumbent candidate who was behind in the first debate and lost that debate lost the general election. Very bad for Biden.
The last four winners of the first debate also gained an average of 4 points in the polls afterwards. If that continues, Trump could gain a 5-6 point lead nationally. photo.twitter.com/8KhJEsd8Dc
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 28, 2024
For now, prominent Democrats continue to back Biden. Most crucially, that includes the list of potential replacements, which includes Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. On Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first member of Congress to call on the president to resign.
The reality is that if Biden is stuck on the defensive in states that Democrats typically win, Trump’s return to the White House will be a foregone conclusion. The only question then is how many Electoral College votes the former president would win.
“If Biden’s position deteriorates, then you might see a Virginia or New Mexico come into play,” Kondik said. “But again, if that’s really what we’re going to be talking about in October, then the election itself shouldn’t be that dramatic. Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico or Minnesota are not going to be the states that would put Trump over 270. They’re the states that would put him well over 300.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
