Biden’s struggles have raised the possibility that former President Trump could make inroads in several Democratic states, a possibility that would have seemed unimaginable just a few weeks ago as Democrats continue to grapple with the fallout from Biden’s costly debate performance.
The Trump campaign and Republicans are hell-bent on again tearing down the “blue wall” that Biden rebuilt for Democrats with his victory in 2020. But the ongoing chaos surrounding Biden has Republicans seizing opportunities in New Hampshire, Virginia and Minnesota, giving them a renewed sense of possibility for more.
“These are heavily Democratic states that Republican candidates shouldn’t be competing in under normal circumstances,” said Collin Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who has worked in the state, saying it should be a “particularly tough” fight for Trump in November’s election.
“If the map really has expanded that far, we can be sure that the so-called ‘blue wall’ of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would have fallen a long time ago. Joe Biden’s only path to winning 270 electoral votes is goodbye,” he added.
The three states have long been thorns in Republicans’ side in presidential elections, especially since the party has seen some recent success and improvement: New Hampshire and Virginia are led by Republican governors, and Trump lost Minnesota by just 1.5 percentage points in 2016, a margin that grew to 7 percentage points in 2020.
But none of them have run for president in the past 20 years, all six of their senators are Democrats, and Minnesota hasn’t supported a Republican candidate since 1972, when former President Richard Nixon won 49 states.
“The only time [New Hampshire] “The biggest surges in Republican support come in years when Democrats are at rock bottom, but they continue to climb,” Reed said.
Months before Biden’s dismal debate performance, the Democratic Party was already in survival mode. Rather than seeking to significantly expand his base, he is seeking to rebuild the coalition that helped Biden win the White House in 2020.
Biden has been focusing on battleground states that were crucial to his 2020 victory, traveling to Wisconsin the week after the debate, and his campaign said he and his team will visit all of the battleground states in July.
But the president has faced questions from members of his own party about the maps, and Maine Gov. Janet Mills and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who met with Biden and Democratic governors on Wednesday, expressed concern about whether the president could win in their states.
The president has stressed he will keep campaigning and is scheduling events, such as the ABC interview that aired Friday, to reassure voters he intends to serve another four years in office. Democrats say they are in a wait-and-see phase before panicking that blue states are being lost to Trump.
“There is heightened anxiety at this point. Democrats did not expect this, but the unknown makes things anxious when something like this happens. We need another week or so to have more data. We don’t need to start listing legitimate concerns until the anxiety has calmed down,” said Ivan Zapien, a former Democratic National Committee official.
Biden won Minnesota, Virginia and New Hampshire by large margins four years ago – Trump also lost those states to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, but by between 1 and 5 percentage points.
But post-debate polls show the tide is changing. Saint Anselm College Poll A poll released earlier this week showed Trump holding a two-point lead in New Hampshire, and national polls have also shown the former president widening his lead over the current president.
Polls taken in May and June also showed Trump closing in on Biden. Virginia and MinnesotaThis presents an opportunity for the Trump campaign following Biden’s dismal debate performance.
The Trump campaign said it was ready to monopolise the upset over Biden and was targeting these typically Democratic-held states as opportunities to flip, adding New Jersey to that list.
“With Joe Biden so weak and the Democratic Party in disarray, President Trump is not only ahead in all of the traditional battleground states, but long-time Democratic states like Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire and New Jersey are now at stake,” said Carolyn Leavitt, national spokesperson for the Trump campaign. “With the Democratic Party in complete disarray, President Trump has gone on the offensive with a message of victory and is growing his movement every day.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are warning Republicans that they are too obsessed with the post-debate news cycle.
“I think as we get closer to Election Day, the issues will become clearer to voters,” said Joe Caiazzo, a Democratic strategist in New England. “It’s less about personalities and more about what’s actually at stake. As the issues become clearer, I’m confident Democrats will win.”
Democrats also pointed to a number of false statements made by Trump during the debate and lamented what they said was biased coverage of Biden.
“We have not heard or seen any reporting over the last week about the fact that most of what Trump said in the debates were lies,” Caiazo said.
In a statement to The Hill, the Biden campaign downplayed the possibility of Trump winning in Democratic states but stressed that “we are watching closely.”
“While Trump has had little presence in battleground states, spending his time hosting events in New York City, our campaign has more than 200 offices and 1,000 staffers across the states that are shaping our path to 270 electoral votes,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director. “Now the Trump campaign is shifting its attention to states that supported Joe Biden by double-digit percentages in 2020.”
To be clear, winning many of these states would be a huge cost to Republicans in the presidential election. Biden won Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico and Maine by at least 7 points each.
But all three of those states are considered “nice to have” states for Republicans, rather than the usual battleground states that decide the outcome of the election, raising questions about whether Trump should spend time and resources there. Virginia and Minnesota are also not expected to be very competitive in their Senate races, giving the Trump campaign little reason to raise the stakes on their own.
“A lot will depend on how much time you spend in each state,” said Republican strategist Jesse Hunt, pointing to Clinton’s decision to abandon Wisconsin in 2016. “She’s not going to make that mistake this campaign.”
