Biden camp urges supporters to ‘campaign like we’re trailing’

Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign is urging supporters not to “become complacent” despite polling that shows the former vice president leading President Trump nationally and in key battleground states, adding that supporters should “campaign like we’re trailing.” 

In a memo obtained by The Hill on Saturday, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said that with almost two weeks left until Election Day, supporters should not automatically assume that Biden is guaranteed to win. 

“We cannot become complacent because the very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire,” Dillon wrote in the memo. 

Dillon cited the 2016 election, in which then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college despite winning the popular vote and numerous polls predicting a victory for the former secretary of State. 

In key battleground states, O’Malley Dillon wrote, the “race is far closer than some of the punditry we’re seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest.”

“While we see robust leads at the national level, in the states we’re counting on to carry us to victory like Arizona and North Carolina we’re only up by three points.” she said. “We also know that even the best polling can be wrong, and that variables like turnout mean that in a number of critical states we are functionally tied — and that we need to campaign like we’re trailing.”

Dillon added that Biden supporters “cannot underestimate Donald Trump or his ability to claw his way back into contention in the final days of a campaign, through whatever smears or underhanded tactics he has at his disposal.”

The campaign manager added that the Biden team expects to raise an additional $234 million before Election Day, arguing that “every dollar we fall short of those goals is a missed opportunity to turn out supporters or communicate our closing message in a race that could come down to a handful of votes.” 

A new Hill/Harris poll released Friday showed Biden leading Trump by double digits in Michigan, which Trump narrowly won in 2016. The poll also placed Biden ahead of Trump by 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania. 

In Florida, however, which Trump won in 2016 by just more than 1 point, the candidates are currently tied. 

This week, both an NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll and an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found Biden ahead of Trump nationally by 11 percentage points. 

The NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist survey also found that Biden leads Trump among Black and Latino voters as well as whites with a college degree, women, people who live in cities and suburbs, young voters, and those who identify as independent. 

In the close battleground state of Arizona, Biden leads Trump by a smaller margin of 49 percent to 45 percent, according to results released Thursday from the Arizona Public Opinion Pulse conducted by the Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights.

-Updated at 7:29 p.m.