Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, your daily rundown on all the latest news in the 2020 presidential, Senate and House races. Did someone forward this to you? Click here to subscribe.
We’re Julia Manchester, Max Greenwood and Jonathan Easley. Here’s what we’re watching today on the campaign trail:
LEADING THE DAY:
We are exactly one week from Election Day and things are heating up the campaign trail with both tickets out in force on Tuesday.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden campaigned in the rural town of Warm Springs, Ga., promising voters that he would unite the country in the vision of the late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
“That’s the kind of president I hope to be,” Biden said. “I’m running as a proud Democrat but I’ll govern as an American president. I’ll work with Democrats and Republicans. I’ll work as hard for those who don’t support me, as for those who do.”
Biden also hit President Trump, referring to him as a “charlatan.”
“Time and again throughout our history we’ve seen charlatans, con men and phony populists who sought to play on our fears and appeal to our worst appetites and pick at our oldest scabs for their own political gain,” Biden said.
Biden’s campaigning in Georgia is an effort to expand the map for Democrats. Biden does not need Georgia to win the White House, as Trump does. But Biden’s polling advantage in the core battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin has been stable enough that he feels emboldened to reach for a blowout.
Biden’s appearances in Georgia should also help down-ballot Democrats in a state with two competitive Senate races and two competitive House races. Later this week, Biden will push into Iowa — another state Trump won easily in 2016. Running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) will visit deep red Texas. The Biden campaign is also up on the airwaves in Ohio, which Trump won easily in the past election.
The Biden campaign on Tuesday also unveiled their closing message on the airwaves with new ads running across 16 battleground states.
“This is our opportunity to leave the dark angry politics of the past four years behind us,” Biden says in the ads. “To choose hope over fear, unity over division, science over fiction. I believe it’s time to unite the country to come together as a nation, but I can’t do it without you.”
Former President Obama was also on the campaign trail on Tuesday, delivering remarks in Orlando, Fla.
“He said this at one of his rallies. ‘COVID, COVID, COVID,’ he’s complaining,” Obama told supporters at a drive-in rally. “He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage.”
Meanwhile, President Trump campaigned in Lansing, Mich., a state he flipped in 2016, but now finds himself behind in the polls. However, Trump downplayed any concern over his standing in the polls at his rally on Tuesday, claiming at the rally that polls show him up 3 points in the state. It’s unclear which poll he was referring to.
“I think we’re up a lot more,” Trump told a crowded audience at a rally. “We’re going to have a great red wave.”
A poll released by the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Monday showed Biden with a 10 point lead over Trump, 52 percent to 42 percent.
Later today, Trump will travel to Nebraska and Wisconsin, as he seeks to shore up his support in the Midwest. The Nebraska trip will hit major markets in Iowa, as well.
First Lady Melania Trump also hit the road to campaign for her husband, headlining her first solo campaign event of the year in Atglen, Pa.
On the vice presidential front, Vice President Pence made a stop in Greensboro, N.C., on Tuesday, despite growing concerns over members of his staff testing positive for coronavirus
Harris is in Nevada, making stops in Reno and Las Vegas.
READ MORE:
Biden calls Trump a ‘charlatan,’ invokes FDR in speech promising to unite the nation, by Jonathan Easley
Obama rips Trump’s pandemic response: ‘He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage,’ by Julia Manchester
Florida and Pennsylvania hold keys to victory, by Niall Stanage.
POLL WATCH:
In the fraught final week of the 2020 presidential race, Biden holds narrow leads over Trump in Florida and Arizona, two battleground states that the president carried in 2016. Meanwhile, the former vice president is on track to win the Democratic stronghold of California by the largest margin for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state’s history. Here’s what we’re looking at:
- In Florida, a poll from the Florida Atlantic University Business and Economics Polling Initiative shows Biden garnering 50 percent support to Trump’s 48 percent, giving him a slight edge in a state that Trump almost certainly has to win on Nov. 3 if he’s to have any path to 270 electoral votes.
- Biden leads Trump 49 to 46 percent in Arizona, according to a new poll from Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights.
- It’s no surprise that Biden’s leading in California (a Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since George H.W. Bush in 1988). But a new poll from the University of California, Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies shows Biden ahead of Trump 65 to 29 percent. If that lead translates to the election itself, it’ll be the biggest Democratic victory in California’s presidential election history.
Biden’s polling lead looks more comfortable than Clinton’s, by Jonathan Easley.