Perez on Biden’s poll leads: Democrats ‘take nothing for granted’

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said on Sunday that the party is taking “nothing for granted” even though presidential nominee Joe Biden leads in several recent national and swing state polls.

When questioning Perez on “Face The Nation,” CBS’s Margaret Brennan cited the CBS News-YouGov polls that show Biden with an edge over President Trump in Wisconsin and Arizona, adding that the election results are “going to be dependent on turnout.”

“Do you think the Democratic Party has done enough in the midst of this pandemic to drive up either easy balloting or ability to go to the poll?” Brennan asked.

“Well, I always caution people, never to go on the ‘poll-er-coaster,’” Perez responded. “We take nothing for granted.” 

With @JoeBiden maintaining a solid lead in key states ahead of #electionday, @DNC‘s @TomPerez cautions voters: “never go on the ‘Poll-er-coaster’, we take nothing for granted” pic.twitter.com/FJ4T36DnUp

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 18, 2020

Perez’s remarks align with the Biden campaign’s recent warning for voters not to “become complacent” because of the national and battleground state polls showing Biden leads.

“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,” Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, wrote in a memo obtained by The Hill on Saturday. 

“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.” Dillon said in the memo. “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.”

Democratic leaders, including Dillon, have pointed to the 2016 election, in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the election, even though she won the popular vote and many polls predicted she would win the election ahead of time. 

But Perez emphasized voter “enthusiasm” in his interview with “Face The Nation,” citing early vote totals in Wisconsin, where he said more than 25 percent of people have voted, and in Florida, where he said 2.4 million people have voted.

“And what’s really interesting is the Democrats are overwhelmingly turning in their ballots and 350,000 of the Democrats that have turned in their ballots haven’t voted in the last two elections,” he said. 

“So it’s not just people who are voting for convenience,” he added. “It’s people who haven’t turned out, and that shows the enthusiasm for Joe Biden and [Sen.] Kamala Harris [(D-Calif.)],” referring to the former vice president’s running mate

The Democratic chairman said Biden was “uniquely qualified to bring people together,” but acknowledged “we have more work to do, and folks gotta get out there and vote.”

Two national polls released last week – an NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll and an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll – found the president trailing Biden nationally by 11 percentage points.

Battleground polls overall have shown Biden with an edge over Trump.