With just over two weeks to go until the general election, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is in a strong position to win back key parts of the midwest that boosted Donald Trump four years ago.
In a Pennsylvania district that Trump won by 10 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016, a new internal Republican poll has Biden with a 48 percent to 46 percent lead over the president.
As Kyle Kondik noted on Saturday, the district “covers Biden’s boyhood home of Scranton and contains a lot of Obama-Trump voters.”
Trump won this district, which covers Biden’s boyhood home of Scranton and contains a lot of Obama-Trump voters, by 10 pts https://t.co/gHhtqYONzI
— Kyle Kondik (@kkondik) October 17, 2020
These numbers from a district Trump easily won are good for Biden and would represent a 12-point swing toward the Democrats from 2016. But given the fact that this a GOP internal poll, it’s possible that the former VP is leading by even more.
Pennsylvania polling in recent weeks shows that Biden’s gains in areas that Trump won four years ago are translating to solid statewide leads as well.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s lead over Trump in Pennsylvania sits at nearly seven percentage points on average, which is in the neighborhood of Barack Obama margins of victory in the state in 2008 and 2012.
The Biden campaign’s bet appears to be paying off
Since day one of the Democratic primary, the Biden campaign argued that the former vice president was the strongest candidate in the field to take on Donald Trump. That strength, the Biden team argued, was rooted in their candidate’s ability to connect with voters in the midwest.
After more than a year of campaigning that has been upended by multiple crises and unpredictable developments, the Biden campaign’s bet on the midwest appears to be paying off.
With just over two weeks to go, Biden has leads in the three states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – that helped Trump cobble together a thin Electoral College majority in 2016.
If Joe Biden can keep the Hillary Clinton states in his column and carry those three midwestern states, the Democrat will have enough electoral votes to make Donald Trump a one-term president.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.