Trump supporters prize plain talk over polling numbers.
The fact that the fundamentals support Joe Biden winning are just so obvious. Yes, there are outliers. Yes, there are rare occurrences. We’ve never been in this type of pandemic situation, this economic situation and the racial instability and the protests. There are so many outside factors that are at play here. But the fundamentals are that no candidate has led the national polls by this much 50 days out, as much as Biden has.
Biden is leading by 6.4 points on the Realclear Politics average. That’s national polls, not state. No candidate has had that since 2000. And then if you look state- by- state, even if you give Donald Trump a fourpoint advantage in every single state, Joe Biden still has 289 electoral votes.
Never in the last 20 years has there been a race that has had this clear of a front- runner. The fact is that if Trump doesn’t win Florida, this race is over. There is no other path to victory. The map becomes almost impossible or unsustainable to get to 270 without Florida in it for Donald Trump.
The fact that he’s down there is a real problem for him. He needs to spend every day in Florida until he can get those numbers back up to a safe spot because it doesn’t matter if he wins Pennsylvania and Wisconsin or any of these other states if he loses Florida. And where his problem is, is that Florida is such a diverse state.
A lot of these other states, they’re more homogeneous, whereas Florida is more representative of America.
If you look at the I- 4 corridor, which everyone says is the key to winning Florida, it has everything from huge senior citizen retirement communities to a huge Hispanic and Puerto Rican community to good old- fashioned rednecks and conservative Americans, and I say that in the best possible way because I am one.
The different demographics that spread across this state is what makes it very unique and it is a bit of an example of the national electorate.
So the fact that the president is having trouble there is a real warning sign for his campaign.
At the end of the day, we can make arguments that the Democrats didn’t pick the best candidate or aren’t running the best convention, but the facts don’t lie. The facts are that Joe Biden is in a far superior position to win this than Donald Trump.
Terry Sullivan is the founder partner of the public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies. He has played a senior strategic role in over 100 campaigns, including Senate, gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. He has worked with some of the biggest names in politics, including Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, for whom he served as campaign manager on his presidential campaign.