It’s 2016 all over again for the left.
The public polls show the Democrat nominee leading Donald Trump.
But something went wrong and this painful truth about the polls sent Democrats running for their lives.
In a presidential campaign, both candidates compete to win the daily news cycle.
Campaigns believe who wins the daily narrative is the campaign pushing their message most successfully to swing voters and that whichever campaign wins the most news cycles will win the election.
The New York Times got into that game this week with a story about how the Trump campaign spent $800 million over the last three years advertising the President’s message as well as building a list of supporters.
Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and other campaign advisors led a conference call to rebut the idea that Trump’s re-election bid faced a cash crisis.
“We are now carefully managing the budget,” Stepien told reporters. “We will have more resources to spend than we had in 2016, and it won’t be close.”
Stepien also made it clear the President owned multiple paths forward to win re-election.
The Washington Times exclusively reported:
They range from the landslide projection, in which the president would carry 12 battleground states, to the “Southwest strength” scenario, in which Mr. Trump wins Arizona and Nevada but loses the “Rust Belt” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In the latter example, Mr. Trump would win the necessary 270 electoral votes; Mr. Biden would get 268.
There’s also a scenario in which Democrats’ “Blue Wall” collapses, and Mr. Trump would win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, while losing Florida. That projected outcome also would have the president winning 270 electoral votes to Mr. Biden’s 268.
Stepien also made it clear that the campaign’s internal polling did not line up with the public polling data that showed Joe Biden comfortably ahead.
“Although Mr. Biden is leading in many public polls, Trump campaign officials said they have quiet confidence about their internal polling in key states and districts,” the Washington Times also exclusively reported.
In 2016, polls undersampled white voters without a college degree.
That led to horrendous polling errors in states like Wisconsin and Michigan.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly said at every opportunity that in 2020 the polling is just as wrong as in 2016.
The campaign’s travel schedule and TV advertising budget – as well as the travel schedule and TV budget for the Biden campaign – do not suggest that the public polls are accurate and Biden is on the verge of a blowout.
President Trump is campaigning in blue states like Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota.
Biden also made one of his first campaign stops in Minnesota as well.
Both campaigns are playing offense.
And that means this race is a toss-up.
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