President Joe Biden‘s campaign acknowledged the general election against former President Donald Trump will be “a tough, close race” as aides outline his strategy to defend his 2020 wins in the Southwest.
Biden is traveling to Arizona and Nevada this week, both of which Biden won in 2020, becoming the first Democrat since President Bill Clinton to win Arizona. Clinton won Arizona in 1996.
“At the end of the day, we know this is going to be a tough, close race,” a Biden campaign aide told reporters Monday. “That’s why we’re investing in multiple ways to 270 electoral votes.”
“In tight races, this work matters,” he said of campaign office openings, staff and volunteer investments, and advertising buys. “This early outreach, mobilizing our diverse coalition, and getting boots on the ground is how we’re going to win.”
Trump outpolls Biden in Arizona and Nevada by an average of 5 and 6 percentage points, respectively, according to RealClearPolitics. The former president is also outperforming the incumbent in other battleground states, such as Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all of which, except for North Carolina, Biden has visited in the past week since his 2024 State of the Union address.
But despite the polling disadvantage, the Biden campaign remains confident in a perceived organizational and messaging edge after the Republican National Committee, for example, closed down minority outreach community centers across the country.
“They don’t have the money or infrastructure to reach the voters who will make a difference in this election and be decisive,” the campaign aide said. “We will continue to meet voters where they are, highlight all that’s at stake this election, engage this diverse coalition of voters that have powered our victories in these two states in the past three cycles.”
In a separate memo, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez previewed that the president would spend time this week in the “perennial swing counties” of Maricopa in Arizona and Washoe in Nevada, “where Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans have powered our victories in recent elections.”
“With abortion on the ballot in both Nevada and Arizona, new, good-paying jobs to tout in clean energy and chips manufacturing, and organized labor behind us, the Biden-Harris campaign is in a strong position to continue to win these voters across the Southwest,” Chavez Rodriguez wrote Monday, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. “Meanwhile, Republicans in both states are deeply divided and far behind in shoring up their party apparatus as Trump and his MAGA allies remain fixated on election denialism and toxic abortion bans that continue to alienate the voters they need to win back after losing in 2018, 2020, and 2022.”
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Of the border, the campaign aide added, “For years Trump and his MAGA allies have tried to weaponize our broken immigration system, then they killed President Biden’s border security bill, toughest and fairest reforms to secure the border in decades. Republicans have already shown voters in Nevada and Arizona they care far more about playing politics with the border than actually solving the problem.”
Biden is scheduled to be in Las Vegas and Reno on Tuesday before he is expected to be in Phoenix later that night. The president is anticipated to be in Texas on Wednesday before returning to the White House on Thursday evening.