President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign detailed what it described as a “number of viable pathways to the 270 electoral votes” needed for him to win a second term in office, saying it enters the election cycle in a “markedly strong position” in a memo issued Thursday.
Julie Rodriguez, Biden’s 2024 campaign manager, wrote in a memo to “interested parties” that there are “significant opportunities” to grow Democratic support. She noted that Democrats won elections in last year’s midterm elections despite higher turnout for Republicans than in 2020.
The campaign said it plans early investments in states Biden won in 2020, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as states it defended in 2020, like Nevada and New Hampshire. It also looks to protect recent Democratic gains in Arizona and Georgia and to expand its reach in North Carolina and Florida. It is investing in those key battleground states early with a seven-figure ad buy, Rodriguez wrote.
The campaign also plans to “break through a fragmented media environment” to reach voters where they are.
“While trust in the media may have eroded, trust in people’s personal networks has never been higher, or consequently, more important,” Rodriguez wrote. “Our organizing program will focus on leveraging people’s personal networks, through amplifying core messages online, and having personal conversations offline.”
The campaign will “engage early and often” with traditionally supportive voters, including women, as well as Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters and young voters who skipped the midterm elections, Rodriguez wrote.
In his re-election bid announcement last month, Biden framed his campaign as a choice between “more rights or fewer” as he argued that “MAGA extremists are lining up” to take away the social safety net and personal freedoms, referring to former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
An NBC News poll released just days before Biden announced his re-election bid found that substantial majorities of Americans don’t want Trump or Biden to run for president in 2024, setting up a potentially divisive and uninspiring general election rematch between the two men. About half of those surveyed who don’t want Biden, 80, to run say his age is a “major” reason.
Trump, who is 76, led the NBC News poll’s first national trial heat of the Republican presidential race, despite his arrest and arraignment in New York City last month on charges that he falsified business records to conceal damaging information in a hush-money case. He has pleaded not guilty.
Forty-six percent of Republican primary voters pick Trump as their first choice, while 31% select Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Other announced or expected candidates, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, drew support in the mid-to-low single digits.
However, the NBC News survey found a combined 41% of registered voters said they would definitely or probably vote for Biden in the general election, versus 47% who say they would vote for the eventual Republican nominee.
By party, 88% of Democratic voters say they’d definitely or probably vote for Biden, compared with 22% of independents and 3% of Republicans. Meanwhile, 41% of all adults polled approve of Biden’s job performance, while 54% disapprove — down from his rating of 45% approve and 50% disapprove in January.
