Sun-belt states within reach, southern Democrats tell Joe Biden

Democrats in key southern states are lobbying Joe Biden to step up his campaign and help the party to win the Senate.

Joe Biden on the stump in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, last week. Picture: AFP

Democrats in key southern states are lobbying Joe Biden to step up his campaign across the US sun belt in an attempt to convert his strong polling lead into a rout of President Donald Trump and help the party to win the Senate.

Mr Biden, 77, has so far stuck to a strategy to capture the White House based on claiming back three rust-belt states that Mr Trump flipped from Democrats by narrow margins in 2016: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

This trio would be sufficient for a narrow Biden victory in November but he faces pressure from Texas Democrats to push for an unlikely victory in the second largest state after a poll put him five percentage points ahead of the President. This, combined with another poll giving him a six-point lead in Florida, has convinced some southern Democrats that Mr Biden can blaze a new path to victory through the south with the potential addition of Georgia, where polls give him a slim lead.

The former vice-president is said to be resisting being diverted from his rust-belt strategy, wary that polls are exaggerating his lead as he tries to avoid the same mistake Hillary Clinton made in 2016 of taking states such as Pennsylvania for granted because of their history of voting Democrat.

Big prizes are at stake in the south: both Georgia’s Senate seats are being contested as well as a closely fought seat in Arizona. “Sun-belt expansion is what will drive the next 30 years of elections,” said Stacey Abrams, the Democrat former leader of Georgia’s House of Representatives.

Filemon Vela, a Texas congressman, told The New York Times: “Trump’s abominable presidency, especially in the context of the total failure to confront coronavirus, makes Texas very winnable.” He said he was being bombarded by Texas Democrats urging the party to pile in resources. Texas has 38 out of the 538 votes in the electoral college, which decides the presidency. This is the second-highest number but on its own is not enough to reverse Mr Trump’s winning margin over Mrs Clinton of 304 to 227.

Mr Biden is spending on advertising in six states, including Florida, which carries 29 electoral college votes, the joint third-­highest. One reason to keep his focus on the rust belt is Ohio, with 18 college votes, seen as a bellwether. It backed Mr Trump by eight points in 2016.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s fury over leaks from the White House has led Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, to plant false information with staff members to see if he can catch any briefing the press, according to the Axios news website. This comes after two leaks: the detail that Mr Trump took refuge in a bunker during violent demonstrations in May after the death of ­George Floyd; and an intelligence report claiming that Russia offered bounties to Taliban fighters to kill Americans.

The Times