US election 2020: Donald Trump has ‘multiple pathways’ to win

The Trump campaign team is focusing on the races in the key battleground states which will decide the election.

Donald Trump speaks to supporters in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Picture: AFP.

Donald Trump still has “multiple pathways” to win the election on Wednesday (AEDT) his campaign insisted as the President prepared to hold seven rallies in a final-day blitz across the country on Tuesday.

It came as his opponent Joe Biden targeted the crucial Midwest states in his final campaign push, with plans to campaign in Pennsylvania and Ohio on Tuesday (AEDT) and two events in Pennsylvania on Monday.

Mr Trump has improved slightly in the polls, cutting Mr Biden’s lead from 7.8 to 7.2 points nationally. But the Trump campaign team is focusing on the much closer races in the key battleground states which will decide the election. The president trails the former vice president by just 0.7 points in Florida, 0.2 points in Iowa, 0.8 points in Georgia, 4 points in Pennsylvania, 1.2 points in North Carolina and 1.2 points in Arizona.

However Mr Biden retains a solid lead of 6.2 points in Michigan and 6 points in Wisconsin, two states that flipped to Trump in 2016.

Mr Biden is the clear favourite to win the election but the Trump campaign insists that the president still has a good chance of a come-from-behind victory.

“We have multiple pathways (to win),” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said on Monday.

“We think that President Trump is going to hold all of the Sun Belt states that he won previously,” he said. “As you look to the upper Midwest, Joe Biden has to stop President Trump in four out of four states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. If President Trump wins just one of those in three of the four he won last time, he will be re-elected president.”

An upbeat Mr Trump tweeted; “Our numbers are looking VERY good all over. Sleepy Joe is already beginning to pull out of certain states. The Radical left is going down!”

pic.twitter.com/zKOgbNmRqL

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

Mr Trump was due to hold five rallies in five states on Monday in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

But his final days of campaigning have been dogged by a record surge in the coronavirus which is now infecting between 80,000 and 100,000 Americans a day.

A new Fox News Poll found that just two in ten Americans think the coronavirus is under control. That same poll found a large majority, 61 per cent to 36 per cent, of voter support limiting the spread of the virus over restarting the economy. This is the opposite message to that given by Mr Trump who has played down the virus and has called instead to reopening the economy.

The White House has hit back at the country’s top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci after he suggested that Mr Biden was taking public health more seriously than the president in his approach to the pandemic.

Dr Fauci said the Biden campaign, which holds small socially distanced campaign events, was “taking it seriously from a public health perspective.”

But the Trump campaign was “looking at it from a different perspective,” he said, which was focused on the economy and reopening the country.

The White House called Dr Fauci’s comments “unacceptable.”

“As a member of the Task Force, Dr Fauci has a duty to express concerns or push for a change in strategy, but he’s not done that, instead choosing to criticise the President in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the President’s opponent — exactly what the American people have come to expect from The Swamp,” the White House said.

In Michigan, Mr Trump attacked Mr Biden’s record, saying it had hurt the livelihoods of the people of Michigan.

“Joe Biden, sleepy Joe, spent 47 years outsourcing your jobs, opening your borders and sacrificing American blood and treasure in endless foreign wars. Michigan lost half of its auto jobs thanks to Biden’s NAFTA and China disasters,” he said. “Biden embraced the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have been a death sentence for your auto industry and your state. If it was OK with you, I cancelled it. … It never got off the ground for us.”

(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)