With Election Day less than 48 hours away, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden finds himself with multiple paths to 270 electoral votes against President Donald Trump and looks to expand the map. However, that is not helping calm Democrats fear of another 2016 upset.
It is no secret that Democrats were overconfident in 2016 and every day since, they have had fear of another upset. Despite being in a much better position this time around, the panic still remains in the back of everyone’s minds.
“I’m ping-ponging back and forth between utter dread and cautious optimism,” Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas told NBC.
Mr. Biden leads President Trump nationally by eight points, according to FiveThirtyEight‘s forecast, a much larger average than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. The former Vice President leads in the rust belt battleground states he needs to win, something Clinton struggled with.
As everyone knows, Clinton made the fatal error of not campaigning in Wisconsin since she won the nomination but Mr. Biden has made it a point to travel back to the Dairy State and has been campaigning in the rust belt, including stopping in Pennsylvania 12 times.
All Mr. Biden would need to do is hold down the Clinton states from 2016 while taking back Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He’s also close in the polling in two states Mr. Trump won in 2016 – Georgia and Texas. If Mr. Biden wins both of those, he could blow out the President and quiet any talk of taking the election to the Supreme Court.
However, don’t tell that to the President.
“I will say, 2016 was an incredible, earthshaking event,” Trump said in Bucks County, near Philadelphia. “But 2020, and I never thought I’d say this, 2020, what we’re doing right now through Tuesday, what we’re doing is far bigger.”
