Joe Biden’s campaign team isn’t ruling out wins in several red states that Trump won in 2016, The Hill reports.
Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said Friday that they are looking at Arizona, Texas and Georgia as battleground states.
“This is something we are very, very focused on,” O’Malley Dillon told reporters at a digital briefing. “We believe there will be an expanded map in 2020. We believe there will be battleground states that have never been battleground states before.”
The campaign is putting Arizona at the top of its list of states they may be able to flip come Election Day. Former President Bill Clinton was the last Democrat to win Arizona in 1996.
Former President Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to win Texas and Georgia. He won the two states back in 1976.
The Biden campaign has also identified Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida as states that they think they can take in 2020. Hillary Clinton lost all of those states in 2016.
“We don’t have to win all of these states, but these are core states to our path to victory and represent the bulk of our focus and attention as we think about battleground states,” O’Malley Dillon said.
O’Malley Dillon said polling has Biden ahead right now in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, which would give him about 318 Electoral College votes.
“We feel like we’re uniquely positioned to do well in these states and we’re polling ahead to take us to a much larger Electoral College victory than we would even need to capture the presidency,” she said.