President Trump's re-election may depend on flipping blue states like Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, people close to or involved with his campaign told Politico.
The campaign has always remained determined to win over those four states, but they were once considered luxury add-ons. But now campaign aides, senior administration officials, and GOP donors are reportedly privately acknowledging that it's just as plausible Trump loses Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, which would put Trump under the 270 electoral vote threshold required to win if everything else played out as it did in 2016. Wisconsin, in particular, is looking quite tenuous for Trump, NBC News reports. "Independents are walking away from Trump," said Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio talk show host in Wisconsin. "That's a big deal."
One of Trump's advisers told Politico that even if the campaign loses two of the Rust Belt states, picking up New Hampshire and one of New Mexico and Nevada would help clinch a second-straight victory. But at the moment, polls show Biden ahead in all three of those states, as well as Minnesota, long considered another possible Trump pickup.
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While Trump's team is coming up with ways to make sure they can get to 270, the Biden campaign says it's "playing offense" and looking to "get in front of a large volume" of voters who supported former President Barack Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Read more at Politico and NBC News.
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