[Read our 2020 presidential election electoral college explainer.]
DES MOINES — President Trump stunned the political universe in 2016 with a series of critical Northern swing states, winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than one percentage point and forcing Democrats into four years of soul-searching over what went wrong. wrong in their historical geographical position. base.
Four years later, the frigid Midwest is once again seen as the primary battleground for the election, and on Friday Mr. Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. crisscrossed the region campaigning in states that not only the president must win but also central importance to the identities of both parties.
For Democrats, their blue wall in the Midwest was for years their only defense against the GOP stronghold in the South, proof that they were still the party of workers, working families and predominantly black inner cities. For Republicans, these states are a key part of their rural base, and Mr. Trump has made his pitch to farmers and white working-class voters here.
As the country reported a record number of coronavirus cases last week, Mr Trump continued to insist on Friday that the illness caused by the virus was not serious. At a rally in Michigan, a state that reported a 91 percent increase in new cases from its average two weeks earlier, made the extraordinary and baseless accusation that US doctors were profiting from coronavirus deaths, claiming they were paid more if patients died. He also mocked Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who attended the rally, for wearing a mask. “I've never seen her in a mask,” he said. “They are very politically correct.”
Mr. Biden, in Iowa, took the opposite approach, pointing to the state's record number of new cases and noting that Iowa's state fair was canceled this year for the first time since World War II. “And Donald Trump quit,” Mr. Biden said.
Later in Minnesota, Mr. Biden rebuked Mr. Trump for his comments about doctors profiting from virus deaths. “Doctors and nurses go to work every day to save lives,” he said. “They are doing their job. Donald Trump should stop attacking them and do his job.”
If Election Night Round 1 is held in the Sun Belt — in southeastern states like Florida, North Carolina and Georgia — Round 2 will be held in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. Trailing in most polls and facing an increasingly narrow path to victory, Mr Trump has been forced to hold a series of large rallies in states he cannot afford to lose.
That pressure was reflected in Trump's latest campaign, starting with stops in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota on Friday. Shortly before Mr. Trump took the stage at his first rally in Waterford Township, Mich., dressed in a black coat and black leather gloves, his campaign announced that he would return to the state for two more rallies on Monday, with additional stops. in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on the same day.
“It's trying to repeat the 2016 book,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll. “It goes back to those three states. He did it effectively, surprised us all and won with that strategy.”
But this time, the landscape is more difficult. Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump by eight percentage points in Michigan in a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College, underscoring his troubled position in the Midwestern states, where his base of white voters without college degrees seems to move away from him. . In Wisconsin, an average of polls shows Mr. Biden with a 10-point lead.
In all, across the four states the candidates visited on Friday, the Biden campaign outspent Mr. Trump on the air, $2.2 million to $1.4 million, over the past 24 hours, according to Advertising Analytics. The most widely broadcast message from Trump's cash-strapped campaign appeared to be lifted from his 2016 campaign for the White House: a promise of “bringing jobs back home”.
The cash-strapped Mr. Biden is running a much more complex advertising campaign with 27 different ads on the air in the four states. of most frequently displayed ad focused on virus control.
Neither campaign made major changes to its paid strategy Friday, though Trump's campaign added $1.8 million to the national cable market, airing on channels with conservative audiences like Fox News and the History Channel.
Trump's campaign advisers, while expressing confidence in the president's prospects, have pointed to some external factors that make this year more challenging on the North's battlefields. The governorships of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are now held by elected officials who refer to themselves as “anti-Trump Democrats.” Early voting, they admit, is an important “X factor” whose impact is not yet fully understood.
And the pandemic remains a top concern for voters, somewhat dampening the economic gains Mr. Trump had hoped to make.
Campaign officials point to the Milwaukee suburb as one of the few suburbs across the country that have moved in Mr. Trump's direction since the summer. Unlike other areas, where law and order has fallen as a top priority, they said it has remained a top priority there since Jacob Blake was shot in Kenosha, Wis.
But Mr. Franklin, who runs Wisconsin's most respected political pollster, said his polls did not show the president winning over new voters with his law-and-order proposal. After the president's visit to Kenosha in September, Mr. Franklin said, Republican approval of his response to the protests rose 21 points. But independents rose only three points.
“It's preaching to the choir, and it gets a loud amen, but it doesn't add more people to the pews,” Mr. Franklin said.
On the campaign trail this week, the president has focused more on personal than policy contrasts and insisted the country was turning the corner on the virus while flouting public health precautions. On Friday, at the first of his three rallies, Mr. Trump criticized one of his favorite foils, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Michigan, and the crowd chanted in response: “Lock her up.”
“Not me, not me,” Mr. Trump said of the chant, while doing nothing to stop it. “I get blamed every time this happens.”
At his final stop of the day in Rochester, Minn., the president left the stage after less than 30 minutes, visibly angry at state restrictions that deprived him of the large crowds he prefers. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has limited gatherings in his state to no more than 250 people.
Mr Trump claimed there were “at least 25,000 people who wanted to be here tonight” and accused Democratic leaders such as Keith Ellison, the state's attorney general, of preventing his supporters from gathering. Mr Trump claimed his supporters were “barred from entry by radical Democrats”.
He left the stage without his usual finishes, where he talks about “win, win, win” and dances to the Village People's “YMCA”
Mr. Biden's Midwestern swing on Friday included stops in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, an itinerary that showed both the promise and peril of the electoral map for his campaign, with the former vice president playing both offense and defense in in a few hours.
Iowa gave Mr. Biden a “punch” early this year, as he later put it after finishing fourth in the state's caucus, and was not among the battleground states his campaign focused on the most. Although Iowa voted twice for Barack Obama, it swung sharply to the right in 2016, when Mr. Trump won by nine percentage points.
But polls have shown a tight race between Mr Trump and Mr Biden this time around, and Mr Trump is scheduled to travel to the state on Sunday for a rally in Dubuque. Mr. Biden's visit also had the potential to boost a Democratic Senate candidate, Theresa Greenfield, who is challenging the incumbent, Joni Ernst, in a tight race.
On a bright fall day, Mr. Biden held a car rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, where supporters decorated their cars with Biden signs and honked their horns to show their support. Others stood next to their cars waving American flags.
Standing outside her minivan, Linda Garlinghouse, 69, was hoping for a big win from Mr. Biden — an outcome that would be more likely if Mr. Biden wins a state like Iowa. “I'm just hoping for a landslide,” he said, so there would be “no doubt about the election.”
Iowa is in the midst of a surge in coronavirus cases, and Mr. Biden was introduced by an Iowa man whose 92-year-old father died of the virus, underscoring the personal pain the pandemic has caused so many families. In a heavy agricultural situation, Mr. Biden also criticized Mr. Trump on trade, blaming the president's “weak and chaotic China trade policy” for hurting farmers and manufacturers.
During his Midwestern swing on Friday, Mr. Biden also took valuable time to stop in Minnesota, a state that hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972. But Mr. Trump has set his sights here and long considered Minnesota a breakout state in 2016, when it lost by just 1.5 percentage points.
Polls have shown Mr. Biden with a wider lead this year, despite Mr. Trump's efforts to flip the state, and Mr. Biden told reporters on Friday morning that he was not worried about that. “I don't take anything for granted,” he said before leaving Delaware. “We will work for every vote until the last minute.”
Thomas Kaplan reported from Des Moines and Annie Karni from Washington. Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from Philadelphia and Sydney Ember from Connecticut.
