A top official with President Biden’s re-election campaign revealed Monday that she doesn’t believe Florida is in play for the incumbent in the 2024 presidential election.
Biden campaign Chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon responded, “No,” when asked in an interview with Puck News if she considered Florida a “battleground state.”
Her comments run counter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, who told reporters during a Democratic Party rally in the Sunshine State just days ago that Florida could swing in favor of the 81-year-old incumbent.
“Florida is in play,” Harrison told Tampa, Fla., outlet ABC Action News last week. “That’s why I am here right now.”
Earlier this month, a Fox News poll showed former President Donald Trump leading the race in his adopted home state.
In a head to head rematch of the 2020 election, Trump leads Biden by 4 points, 50% to 46%, the poll showed.
With third-party candidates included, the 78-year-old former president’s advantage grew to 7 points, 47% to 40%.
Meanwhile, a FiveThirtyEight average of Florida polls has Trump ahead by 8.2 percentage points.
In 2020, Trump beat Biden in the Sunshine State by a 51.2% to 47.8% margin. He defeated former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by a 49% to 47.8% margin in 2016.
Dillon, who served as Biden’s campaign manager in the 2020 race, argued that at least seven states will be battleground ones this cycle.
She named Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina as states that could go either way in November.
Several 2024 polls have shown Trump holding narrow leads over Biden in those seven states.
“The job of the campaign is to keep as many battleground states in play for as long as possible so we can navigate any flexibility in the race,” Dillon said. “If you look at 2020, Georgia and Arizona weren’t even in play at all at this point, and certainly were not traditional battleground states. So at the end of the day, all we have to do is get to 270, and the easiest path is certainly [by preserving] the blue wall, where there’s a lot of core-coalition strength for the president.”
“But I am bullish on North Carolina, and I don’t f*** around in saying that — because I was bullish on Arizona [four years ago] and that’s because we looked at it very closely,” she added.
Biden lost North Carolina to Trump in 2020 by 1.3 percentage points.
