- The Biden campaign is aiming for the president to compete in North Carolina and Florida in 2024, per the Washington Post.
- The early push would be launched through a TV ad campaign by the Democratic National Committee.
- As Biden looks at the electoral map for 2024, he’ll have to defend a slew of states that he narrowly won in 2020.
In 2020, now-President Joe Biden swept the Northeast, retook upper Midwestern states that the Democrats lost four years earlier, and secured critical wins in states like Arizona and Georgia en route to winning the White House.
Biden would eventually defeat then-President Donald Trump in a 306-232 electoral romp that November, winning with independents and cutting into some of the working-class support that had propelled Trump to victory in 2016.
But headed into 2024, top advisors in the Biden campaign are looking to invest in North Carolina, a former GOP stronghold-turned-perennial swing state that eluded the president by a little over one percentage point in 2020, while also looking to compete in Florida, according to The Washington Post.
Biden needs an electoral cushion in 2024
While the Biden campaign is looking to hold the states that it won four years ago, which also includes battlegrounds like Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, their strategy of competing in North Carolina and Florida is being tested in early television advertising spending courtesy of the Democratic National Committee, per The Post.
The strategy would give Biden some breathing room next year should he win North Carolina — which he lost by 1.3% in 2020 — but come up short in Arizona or Georgia, states that he won by razor-thin 0.3% and 0.23% margins, respectively.
Florida, which Trump won by 3.4% in 2020, will be a taller order for Biden to flip next year.
While the state has long been competitive at the presidential level, it has recently taken a sharp turn to the right, reelecting Gov. Ron DeSantis in a 19-point landslide last year. And DeSantis, who’s slated to enter the GOP presidential primary in the coming weeks, would likely seek to make his campaign a vehicle for conservatives who may have appreciated Trump’s presidency, but are looking to move on from the former president and anoint a new generational leader for the party.
Republicans think the Democrats are wasting their time
Republicans, who have made exurban gains in both North Carolina and Florida in recent years, reacted to the Democratic push with glee.
“We are excited the Biden campaign is investing in both of these states as Republicans always encourage Democrats to light money on fire in places where voters have solidly rejected them cycle after cycle,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Vaughn told The Post in a statement.
However, despite the statement from the GOP, North Carolina has a two-term Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, and remains competitive for the party on the statewide level.
And while Florida has developed a redder tint since over the past decade, with Republicans now enjoying a voter registration advantage, Democrats as recently as 2012 won the state’s electoral votes and reelected then-Sen. Bill Nelson to a third term. Newly-elected Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried, a former state agriculture commissioner, is working to reverse the party’s slide as it heads into next year’s races.
“If the Biden campaign, by spending money early and putting some people on the ground, can get to the place where Republicans have to take Florida seriously, that is a massive move on the chessboard,” Florida Democratic strategist Steve Schale told The Post.
Both North Carolina and Florida are expensive states to advertise in, which in the past has hampered investments from national Democrats as they’ve looked to boost candidates in more promising races for the party.
Cooper, who previously served as North Carolina’s attorney general for 16 years, applauded the Democratic Party’s early push into the Tar Heel state.
“This would be the right call for President Biden,” the governor told The Post. “North Carolina is the fullback of presidential politics. Republicans have to win it to be president. Democrats don’t.”
“But it’s critical for Democrats to keep it close because Republicans have to expend extraordinary resources and time making sure they win North Carolina,” he added.