Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign asserted on Tuesday that he could still win the general election without Pennsylvania and Florida, two battleground states rich in electoral votes.
Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who has led the former vice president’s campaign since the end of the Democrat primaries, told supporters during a virtual election protection briefing that Biden had many paths to the White House. The campaign manager, in particular, emphasized that, even were the Democrat nominee to lose the biggest swing states considered up for grabs — Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and Texas — they were still confident of victory.
“While we believe we can win all four of them, and we are doing everything in our power to do that, we don’t need to win them and that’s a true luxury,” O’Malley Dillon said. “We don’t need to win any of these four big states in order to still get to 270 electoral votes.”
Biden’s campaign manager proceeded to layout a variety of potential “paths to victory” that did not include either Pennsylvania or Florida.
The implicit admission that two of the election’s biggest swing states could be out of reach comes as polling has shown the contest between Biden and President Donald Trump has tightened in recent days.
Although the former vice president is still favored to win the race, according to some political prognosticators, behind the scenes, his campaign is already preparing for a protracted legal battle that might stretch out well past Election Day.