US election 2020: Donald Trump pulls Florida ads, bets on battlegrounds north

US President Donald Trump’s campaign has all but pulled its advertising out of Florida, as it stakes its relatively small bank account on the industrial northern states that carried him to victory in 2016. Since the beginning of the fall campaign on Labour Day, Trump has cut US$24 million from his national ad budget, while former vice-president Joe Biden has added US$197 million. Biden has outspent Trump three-to-one over that time. Trump was placing his final bet on just four battleground states: Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Polls show he is down in all those states but Ohio, where it is effectively even. The president still has US$350,275 budgeted to spend on ads in Florida through Election Day, but has cancelled US$5.5 million in the final two weeks of the campaign, according to data compiled from ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics. Biden and Trump were effectively tied in the RealClearPolitics average of polls for Florida. The Trump campaign said its organisational strength in the state would carry it into Trump’s column on Election Night as Republicans get more in-person voters to the polls. “You have to have a ground game. Joe Biden does not have one. The president does,” Trump communications director Tim Murtaugh said. “That’s why you saw the president close the gap in Florida.” Biden tapped one of his top surrogates, popular former president Barack Obama, to deliver a closing argument for Democrats in Florida as the former vice-president took his campaign to the Republican stronghold of Georgia on Tuesday. 10 moments that defined the 2020 US election campaign Trump meanwhile maintained his hectic campaign pace, holding an open-air rally in Michigan followed by two events in Wisconsin. “I’ve got to say I’m working my ass off here!” he boomed in Lansing, Michigan, eliciting a huge cheer. In the latest sign that Texas was really in play in the presidential race, Michael Bloomberg will be spending about a million dollars a day the last week of the campaign on statewide advertising in Texas in both Spanish and English to help Biden defeat Trump. Howard Wolfson, a top Bloomberg adviser, told The New York Times that the billionaire businessman and former Democratic presidential contender, who has already committed US$100 million to helping Biden in Florida, had asked his team to poll other states where Trump may be especially vulnerable and both Ohio and Texas looked ripe. All together, Bloomberg’s super PAC, Independence USA, will spend US$15 million on advertising in the two states beginning on Wednesday, The Times reported. The Texas ads will attack the president’s management of the response to Covid-19. Trump won Ohio and Texas by similar margins in 2016, carrying Ohio by 8 points and Texas by 9 points. But the Obama-Biden ticket carried Ohio in 2008 and 2012, while Texas has not voted for a Democrat for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Trump vs Biden: what happens if the 2020 US election is contested? Recent polls have shown Biden and Trump running neck-and-neck in Texas, but the New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday found Trump ahead by 4 points, 47 per cent to 43 per cent for Biden. Election tracking website RealClearPolitics has Biden up 7.6 points in an average of national polls and leading Trump by nine points in Michigan. In Wisconsin, Biden was up by an average of 5.5 points. Trump dismissed the polls in a tweet on Tuesday and accused the media of focusing on “Covid, Covid, Covid” to hurt his chances for re-election. “The Real Polls are now saying that I am WINNING!” he said. According to data from the US Elections Project, nearly 70 million people have already voted in the US presidential election, meaning voters have cast more than half of the total ballots counted in the 2016 election. Around 137 million people voted in total in the election four years ago, according to the Federal Election Commission. Early voting has also far surpassed the 47 million early votes recorded by the Elections Project in 2016. How the Electoral College picks the winner Far more registered Democrats than Republicans so far appear to have used postal voting, though Republicans have surpassed Democrats in in-person early voting, according to the Elections Project. Trump has repeatedly claimed that voting by mail leads to election fraud, an assertion that is not supported by evidence. Voting by mail and using drop boxes for ballots sent out through the postal system has increased this year, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic, though the trend has been on the increase for a number of general elections. However, it could also indicate that voters this year have simply made up their minds, solidly, well ahead of the November 3 election day, in numbers not seen in the past. Bloomberg, Tribune News Service and Agence France-Presse

US election 2020: Donald Trump pulls Florida ads, bets on battlegrounds north

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Joe Biden goes on offence in Georgia while Donald Trump targets Midwest Michael Bloomberg commits millions of dollars to help Biden in Texas

Joe Biden goes on offence in Georgia while Donald Trump targets Midwest

Michael Bloomberg commits millions of dollars to help Biden in Texas