Leading representatives of the campaign of the former president Donald Trump expressed to donors behind closed doors at a retreat for the Republican National Committee on Saturday that they think they can turn Democratic bastions like Minnesota and Virginia into his column in November.
Two persons who were present at the Four Seasons resort here said that pollster Tony Fabrizio and senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, armed with internal surveys, gave a series of presentations that centered on politics, messaging, and money.
According to Fabrizio’s calculations, which were presented on a slide that was provided to NBC News, Trump led Joe Biden by narrow margins in the crucial 2020 swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.
The Trump campaign is talking about pushing the electoral map further into Democratic areas like Minnesota and Virginia. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s reelection team is reportedly eyeing Florida and North Carolina, where the GOP has won the last two presidential elections and three straight presidential races.
With wins in the key states of Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, as well as an overall edge of over 44,000 votes, Biden won the 2020 election by a margin of 74 electoral votes.
“I think that the Biden campaign is deliberately playing a faux game by talking about [how] they’re going to expand the map in Florida and North Carolina,” LaCivita stated. “But we have a real, real opportunity in expanding the map in Virginia and Minnesota.”
While Trump’s advantage in his own polling in Minnesota is at odds with the few public surveys in that state, the top lines of the internal polling shared with donors are largely consistent with the scant public surveys that show Biden with a slight advantage in Virginia.
However, every public poll conducted in Virginia and Minnesota, as well as the trials conducted by Trump’s team, are inside their error margins, indicating that both states are very close to win.
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LaCivita claims that Trump’s staff experimented with head-to-head, four-way, and six-way contests in every state. According to him, Trump and Biden were deadlocked at 40% each in the six-way trial in Minnesota that also features four independent candidates. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came in at 9%.
Once there were just four contenders, Trump had a 46% to 41% advantage over Biden. When they faced off, Trump prevailed 49% to 46%.
In 2020, Biden won Minnesota by almost 7 percentage points, and since Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign in 1972, the state has not supported a Republican candidate for president.
In a six-way test with Kennedy at 8%, Biden led Trump in Virginia, according to Trump’s internal poll, 40% to 37%. In their head-to-head contest, Biden led Trump 48% to 44%. Additionally, Biden led Trump by a margin of 42% to 41% in a four-way contest.
The whole surveys, including with their methodology, were not made accessible to NBC News by Trump aides. Promises of scoring points on unfamiliar ground are frequently used by campaigns to entice contributors to contribute to their causes.
“Trump’s team has so little campaign or infrastructure to speak of they’re resorting to leaking memos that say ‘the polls we paid for show us winning, don’t ask us to show you the whole poll though.’ Sure, guys,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt stated.
“While we have 150 offices open with hundreds of staff across the key battlegrounds, the RNC is closing offices and hemorrhaging money on legal fees,” she continued. “Joe Biden has hit every battleground at least once, while Trump’s in the courtroom or on the golf course. We’ll see how that translates in November.”
