President Joe Biden’s campaign for re-election is determined to maintain the states that led to his victory in the 2020 Presidential election and simultaneously venture into regions it didn’t secure, such as North Carolina and the increasingly Republican stronghold, Florida. The campaign asserts that these plans offer multiple viable routes to secure 270 electoral votes for a successful re-election bid.
Last month’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, provided detailed remarks on the campaign strategy for the first time, outlining that the 2024 race presents substantial opportunities to increase Democratic support. This strategy was released while President Biden was visiting Japan. However, he has since cancelled upcoming visits to Australia and Papua New Guinea to address the debt limit talks in Washington.
Rodriguez elaborated that early investments are being planned by the re-election campaign to ensure the retention of battleground states won by Biden in 2020, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Efforts are also in place to secure Georgia and Arizona, states that hadn’t favoured the Democrats in a presidential race for several decades until three years ago.
The campaign is also setting sights on extending its reach to states such as North Carolina and Florida, with Rodriguez confirming both would be targeted through a seven-figure advertising investment covering a range of swing states.
Biden’s re-election campaign is founded on allowing him to ‘complete his work’ and aims to depict extreme Republicans like ex-President Donald Trump and his ‘Make America Great Again’ followers as dangers to fundamental American political values.
Though Trump is making another bid for the presidency, despite not mentioning him directly, Rodriguez’s memo forecasts that Biden would again triumph over the MAGA extreme agenda.
The president’s political consultants have consistently asserted that Biden has defeated Trump once and can do so again. If another contender, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, grabs the GOP presidential nomination, Biden’s team remains confident that their strategy will still be effective given the overall alignment of top Republicans with the MAGA movement.
Despite not being explicitly mentioned in Rodriguez’s memo, contrasting Biden’s vision with his opponent’s might be the most compelling re-election strategy. A survey last month by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research suggested that only half of Democrats want the 80-year-old Biden to run again. Still, 81% of respondents said they would likely support him in the 2024 general election if he is the Democratic nominee.
According to the memo, the re-election campaign will broadcast its message via online platforms and direct interactions with voters, leaning heavily on the influence of voters’ existing social networks.
Rodriguez stated, “Despite the dwindling trust in the media, faith in personal networks has never been higher.” She committed that the campaign regularly engages with its traditional base of women, Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters, and younger demographics who didn’t participate in the 2022 midterms. The memo also mentions that organized labour will be crucial to the campaign’s success.
Next year, Biden’s re-election campaign aims to improve its standing among specific voter groups, building on 2020, where Biden saw minor but significant gains among rural and white working-class voters in battleground states. The memo recognizes a slight increase in Democratic support from these demographics in the previous year’s midterms in crucial states.
Biden’s success in securing 306 electoral votes in 2020 was primarily thanks to suburban solid support, and there’s potential for further growth in this demographic, particularly with the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision.
National Democrats have continued to support Biden strongly. His only competition in the party’s presidential primary comes from self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. As a result, as Chavez wrote, the re-election campaign “can leverage party infrastructure from Day One, including tools, technology, and people, meaning we don’t have to start from scratch.”
The success of Biden’s re-election strategy is thus profoundly intertwined with his campaign’s ability to maintain and grow support in crucial demographics, amplify its message through personal networks, and take advantage of party unity to hit the ground running. With its eyes set on a diverse set of battleground states, the campaign is keen to demonstrate that the President remains the best option to continue leading the nation into the future.
