Biden to Campaign in South Florida on Thursday Amid Fears Democratic Turnout Is Lagging
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is set to campaign in South Florida’s Broward County on Thursday after warnings from Democratic consultant James Carville and others that early voter turnout by Democrats in the region has been lagging.
“Somebody needs to fix that thing pronto, and Democrats — get on them and make them get some energy down there in South Florida, because we’ve got to build up a big margin down there,” Carville said in a Tuesday interview with MSNBC’s Brian Williams.
Former Republican consultant Mike Murphy agreed. “James is right about Miami-Dade,” Murphy said. “That’s where Trump has sold some tickets, particularly in the Cuban community. And there’s a little underperformance going on there. There’s other places where Biden is doing pretty well, but there [are] things to watch tactically here as the campaign closes.”
Roughly 41 percent of Florida’s early votes had come from Democratic voters as of Wednesday evening, compared to 37.5 percent from Republicans.
Biden’s first event on Thursday will be a 1:30 p.m. drive-in rally in South Florida’s Broward County. Hillary Clinton won the heavily Democratic area with 553,320 votes in 2016, nearly double Trump’s total of 260,591, even as she lost Florida by 1.2 percent. Early voting metrics suggest a little more than 50 percent of voters in the area had already cast their ballots as of Wednesday, leaving a decreasing number up for grabs.
The Democratic nominee’s second event will be a drive-in rally set for Tampa at 6:30 p.m., just two days after President Barack Obama visited Tampa for a rally on Tuesday. Biden will just miss President Donald Trump, who is also scheduled to hold a rally in Tampa at 1:30 p.m. that same day before heading to Fayetteville, North Carolina for a 6:30 p.m. event.
Democratic consultant Steve Schale suggested in a Tuesday column that both parties believe Florida is still competitive in the final week of the campaign, writing on his blog, “If Republicans weren’t still worried about the state, Trump wouldn’t have visited Pensacola, Ocala, and The Villages in the last week — and if Democrats didn’t think Florida was winnable, Biden and Obama wouldn’t be on their way here this week. The most valuable commodity on a campaign is time — and campaigns have far better data than us — or even Twitter — so keep that in mind.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
