A pollster for President Biden admitted the re-election campaign needs to boost support from key demographic groups if it hopes to defeat GOP rival Donald Trump in November.
“All of the data consistently shows that our campaign needs to do better with younger voters, with black voters and with Hispanic voters,” top Biden campaign pollster Jefrey Pollack told The New Republic.
Surveys released Monday by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer showed Biden trailing Trump in five critical swing states that he won in 2020 — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, while Biden was leading in Wisconsin.
The poll found Biden is especially struggling with demographics who have historically voted Democratic.
In a hypothetical two-way matchup, younger voters between the ages of 18-29 favored Trump 46%-43%, despite over 60% of the demographic voting for Biden in 2020.
The former president was also close to Biden in the Hispanic vote — with 42% going for Trump and 45% supporting Biden.
Among black voters, the poll showed Trump at 23% support — the highest level of black support seen for any GOP presidential candidate since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, per the Times poll.
Pollack argued that the poll was likely not representative of what will happen in November, given the historic nature of Trump’s numbers.
“If Donald Trump were able to win 20% of black voters and essentially tie among Hispanic voters, it would be the greatest performance with non-white voters since the Civil Rights Act. So I think that feels a bit aggressive and excessive,” Pollack said on an episode of the “The Daily Blast” podcast.
The pollster also said a large percentage of young and Hispanic voters are undecided, and that the Biden campaign will court those fence-sitters before November.
“And that’s, I think, an advantage that the Biden campaign has the frankly, the Trump people don’t have because Donald Trump doesn’t have the money,” Pollack argued.
“They’re too busy dealing with court battles and not doing the things they need to do. The Biden campaign’s invested in field offices, in staff, and in advertising, to make sure that they are communicating with those particular voters from now until November.”
The pollster’s admission for the need of a numbers boost stands in contrast with what Biden and his advisers have been saying about his polling numbers.
The president has often said polls show him gaining ground and even defeating Trump in some cases, and, according to Axios, his close advisers believe the public polling numbers don’t accurately reflect Biden’s support.
“While the press doesn’t write about it, the momentum is clearly in our favor, with the polls moving towards us and away from Trump,” Biden said last week during a West Coast campaign trip.
A Biden campaign official told The Post, “This election will be close like all presidential races are. What matters is which candidate has a popular and winning agenda, and which candidate and their campaign are putting in the work to reach the voters who will decide this election. That candidate is Joe Biden.”
