Obama Says Biden Would Rely on ‘Good Instincts’: Campaign Update
Biden is ahead in Trump’s backup states. And Trump undermined his own pitch to seniors.
(Bloomberg) -- Former President Barack Obama praised Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s “good instincts.” The Lincoln Project raised $39.4 million in the third quarter. And another big county in Pennsylvania reports mail-in ballot mishap.
There are 20 days until the election and 62 days until the Electoral College meets.
Other Developments:
Obama Says Biden Would Rely on ‘Good Instincts’
Obama said Biden would be a president who used his “good instincts” to set a direction for his administration and would leave it to competent aides to work out the details of policy.
The Democratic presidential nominee “understands the importance of surrounding himself with people who are smart” and who “believe in science and believe in expertise and believe in, you know, institutional knowledge and experience,” Obama said in an episode of “Pod Save America” released Wednesday.
Biden will “have a lot of people around him who were able to translate his good instincts into actual policy that works,“ Obama added in the interview by the podcast’s creators, his former aides Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor.
Obama also urged Americans who are “skeptical of what the government can do” to vote in November. “The idea that you’d give away your power because you’re not getting 100% when you could get 30%, 40%, 50% better, that doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
Obama endorsed his former vice president in April, after Biden’s primary opponents had dropped out of the race. Biden has said that Obama would go out to campaign for him in the weeks leading up to Election Day. -- Max Berley
Anti-Trump Lincoln Project Raises $39.4 Million in Third Quarter (4:48 p.m.)
The Lincoln Project, a super political action committee founded by Republican opponents of Trump, raised a record $39.4 million in the third quarter, according to its latest filing with the Federal Election Commission.
The group, which was founded by Republican operatives including George Conway, the husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, had its best fundraising quarter since launching in November. Overall it’s raised $59 million.
The group got a $1 million contribution from investor and philanthropist Gordon Getty and $200,000 from entertainment mogul David Geffen. Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, Bain Capital’s Jonathan Lavine and John Pritzker, founding partner of Geolo Capital, each gave $100,000.
Karla Jurvetson, who’s made seven-figure contributions to super-PACs that supported Elizabeth Warren and Biden, gave the group $10,000. Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly led Trump’s White House communications team in 2018, also gave $10,000.
The group, which has become known for its acerbic ads targeting Trump and some vulnerable Senate Republicans, spent $37 million in the third quarter and started October with $13.2 million in the bank. -- Bill Allison
Map Error Reroutes 29,000 Pennsylvania Ballots (3:01 p.m.)
The Pennsylvania county that includes Pittsburgh is reporting it sent the wrong mail-in ballots to voters.
The Allegheny County Elections Division in Pittsburgh said 28,879 voters received an incorrect ballot and are being sent a correct one. A “ballot image mapping error” by the vendor hired for the printing, collating and mailing of ballots caused voter information to be matched to the wrong ballots, the county said.
The mistake comes after almost 50,000 absentee ballots were sent last week to the wrong voters in Franklin County, Ohio, which includes Columbus, from an initial batch of 237,498 ballots mailed on Oct. 6 with the start of early voting in the state.
Election officials blamed a faulty setting on a machine that automatically inserts ballots into envelopes for mailing. They said correct ballots are being sent and safeguards put in place to ensure only one ballot is counted from each voter.
Trump highlighted the mistake in Franklin County to again baselessly claim that the election would be “rigged” against him. -- Mark Niquette
Biden Leads Trump by 9 Points in Michigan (2:33 p.m.)
Biden leads Trump in the critical battleground state of Michigan by 9 percentage points in a new poll of likely voters released Wednesday by the Detroit Free Press.
The poll found Biden leading the incumbent 48% to 39%. The results were similar to the September poll by the Detroit Free Press, which showed Biden ahead of Trump by 8 percentage points, 40% to 48%.
Wednesday’s poll found that 51% of Michigan voters had a favorable view of Biden, compared with 41% for Trump. The president’s favorability has not surpassed 42% in the Detroit Free Press poll this cycle.
The poll was conducted Oct. 8-12 among 600 likely voters in Michigan. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. -- Emma Kinery
Biden Edges Trump in North Carolina Poll (1:46 p.m.)
Biden led Trump by 4 percentage points in a poll of North Carolina likely voters released Wednesday by the New York Times and Siena College.
The poll showed Biden leading Trump, 46% to 42%. In 2016, Trump won the state by a margin of 4 percentage points over Hillary Clinton, 50% to 46%.
While Biden’s lead is within the margin of error of 4.5 percentage points, the poll was the second survey this week to give the Democrat the edge in the state.
A poll of North Carolina registered voters released Tuesday by Monmouth University showed Biden leading 49% to 46%, also within the margin of error.
The New York Times/Siena poll also showed Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham leading Senator Thom Tillis 41% to 37%, despite the revelations of inappropriate text messages between Cunningham and a woman who is not his wife.
The New York Times/Siena College poll was conducted Oct. 9-13 among 627 likely voters. -- Emma Kinery
Democrat Bullock Is Competitive in Montana Senate Race (1:07 p.m.)
In the latest troubling poll for Senate Republicans, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat, is competitive with incumbent Senator Steve Daines, even as Trump is ahead in the state.
In Montana State University’s Treasure State poll released Wednesday, 49% of likely and active registered voters backed Bullock, while 47% supported Daines -- a lead within the margin of error.
The “Battle of the Steves” has become one of the most expensive and hotly contested races in the country as Republicans struggle to hold on to their Senate majority. More than $141 million has been spent or reserved for advertising so far in a state that has a little more than 1 million people, per Advertising Analytics. Democrats have an $18 million edge so far.
The poll also found that Trump had a lead of just 7 points over Biden in a state the president won by 20 points in 2016.
The poll of 1,787 Montanans was conducted Sept. 14-Oct. 2. It has a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points. -- Steven T. Dennis
Trump Would Need a Record Polling Error to Win (12:21 p.m.)
Trump won in 2016 after beating the polls by a few percentage points. But to repeat that feat, he’d need to overperform by a historic margin.
Jim Reid, a global strategist at Deutsche Bank AG, wrote in a note Wednesday that a review of the margin of error in final polls and polling averages since 1948 showed Trump is currently far behind past surprises.
Polls have been within zero and 3 percentage points of the final outcome in the last six presidential elections. The largest error was in 1948, when President Harry Truman won by 5 points, even though he was behind 4.4 points in the final polls.
That’s a 9.4 point error, but Trump is currently behind Biden by 9.8 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.
“A Truman-style error in the polls may give Mr. Trump a chance given the Electoral College system,” Reid wrote, “but the reality is that -- unless the polls narrow into Election Day -- a Trump victory would be the biggest error in the modern era of mass polling.”
Hillary Clinton was ahead by 3.2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls on Election Day in 2016. She won the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, a 1.1 point difference. But she lost the Electoral College because she narrowly lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump, Biden to Hold Dueling Town Halls Thursday Night (10:18 a.m.)
Trump and Biden won’t debate remotely, but they’ll still be answering questions from voters at the same time in separate cities.
After doctors reviewed the president’s medical data to ensure he is not still contagious, NBC News announced Wednesday morning that it will hold a town hall with Trump in Miami at 8 p.m. Eastern Thursday.
The event will be moderated by “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, who will sit 12 feet from Trump. People in the audience will be required to wear masks.
At the same time, Biden will appear at an ABC News town hall with anchor George Stephanopoulos in Philadelphia, which was announced last week.
Trump backed out of the second debate after the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced that it would be held virtually, saying he did not want to “waste my time.”
Biden Ahead in Trump’s Backup States, Too (9:45 a.m.)
The Trump campaign’s top plan has always been to win the battleground states -- especially Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But the campaign has also thrown out some backup plans: winning some combination of Maine, Minnesota, Nevada and New Hampshire.
But Biden is running ahead in those places, along with the battleground states to boot.
A Boston Globe/Suffolk poll released Wednesday showed 51% of likely voters in New Hampshire backed Biden and 41% supported Trump.
Conducted Oct. 8-12, the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Meantime, Biden is ahead by 12.8 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in Maine, and essentially tied in the race for a single elector in the state’s Second Congressional District.
Biden is also up nine points in Minnesota and 5.2 points in Nevada in the RealClearPolitics averages.
Trump Undermines His Own Pitch to Seniors (6:50 a.m.)
Trump needs seniors, but he keeps getting in the way of his own outreach.
Voters over the age of 65 were a key part of his 2016 coalition, and they’re crucial to him winning states like Arizona and Florida this time around.
But recent polls show Biden with a double-digit lead among seniors.
So the Trump campaign announced this week it would be spending eight figures on ads promoting his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and attacking Biden on Social Security and Medicare in a bid to win back seniors.
But Trump undermined all of that Tuesday with a tweet that made fun of Biden’s age by arguing that he should be a resident of a nursing home.
End of Straight-Ticket Voting Leads to Long Lines in Texas (6:28 a.m.)
Long lines have been reported in early voting in Georgia, Ohio and Virginia due to intense voter interest, equipment malfunctions and social-distancing requirements.
In Texas, you can add one more reason: the end of straight-ticket voting.
Facing increasing Democratic strength in the state, the Republican-led legislature voted to end straight-ticket voting starting with this year’s election, leading to long lines on the first day of early voting Tuesday.
The practice, which allows voters to pick all candidates of one party, was particularly popular in some of Texas’s large urban counties, where more than two-thirds of voters took advantage of it in 2016. It was something of a time saver, since Texas ballots can have a lot of down-ballot races and other local measures.
This will also be the first presidential election without straight-ticket voting in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan. Only six states still allow straight-ticket voting: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma and South Carolina.
Pizza to the Polls Is Sending Food Trucks to Polling Places
One group is hoping to make those long lines at polling places a little less rough by sending in hot pizza and food trucks.
Started in 2016, the nonprofit Pizza to the Polls collects reports of long wait times at polling places around the country, then pays local restaurants to deliver pizzas for voters, volunteers and elections officials.
This year, Pizza to the Polls is working with Uber Eats to send food trucks to cities in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as nine other states and the District of Columbia.
“Poll worker shortages are reducing the number of polling places — and social distancing measures are limiting the number of people who can vote at one time,” the group writes. “As a result, lines are getting longer. By launching food trucks in cities with a history of long lines, we plan to safely provide free, individually wrapped snacks and beverages to everyone.”
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