President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects largely hinge on the so-called Blue Wall, a trio of industrial states that offer the ultimate test for his message of a manufacturing revival.
In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, his campaign sees signs for optimism, even as recent polling shows Biden trailing presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in those key battlegrounds.
The Biden campaign says it ranks no swing state above another — and is focusing on all of them to keep open multiple paths to get to 270 Electoral College votes. It has ramped up sharply, doubling its battleground state staffing this month.
But unique factors in those one-time Blue Wall bastions – from demographics to the presence of well-placed allies – position them as his best shot at holding the White House. Biden can clinch a victory with their electoral votes even if he loses four other crucial swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
The Blue Wall states had long voted for Democrats in presidential contests before Trump won all three in 2016. Biden then swept them in 2020 and has traveled repeatedly to them since, including Thursday’s visit to Saginaw, Michigan, suggesting a heavy focus on keeping them in his column.
Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are dotted with the kinds of small cities and manufacturing centers that Biden has long begged his party to not forget. Michigan and Pennsylvania in particular are also organized labor strongholds where the president – who appeared on an autoworker picket line last year – can hammer his oft-repeated message that unions built the middle class.
Biden teed up his visit Thursday by announcing his opposition to the sale of United States Steel Corp. to a Japanese buyer, saying the company should remain American owned and run. The statement left unclear whether Biden would move to block it outright.
At the same time, Biden has a major cash advantage over Trump and is painstakingly linking efforts in those three states with their state-level parties.
“The tactical advantage we are building in states we know are going to be razor close — we have that, they do not,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground states director.
Favorable demographics
The Blue Wall states offer a more favorable demographic picture than some of the others that were close in 2020, with one or all having relatively strong concentrations of key groups for Biden, such as union voters, college-educated voters and Black voters.
And Democrats are optimistic about how a relocation boom since the pandemic may help Biden’s chances in places like Wisconsin’s Dane County, the deeply blue area that includes Madison.
“This time, even more than last time, the issues are on our side,” said Tanya Bjork, a Biden campaign adviser in Wisconsin.
When voters in these states have gone to the ballot box since Biden’s 2020 victory, they’ve delivered wins to his party: Democrats flipped a Pennsylvania Senate seat, won a key seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court and gained full control in Michigan for the first time in 40 years.
“It would be a frost-belt strategy for the president, if he can come back,” said Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report. “It would be more likely to be Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.”
Of the Blue Wall states, Michigan is so far the only one to hold a primary. Some 13% of Democratic primary voters there lobbed a protest vote against Biden by choosing “uncommitted” to show dissatisfaction with his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Yet the campaign sees a rich target in the nearly 300,000 voters who got behind GOP challenger Nikki Haley in that state’s Republican primary – many of them in suburban districts Biden had already been eyeing.
“There’s no road to the White House that isn’t going to go through Michigan,” Representative Debbie Dingell, a Democrat and Biden ally, told Bloomberg Television.
Tailor-Made message
Still, recent surveys do not paint an upbeat picture for Biden in these states. A February Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found Trump leading by two percentage points in Michigan, four in Wisconsin and six in Pennsylvania.
“Michigan is one where I think Donald Trump is in the driver’s seat,” said Aric Nesbitt, the Republican leader in Michigan’s state Senate. “His campaign seems better organized and ready to take advantage than I’ve seen in the last two presidential cycles.”
And while Biden’s economic message and industrial policy are tailor-made to appeal to places that were once manufacturing powerhouses, he has deep challenges with voters in Blue Wall states on those issues. Two-thirds in each state said the national economy is on the wrong track in the recent Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
The Biden campaign seeks to frame voters’ choice as a referendum on Trump. “This stark contrast will drive our victories across the battlegrounds that will decide this election,” spokesman Josh Marcus-Blank said.
Biden also will be counting on the strength of candidates in key U.S. Senate races to help him hold off Trump. Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, a Biden ally, is up for reelection this year. Senator Tammy Baldwin won her previous race in Wisconsin by 11 points, an unusually wide margin.
These states also offer Biden a different kind of firewall: Each has a Democratic governor, quelling concerns about Trump trying to interfere with or influence the counting of votes.
“The blue wall is obviously incredibly important,” said Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager. “We’re down to the smallest map in the history of American politics.”
