2020 election: Biden campaign says it can win without Florida or Pennsylvania

Both states are viewed as crucial battlegrounds for the 2020 election

Joe Biden addressing crowd at campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 2 November, 2020 (Getty Images)

As Americans head to the polls, the Biden campaign believes it can win even if it loses in some key swing states.

"We continue to have multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters on Tuesday.  

That includes scenarios that don’t include Mr Biden winning Florida or Pennsylvania. Both states went for Donald Trump in 2016, but have been eyed as toss-ups in 2020.

“Trump has such a harder hill to climb today to overcome the advantage we came in with,” Ms O’Malley Dillon added.

While the campaign may be confident, it has also been pouring time and resources into trying to take Pennsylvania. Joe Biden’s first campaign stop after announcing his candidacy a year and a half ago was in western Pennsylvania, and he and running mate Senator Kamala Harris crisscrossed the state on Monday making a final push to voters.

The president, meanwhile, spent the day before the election racing through a number of battleground states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and said he felt solid about his chances.

“I think we win this state. We win Pennsylvania. We’re going to win Florida,” Mr Trump said at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “We’re going to win the whole thing,” he added.

According to poll aggregates from RealClearPolitics, the president is leading in swing states like Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina. But Mr Biden, on the other had, maintains an expected 7.2 percent lead nationally, a 1.2 per cent lead in Pennsylvania, and a razor-thin .09 per cent lead in Arizona and Florida.

The Biden campaign also said in a briefing that polling places in states like Florida, Wisconsin, and North Carolina seemed to be running smoothly without major delays or large numbers of ballots being rejected. 

Campaign advisor Bob Bauer also argued that predictions from Republicans of mass chaos or fraud at the polls, as well as legal challenges to election rules, had thus far been unfounded.

“The courts recognize these last-minute hijinks for what it is,” he told reporters. "They're designed to generate the appearance of a cloud over the election. They are not in fact bonafide legal claims against voters."

This election has seen a surge in mail-in and early voting. More than 100 million people have cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, representing more than 70 per cent of all votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.