Joe Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, preemptively countered an expected move from President Trump to declare himself the victor of the presidential election on election night before all votes are counted and before analysts can accurately project a winner.
“It was reported yesterday that President Trump believes that if he wins the East Coast battleground states, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia, he plans to go out and declare victory,” O’Malley Dillon said Monday during a briefing on the Democratic presidential nominee’s potential paths to wining 270 Electoral College votes. “We want to be clear with you: If he tries to do that, that will not be true.”
She added, “Under no scenario will Donald Trump be declared a victor on election night.”
[PREDICT TUESDAY’S WINNER WITH THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER’S INTERACTIVE ELECTORAL MAP]
A report in Axios citing three unnamed sources said that even though it is likely an election winner cannot be projected on election night because of a massive rise in mail-in and absentee voting due to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump is considering a plan to “walk up to a podium on election night and declare he’s won.”
Trump on Sunday denied that he plans to declare victory on election night. “No, no, that was a false report,” he said, but he added that it “wasn’t fair” if results are not known that night.
“We’re going in the night of. As soon as the election is over, we’re going in with our lawyers,” Trump said.
In the briefing, O’Malley Dillon ran through the bright spots that she sees for Biden heading into Election Day. She cited high levels of early voting and data that shows registered Democrats have cast more early ballots than registered Republicans.
“We see that we have really strong leads in places like North Carolina and Wisconsin, and those leads are really important for us to think about what that means for Election Day,” O’Malley Dillon said.
Based on those figures, she said the campaign projects that Trump would need 62% of the votes cast on Election Day in North Carolina in order to win and 61% of the day-of vote in Wisconsin in order to win the state.
She also said that Biden has many more paths to victory than Trump does. For instance, she said that while Trump needs to win Florida in order to win the election, “we don’t need it to get to 270.”
“What Donald Trump is out there saying doesn’t live up to historical precedent or the facts,” O’Malley Dillon said. “We are well positioned with multiple pathways to victory.”
Even if Trump wins Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia — states that will likely be decided earlier than other battlegrounds — Biden “still has a clear and viable path to 270 electoral votes, and that path is through our easiest path: the Midwest and Pennsylvania,” she said.
