Biden uses NYT poll to argue only he can beat Trump

Former Vice President Joe Biden doubled down on his argument that he’s the most electable challenger to President Trump, citing polling showing him beating the president in 2020.

Biden sent a fundraising email to supporters citing a New York Times-Siena College poll released Monday showing him ahead in a hypothetical 2020 match-up with Trump in key swing states while Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) trail the president in the same states.

{mosads}”This speaks for itself,” Biden’s campaign said. “If Joe Biden wins the primary, he can beat Trump in a general election. Other candidates can’t.”

The campaign included a graphic showing Biden beating Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Arizona. The graphic also shows Sanders trailing in all of those states except Pennsylvania, where he pulls even, and Warren losing in all of those states except Arizona, where she ties the president.

In the Times-Siena College poll, however, Sanders actually leads Trump by 3 points in Michigan, ties him in Wisconsin and narrowly trails him in Pennsylvania. The graphic also leaves off North Carolina, a state where Trump leads all three Democrats in the poll. 

Electability has remained at the heart of Biden’s appeal, with the former vice president often saying he is the only candidate who can unseat Trump and that he would beat the president “like a drum.”

However, several other polls show that Warren and Sanders, who round out the top three in most surveys, could be competitive in 2020.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll released Tuesday found that Biden and Sanders lead Trump by 17 percentage points, while Warren leads him by 15 points. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg both lead Trump by 11 points in the survey.

The fundraising request comes amid Democratic hand-wringing over the Biden campaign’s finances. While it reported a $15.2 million haul in the third quarter of 2019, that total fell millions of dollars short of the third-quarter hauls of Warren and Sanders. 

The former vice president also finished the third quarter with just under $9 million cash on hand, while Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg and Harris had $33.7 million, $25.7 million, $23.4 million and $10.5 million, respectively.

The fundraising concerns coincided with a slip in the polls, though the former vice president still leads in many surveys and has an 8.5-point edge in the RealClearPolitics polling index. 

“Folks, we’ve been honest with you about this from the beginning,” the Biden campaign said. “We told you Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both have double the money we have to spend on winning the Democratic primary.”

“The decisions we make now decide the next six years of our country,” it continued. “Thanks for being on the team that can get Donald Trump out of office.”