Fears of a Purple Wave in Democratic Strongholds Cast Doubt on Biden’s Campaign

As President Joe Biden’s campaign viability faces new critiques and daily defections, solidly blue states may be shifting toward purple, according to polling and local officials across the country.

Still months away from the general election, some Democratic leaders and polls show that Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia—all of which Biden won by several percentage points in 2020—are potentially ebbing closer to battleground states for Biden and former president Donald Trump.

“The dynamics are different in each of the four possible battleground states: Minnesota, for instance, has a knack for voting for third-party candidates, while New Mexico has a large population of Hispanic men, a group that Mr. Biden has struggled to win over,” The New York Times’s Nicholas Nehamas and Kellen Browning wrote on Friday. “But consistent across all four states are widespread fears about Mr. Biden’s age, unhappiness with inflation and electorates that are more closely divided than many national observers realize, according to interviews with local Democratic officials and strategists.”

This apparent transition of Democratic stronghold states comes after weeks of contentious commotion surrounding Biden’s fitness to lead the party’s ticket—and this country for another four years—following a poor debate performance at the end of June. As of July 12, according to tracking from the Times, 19 representatives, one senator, and a growing number of powerful donors and business leaders have all called on the president to step aside, with even more expressing concern for whether Biden could effectively prevent another Trump administration.

“I believe the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch,” Representative Mike Levin of California said. “I fear if he fails to make the right choice, our democracy will hang in the balance,” Illinois Representative Brad Schneider said Thursday. “I understand why President Biden wants to run. He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again,” Peter Welch, the first Senator in the country to push for Biden to drop out, wrote in a Washington Post editorial, “But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not.”

Since the immediate fallout from Biden’s poor debate performance, the president has been consistent in his insistence that he is going to stay in the race.

In a post-debate interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Biden dismissed concerns that his cognitive health was declining and attempted to use his policy legacy as an assurance of his potential future successes.

“If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“If the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that,” later adding, “The Lord Almighty’s not comin’ down.”

Multiple polls have forecasted a tight nationwide race in November, even with the growing discontent about the Democratic ticket. The latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll has Biden and Trump in a tie. A new national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that Biden actually gained a point since last month’s pre-debate survey. And that poll, taken among registered voters, including leaners, puts Biden at 50 percent to Trump’s 48 percent in a two-way presidential matchup.

State-by-state contests, though, are still causing Democratic leaders to stress.

A Fox News Poll found that in Virginia, where Biden won by over 450,000 votes in 2020, the race is tied—with the two men each standing at 48 percent. Virginia hasn’t sided with a Republican in two decades, since George W. Bush won reelection in 2004.