Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign manager said Tuesday evening that the so-called Blue Wall remains her clearest route to victory, an indication of pessimism about the Sun-Belt swing states.
In a memo from Chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon to staffers, she suggests that the campaign is bracing for losses in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina but is laser-focused on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
“While we continue to see data trickle in from the Sun Belt states, we have known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states. And we feel good about what we are seeing,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote in the memo, obtained by The Washington Times.
Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote that the vice president “overperformed” in Philadelphia based on the exceptionally high voter turnout from “large non-white and student populations.” She wrote that the campaign expects to see higher turnout in Philadelphia will exceed 2020 numbers, but also cautioned that they have limited data about the suburbs.
The limited data the Harris campaign does have is “tracking with our expectations,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote.
In Michigan, there is a significant amount of votes left to count with the city of Detroit likely reporting its final results around midnight. Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote that other results in Michigan are harder to parse because the results are coming in more piecemeal than in other states.
Ms. O’Malley Dillon also wrote that there is “a significant amount of vote remaining” in Dane and Milwaukee counties, the two large urban Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin.
Again, she cautioned that she doesn’t expect complete results from the Badger State until between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. Wednesday.
“We’ve been saying for weeks that this race might not be called tonight,” she wrote. “It takes time for all the votes to be counted — and all the votes to be counted. That’s how our system works.”
Ms. O’Malley Dillon’s memo suggests that the campaign is writing off Georgia and North Carolina.
The two Sun-Belt swing states have not yet been called when the memo was sent around 11 p.m., but early voting indicates that Mr. Trump has a sizable lead over Ms. Harris in those states.
He also had been doing better in Arizona and Nevada polling and in early voting than he had been doing in 2020, though those two southwestern states were still early in the counting process at 11 p.m. EDT.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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