Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who tried but failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination, has announced that he is planning to spend at least $100 million to boost Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in Florida, which is a key battleground state. In the 2018 race for the Florida governorship, the Trump-backed Republican Ron DeSantis won, but his winning margin was less than half of one percent, which provides some real-world evidence for the possibility that the final results in Florida in the upcoming presidential race could be very close. According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden currently leads in Florida polls by an average of just 2.6 percent — not much.
According to The Washington Post, Bloomberg’s “spending will focus mostly on television and digital ads, in both English and Spanish,” and his “aim is to prompt enough early voting that a pro-Biden result would be evident soon after the polls close.” Florida reports their early vote totals on or as close to Election Night as possible. If Biden were to successfully win Florida, then he would be very close to successfully denying Trump a second term in office. If all else stayed the same as it was in 2016, then with Florida in his column, Biden would have to shift just 6 other electoral votes to get Trump below a total of 270. There are, of course, a ton of options for shifting 6 electoral votes.
Bloomberg adviser Kevin Sheekey told the Post the following:
‘Voting starts on Sept. 24 in Florida so the need to inject real capital in that state quickly is an urgent need. Mike believes that by investing in Florida it will allow campaign resources and other Democratic resources to be used in other states, in particular the state of Pennsylvania.’
North Carolina, which is another key battleground state, has already mailed out some absentee ballots. Trump, who sounds desperate, has been meddling in the process already — he has encouraged North Carolina voters to send in their absentee ballots and then try and vote a second time in person in order to try and see if their earlier ballot was counted. If it was, Trump claims, then they’ll be blocked from voting again. Trying to vote twice is a crime, and the problem that Trump is proposing addressing with it — a systemic issue with mail-in voting — does not exist.
