The Biden campaign has begun to see their polling numbers take a turn—and they’re now talking openly about it as a warning to their allies.

They fear what we know to be the most important factor in the race: momentum at the end. The momentum has clearly shifted in our direction over the last week.

On a state by state basis, the trendlines from mid-October 2016 are starting to reappear—and that’s why the Biden campaign is sweating.… History is beginning to repeat itself.

Trump’s timing might be off, but his instincts were so often right: Joe Biden, even given all the breaks, was sinking, and Trump was rising.

2

ELECTION NIGHT

Miami-Dade came in first, and it blew out all Trump team expectations.

“This is good, tell me this is good!” shouted Jason Miller across the Map Room to Matt Oczkowski, who ran the data operation.

“This is very, very good,” muttered Oczkowski, hardly looking up from his screen.

Florida had become a key bellwether. It counted its early voting tallies ahead of Election Day. Returns here would be some of the first in the nation for a battleground state. If Trump lost Florida, he faced a virtually insurmountable map.

The more realistic of the Trumpers understood that there was a good chance that older people, a dominant Florida bloc, usually Republican swinging, would this year, fearful of COVID, come back to the Democrats. What’s more, Michael Bloomberg had committed to pouring $100 million into the state for Biden—although many in the White House, most of all Trump, believed he wouldn’t make good on that promise.

It was clear by 8:10 p.m., Donna Shalala, a Democratic personality with strong Clinton cred—she served as his secretary for health and human services—who had come to Congress in the 2018 anti-Trump backlash, was out. She was followed by Debbie Jessika Mucarsel-Powell, another liberal Democratic pickup in 2018. By 8:30, a CBS News exit poll had Florida seniors breaking heavily for Trump.

The Republicans had doubled down on their Florida spend (digital, radio, and television), with a singular message: The Democrats were socialists. ¡Socialistas!

To Democrats, a ridiculous message. To Hispanic voters, apparently a resonant one.

After Miami-Dade, the I-4 corridor came in, “the road where presidents are picked,” the 130-mile stretch of Florida between St. Petersburg and Daytona Beach, passing through Orlando. The Trump campaign had beaten Matt Oczkowski’s numbers in Miami-Dade with Cubans; now they were beating them in Orlando with Puerto Ricans.

Florida represented a set of key communities. If the campaign performed at the levels Oczkowski predicted, not only would Trump win the state, but his win would be a strong indication of what might be expected across the country. Now, down the line, the campaign was holding or beating Oczkowski’s model for seniors, Hispanics, women, Blacks, and even the most difficult group in Oczkowski’s model, eighteen-to-forty-four-year-old independents.