'Our map has expanded' in final days of the race: Biden campaign senior adviser

Dunn hedged on whether there will be a definitive result on election night.

November 1, 2020, 2:27 PM

With just two days to go until Election Day, Biden campaign senior adviser Anita Dunn expressed confidence in the Democratic nominee's path to 270 electoral votes and argued that their map has "expanded."

"As we've gotten closer to the election, instead of the number of contested battleground states shrinking, which is normally what you see at this point in the campaign ... the number is actually expanded, so that we're now campaigning also, in Georgia, in Iowa, in Ohio," Dunn told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."

Pressed on whether she believes the race will be decided on election night, Dunn said she did not know for sure. She singled out Pennsylvania, a battleground state critical to both campaigns' path to victory, as a state where the result may take a few days to determine.

With a surge in mail-ballots, counting all of the votes may take time, Stephanopoulos reminded viewers on Sunday, adding that "everyone watching at home should know that is not a sign that anything has gone wrong."

"Obviously three big battleground states may be slower to count their votes. Pennsylvania in particular," Dunn said. "But, Georgia and North Carolina and Florida are all states that I think we can reasonably assume we're going to hear results from either election night or early the next morning."

Dunn also accused the Trump campaign of trying to suppress votes.

"We may know the results election night, we may know them the next day. But one thing that is clear though, is that we're going to make sure all of the votes get counted. There's only one campaign -- and that's the Trump campaign -- that thinks they have to suppress votes in order to win," Dunn said.

Dunn also hedged on whether the nation will hear directly from Biden on election night, saying the entire campaign will be focused on making sure all votes are counted.

"I think it will depend on where we are in the results. Obviously you don't want to go out prematurely. But you're certainly going to hear from the campaign. You may very well hear from the vice president. I think that we'll all just be concentrating on working up to the moment the polls close to get those votes. And then to make sure every vote gets counted," Dunn said.

PHOTO: Anita Dunn stands in her Washington office, May 23, 2008.
Anita Dunn stands in her Washington office, May 23, 2008.
Susan Walsh/AP, FILE

The Biden campaign has announced that the candidate plans to "address the nation on Election Night in Wilmington, Delaware," according to a release sent Saturday afternoon. Biden will be joined in his hometown by his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris and their spouses.

Dunn also laid out the Biden campaign's strategy of defending states Hillary Clinton won as the Democratic nominee in 2016 that the Trump campaign has been targeting like Nevada, Minnesota, Virginia and Colorado, while attempting to expand the map into states like Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina to maximize their path to victory.

The Trump campaign has maintained that they see a path to 270 electoral votes by holding key Rust Belt states like Michigan and Wisconsin and pulling off another victory in Pennsylvania, a state where Trump and Biden are campaigning aggressively this weekend.

Two new polls out Sunday conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post shows Biden maintaining a slightly narrowed seven-point edge over the president in Pennsylvania, while Trump holds a 2-point edge, within the poll's margin of error, in the all-important swing state of Florida.

In the final days of the 2020 race, Biden has prioritized an array of battleground states his campaign said will give them multiple paths to win the White House.

On Saturday, Biden hit the critical swing state of Michigan alongside his one-time running mate, former President Barack Obama. Both men delivered blistering critiques of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

"No matter how many threats (Trump) makes, America will be heard. When America’s heard I believe the message is going to be loud and it’s going to be clear. It's time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home!” Biden told supporters at a rally in Flint, Michigan.

"(Trump's) still talking about his inauguration crowd being small. ... Does he have nothing better to worry about? That was four years ago. I mean, what kind of trauma did he go through? Did no one come to his birthday parties when he was a kid?" Obama said at a later rally in Detroit.

In the final days of the campaign, Biden is going all in on Pennsylvania, holding two events in Philadelphia on Sunday. The entire Democratic ticket and their spouses will mount a final barnstorm of the state on Monday.

In addition to touting the campaign's electoral strategy, Dunn responded to comments made by Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller earlier on "This Week" that attempted to back up President Donald Trump's unfounded claim that doctors are inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths to make more money.

"I'm astonished that Jason Miller spent as much time as he did without ever saying that the doctors who are on frontlines in this coronavirus crisis that this country faces, without ever defending them. And without ever basically saying, 'No they're not in it for money.' These people have been risking their lives since the beginning of this crisis," Dunn said.

"It tells you everything you need to know about the difference between the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign. And between Donald Trump and Joe Biden," she added. "We saw for the first time over 100,000 new cases in one day this week -- 1,000 people a day dying on average now. Jason Miller and the Trump campaign, they feel that that's virtually no one, but there were 1,000 families in this country who lost someone yesterday. There are 1,000 more that will lose someone today and those are not virtually nobody."

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