Peter SchorschDr. Jill Biden is visiting the Tampa Bay area on Election Day in a last-minute push to help her husband get elected.
The Biden campaign announced Jill will travel to Tampa and St. Petersburg. Tiimes and locations for Tuesday’s visits have yet to be announced.
Biden will visit a polling site in St. Petersburg this morning to rally individual voters and deliver short remarks. She then will go to a canvassing kickoff event at Casa Biden in Tampa at 11 a.m. It’s all part of an effort to step up get-out-the-vote in the Tampa Bay region.
Jill Biden was most recently in town on Sunday campaigning for her husband, Joe Biden, hosting a drive-in rally in Tampa. She also made stops in Orlando and Tallahassee to encourage voters to participate in “Souls To The Polls” — a tradition when Black voters gather together to cast ballots at early voting locations the Sunday before an election.
Energizing Black voters led to historic victories in 2008 and 2012, when Biden was running mate to Barack Obama, America’s first Black President. Democratic consultants in Florida hope for turnout in this election that rivals the Obama campaigns.
But the I-4 Corridor also holds storied political status in Presidential elections, home to the Central Florida swing voters who often determine if this purple state goes red or blue on Election Day.
Florida, as always, plays an outsized role in this year’s Presidential election. It’s the largest swing state pollsters agree is in play (some count Texas as a battleground this year, though most polls show Donald Trump with a small but consistent lead there). The state has 29 electoral votes, which goes a long way to pushing a campaign over the 270 needed to win the White House.
On Election Day, the RealClearPolitics polling index shows Biden up by less than 1 percentage point in Florida.
