Joe Biden's 2024 campaign will air a television ad during the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day football game on Thursday as the president tries to boost support in his bid for re-election, which appears to be dwindling.
Recent polls by The New York Times and Siena College have shown that Biden is losing ground to Donald Trump in five critical states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
That means that the embattled former president—currently the frontrunner in the Republican primary by a huge margin—is ahead in five out of six key battleground states, where voters said they trusted Trump over Biden on tackling issues surrounding the U.S. economy, immigration and foreign policy.
Biden was leading only in Wisconsin, where he had an advantage of two percentage points.
The president and Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Wednesday that the one-minute commercial will air during the Lions-Green Bay Packers game on Thursday, in one of those swing states where Biden is trailing Trump, Michigan.
According to the New York Times/Siena poll, Trump would win the state by five percentage points. The poll was conducted between October 22 and November 3. In Nevada, Trump was ahead by 10 percentage points, in Georgia by six, in Arizona by five and in Pennsylvania by four.
Newsweek contacted the White House and Trump's 2024 campaign for comment by email on Thursday.
The ad, titled "Never Left," focuses on Biden's Scranton roots and underlines the Democratic president's understanding of the struggles of middle class Americans, as reported by The Detroit News.
"He grew up a middle-class kid in a middle-class town," the ad says, adding that the middle-class town "has never left him." It adds: "He knows what life is like for working people and knows middle class life is too expensive right now."
The ad continues saying that the Biden administration is working to make the cost of healthcare more affordable for middle class Americans, including by capping the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month and giving Medicare officials the possibility of negotiating with drug companies for lower prices.
"For Joe Biden it's about restoring the sense of security working people deserve—that simple promise, that peace of mind. He's determined to get it back, because of where he's from and who he is," the narrator says in the ad that will show at the Thursday game.
The same ad, which was first rolled out in October, was expected to show in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Scranton, as reported by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. The commercial is part of a $25 million media campaign that the president announced in August and will focus on swing states.
Correction 11/27/23, 9 a.m. ET: This article was corrected to say that Biden is leading in Wisconsin, not Washington.
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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. and European politics, global affairs ... Read more
