Posted 12.08am UK time

Fox News have called the state of Virginia, and its thirteen electoral votes, for Biden. A once competitive swing-state appears to now be firmly in Democratic hands.

Posted 12.05am UK Time

And we have our first calls of the night, as the Associated Press projects that Donald Trump has won Kentucky and Joe Biden is the winner in Vermont. No surprises there.

Posted 11.45PM UK Time

Fifteen minutes to go until we get our first results from Florida and Georgia, two critical states which Donald Trump is hoping to defend. I’ll be keeping an eye on Sumter County, home to some of Florida’s largest retirement communities. Most of the returns there are expected early on, and will be a good indication of whether Biden is indeed making gains among the senior vote.

Posted 11.40pm UK time

Many stores in the US have boarded up their entrances and windows in anticipation of riots in the event of an unexpected Trump victory.

Posted 11.25 UK time

CNN exit poll reports that the economy is the most important issue according to voters at thirty-one per cent. Racial inequality is the second biggest issue, at twenty-one per cent, with the Coronavirus sitting in third place at eighteen per cent even in the middle of the pandemic.

The exit poll is based primarily on votes on the day, so will likely be skewed towards Republican voters. It will be updated as the night goes on.

Posted 11.15pm UK time

Upon eating up at the local curry house for the last time before Boris Johnson makes it illegal for me to do so, I’m now ready to get to work with the team. We should have an interesting night ahead!

Posted at 2.30 PM GMT

Hello and welcome to Bournbrook’s live coverage of the 2020 presidential election. I’m Associate Editor Peter Tutykhin and I’ll be joined by Editor and Director Michael Curzon and Deputy Editor Taylor Francis, alongside columnists Billy Thompson and Guy Denton. Coverage will start in full at 10.30 PM, just half an hour before the first polls close in Indiana and Kentucky. For now, you can find the full catalogue of our US Election Watch series below, including your guide to election night.

Bournbrook’s guide to election night 2020

Hello and welcome to this special edition of US Election Watch. The 2020 presidential election is almost over, with President Donald Trump fighting an uphill battle against Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Plan on staying up for the results? Here’s what you need to know. 

The basics

In case you are unfamiliar with the process, this is how it goes. Unlike most of its contemporaries, the United States does not elect its president via national popular vote. Instead, candidates compete for votes in the ‘electoral college’ by winning individual states. The number of electoral college votes each state holds is determined by the size of its congressional delegation, plus two. To that effect, California has fifty-five, Florida twenty-nine, Alaska three etc. 

In all but two states, the winner of the popular vote in that state gets all of its electoral votes (Nebraska and Maine allocate some of theirs on the basis of congressional districts). There are a total of 538 votes in the electoral college, with 270 required for a majority. 

A very different election 

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way millions of Americans vote, and it will have serious implications for how and when the votes are counted. For the first time in history, a majority of the electorate has chosen to vote early, either in person or by mail. Due to election security measures (such as signatures), mail ballots take longer to count. 

In some states, officials cannot begin the verification process until election day. Other states allow mail ballots to be verified and tabulated days or even weeks before. This has two primary implications. 

Firstly, some states will take significantly longer to report near-complete results. If the election is close, this could mean waiting days (or longer, in the event of a recount) until we find out who wins. Secondly, given that Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, the margin between Trump and Biden could change dramatically as more votes are counted. 

The ‘red mirage’ and the ‘blue shift’ 

As we watch the initial results come in, it is important to familiarise ourselves with two concepts, the ‘red mirage’ and the ‘blue shift’. In states which do not begin processing mail-in ballots until election day, initial results will be comprised mostly of votes cast on election day. They won’t tell us the full story. 

In those states, the results we will see come in throughout the early hours of November 4th will likely break for Donald Trump, while disproportionately Democratic absentee ballots remain to be counted. This is the ‘red mirage’. As the hours and days go by, the electoral map will change in Joe Biden’s favour. In some states, the president’s early lead will narrow and eventually reverse. This is the ‘blue shift’.  

However, states which get an early head start on processing mail ballots are likely to see the opposite effect. That being an initial Democratic lead (or a ‘blue mirage’) followed by a tightening in Trump’s favour (or a ‘red shift’). Now let’s look at where the electoral map stands as we wait for polls to close. 

The red wall 

UK readers might be familiar with the term, although Trump and Biden are obviously not fighting over Doncaster. This red wall is made up of traditionally Republican (or Republican-leaning) states in the American South, five of which are very competitive this year. They are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. 

These states are effectively must-wins for Donald Trump, given that a loss in any of them dramatically reduces his path to 270 electoral votes. According to the final FiveThirtyEight average, Biden leads by three points in Arizona, by two in Florida and by less than two per cent in Georgia and North Carolina. Trump maintains a one-point lead in Texas. 

In all five states (with the possible exemption of Arizona), the race is clearly in toss-up territory. These states are also expected to report results relatively fast, as all have provisions for the early counting of mail ballots. As a result, we should expect a blue mirage, followed by a red shift. 

The blue wall

As Donald Trump hopes to keep the red wall intact, Joe Biden will try to put a blue wall back together. The latter consists of four Democratic-leaning states in the Upper Midwest, three of which were won by Trump four years ago. They are Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If Biden can secure all four, he is very likely to win the White House. He currently leads by eight points in Michigan and Wisconsin, by nine in Minnesota and by five per cent in Pennsylvania. 

According to most forecasting models, Pennsylvania remains the most likely ‘tipping point’ state as we head into election night. In other words, it is the state most likely to put either candidate over 270 electoral votes. Alongside the relatively narrow polling margin when compared to the rest of the blue wall, the fact that both campaigns have thrown the kitchen sink at Pennsylvania (with massive advertising spend and multiple visits by each candidate) should not come as a surprise. 

Compared to their counterparts in the red wall, the blue wall states do not give officials as much time to process mail ballots before election day, or no time at all in the case of Pennsylvania. Minnesota and Wisconsin are expected to have near-complete results on election night, while Michigan could be counting until Friday. Pennsylvania could take even longer. 

What this means is that, should Biden fail to break through in the Red Wall, it is highly unlikely that we will know that winner on election night. All blue wall states are expected to see varying degrees of a red mirage, followed by a blue shift. 

Anything else?

So glad you asked. While the above states constitute the main electoral battleground you should be watching on election night, there are four more to keep an eye on. Two of them, Iowa and Ohio, were won by Trump in 2016, while the other two, Nevada and New Hampshire, were carried by Hillary Clinton. 

Trump maintains narrow leads in Iowa and Ohio. Alongside Texas, these are states which Biden should only expect to pick up if the election enters landslide territory. Meanwhile, the Democrat leads by about five points in Nevada and by eleven in New Hampshire. 

Due to the order in which mail ballots are counted, Iowa is expected to see a blue shift while initial returns from Ohio will probably be too good to be true for Democrats. Both states should report most of their votes on election night, but that might not paint a complete picture should the results be close. We are also unlikely to see near-complete results from Nevada, even though the state is used to large volumes of mail-in voting. Late arriving ballots will probably favour Democrats. Finally, New Hampshire will likely be called on election night. As the state counts early and election day votes at the same time, we are unlikely to see a blue or a red shift on that basis. 

And now for your election night schedule 

22:30 GMT (17:30 Eastern)

Grab a coffee (or a beer) and open up the Bournbrook election live blog, where I and other members of the team will keep you up to date with the latest news and commentary. No need to rush. You’ve got an hour and a half before things get serious. 

23:00 GMT (18:00 Eastern)

Polls close in Indiana and Kentucky, as we get our first results of the 2020 election. These are both solidly Republican states, so no need to get excited yet. 

00:00 GMT (19:00 Eastern)

Trump’s red wall gets its first test as polls close in Florida and Georgia, alongside New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. 

Pinellas County, which includes the city of St Petersburg, is arguably the best bellwether we have for Florida. It voted for Obama twice and then narrowly for Donald Trump. While Pinellas should be very close, who wins the state will also depend on the margins in firmly Republican and Democratic counties. To that effect, Trump will be hoping to maintain his thirty-nine point margin in Sumter County (which has the oldest population in the United States), while Biden will seek to improve upon Clinton’s margins in the Democratic strongholds of Broward and Miami-Dade. 

In Georgia, keep an eye out for Peach County, an important bellwether where Joe Biden should be hoping to get over fifty per cent of the vote. Also, watch the Cobb and Gwinnett counties covering the Northern Atlanta suburbs. Clinton won them by about two and six points respectively. If Joe Biden is to turn Georgia blue, he will need to seriously run up the score here. 

Joe Biden should be ahead in New Hampshire when the first results come in. If he is not, the Democrats are likely in for a heap of trouble.

00:30 GMT (19:30 Eastern)

Polls close in two more battleground states, North Carolina and Ohio, alongside West Virginia. In North Carolina, keep an eye out for Union County near Charlotte. This is Republican territory (Trump won it by thirty points in 2016) but Democrats are hoping to make inroads. Meanwhile, Biden will be looking to run up the score in Wake County, which went for Hillary Clinton by twenty points. As for Ohio, watch out for Wood County just South of Toledo, which Trump previously carried by eight points (identical to his statewide margin). 

01:00 GMT (20:00 Eastern)

Here comes the flood. Polls close in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.

Don’t worry, there are only three that we should care about as far as the presidency is concerned, Maine, Texas and Pennsylvania. 

While Joe Biden is very likely to carry Maine, Trump will be hoping to cling on to his single electoral vote from the second congressional district. 

Conversely, with thirty-eight electoral college votes, Texas is the biggest prize of any 2020 battleground state. If Joe Biden is to become the first Democrat to win it since 1968, he will need to do two things. The first is to run up his margins in the major cities, so watch out for Harris County (Houston), Bexar County (San Antonio), Travis County (Austin) and Dallas County (Dallas). The second will be to flip the suburbs. Keep an eye out for the Tarrant, Denton and Collin counties around Dallas, as well as ultra-marginal Hays County just south of Austin. 

It is unlikely that we’ll have any meaningful results out of Pennsylvania tonight. However, if Joe Biden is to take back this crucial battleground, he will have to defeat Trump in places like Erie County while running up his margins in Philadelphia. 

01:30 GMT (20:30 Eastern) 

Polls close in solidly Republican Arkansas. Use this opportunity to get yourself another coffee. 

02:00 GMT (21:00 Eastern)

Polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin and Wyoming. 

In Arizona, there is only one bellwether county. Encompassing the city of Phoenix and its suburbs, Maricopa is home to over sixty per cent of the state’s population and will likely decide who gets its eleven electoral votes. 

In Michigan, Joe Biden will be looking to flip the Kent and Macomb counties while running up the score in Wayne County, which includes the city of Detroit. Keep an eye out for the Grant and Brown counties in neighbouring Wisconsin, which saw large swings towards Donald Trump in 2016. 

Trump is almost certain to win Nebraska, however, Biden could pick up one electoral college vote by flipping the state’s second congressional district. The district consists mostly of Douglas County and the Western part of Sarpy County. 

03:00 GMT (10:00 Eastern)

Polls close in the final two battleground states, Iowa and Nevada, alongside Montana, Idaho and Utah. Marshall County will likely prove a crucial bellwether for Iowa. Meanwhile, Joe Biden will win Nevada if he can match Hillary Clinton’s eleven-point margin in Clark County, home to Las Vegas and over seventy per cent of the state’s population. 

04:00 GMT (23:00 Eastern)

If you are still awake, well done! Polls close in California, Oregon and Washington. We’re not expecting close results in any of those states, but this is around the time when we should know if Biden has broken through in the red wall. 

05:00 GMT (00:00 Eastern)

Polls close in quite red Alaska and deep blue Hawaii. Results will still be coming in from all of the above states. However, if it becomes clear that the election result will hinge on Pennsylvania, I suggest you go to bed. 

Forecasting the Senate

Posted 11am UK time

At long last, today is the day of the US Presidential election. To think that you could raise an elephant in the time the election takes, from the invisible primary all the way up to polling day in the first week of November. However, whilst all the focus is on the race for the White House, the race for control of the Senate is perhaps the most interesting. Given the polling figures over the last few months, along with all the various models by FiveThirtyEight and YouGov, it is safe to say that Biden is the favourite going into today's Presidential election. This cannot be said for either the Republicans or Democrats in the Senate elections.

With so many of the thirty-five Senate races being categorised as a toss up today, it is not surprising that both parties are nervous. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has geared up his campaigning over this last week, with conspiracy theory style ads blaming the Democrats’ huge war chest of money on George Soros. The Republicans know that the Senate is their best chance to have influence in federal politics over the next four years. Back in August, when I wrote my first article on the Senate races going into November, my gut said that the Democrats might just miss out on securing the Senate as a result of split ticket voting in states like Maine and North Carolina. However, the collapse in support for President Trump after the first Presidential debate has led me to these final predictions across key seats the Democrats need in order to win the keys to the upper house.

Arizona (Special)

The most likely of the Sun Belt states to be secured by the Democrats today will be of huge significance for American politics in the years ahead. Arizona has followed the same sort of change in its political makeup as Virginia did between 2004 and 2008; it has gone from a place that the Republicans could always guarantee on winning into a relatively safe Democrat state. The Democrats already have one Senator elected in Arizona from the 2018 midterms, which was a significant achievement in itself as the party had not won a Senate seat there since 1988, so the tide is with them to win the second seat this year. To have a second Senator elected there would allow the Democrats to establish a foothold in the state in future Presidential elections.

Prediction: Mark Kelly (D) to defeat Martha McSally (R - Incumbent)

Georgia (Both seats)

I will admit this is perhaps my bravest prediction for tonight, as not only do I think one of the Georgian Senate seats will go Democrat, but I think the other one will do so as well. In the first Georgian seat, the incumbent David Perdue has a tough fight for re-election against Jon Ossoff, who has pulled ahead in some of the polls in recent weeks. Ossoff is likely to be joined by Democratic colleague Raphael Warnock in the other Senate contest, which is taking the form of a jungle primary as there is no incumbent running for re-election. Reasons for this are contextual to the contest and beyond, with demographic change over time benefitting the Democrats and the polling swing towards them following the televised debates. If my predictions are correct, this would be a powerful signal towards a big realignment in US politics.

Prediction: Jon Ossoff (D) to defeat David Perdue (R - Incumbent), and Raphael Warnock (D) to win the jungle primary. 

Maine 

After serving for the last 23 years continuously in the Senate for Maine, the Republican incumbent Susan Collins is very likely to bow out today. Her ‘canny operator’ style, appearing non-partisan, has helped her win re-election comfortably in the past, but her support for Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 has not been forgotten and the Democrats have made sure of it. The Democrats have campaigned mercilessly on this point and it seems to have made this state a dead certain to go Democrat today. For a Senator whose personal reputation often kept her elected, this issue-based campaign is seriously harmful to her re-election chances. This would mean that there would be no Republican Senators in the North East of the United States.

Prediction: Sara Gideon (D) to defeat Susan Collins (R - Incumbent) 

Montana 

Compared to Maine, Montana is an extremely marginal state that could go either way. Steve Daines for the Republicans has been run close by his Democrat opponent, Steve Bullock, who also happens to be the incumbent governor of Montana. Bullock’s fundraising abilities, coupled with Trump’s poor polling nationwide depressing the Republican vote in many states, means that this state has a chance of being won by the Democrats today.

Prediction: Steve Bullock (D) to defeat Steve Daines (R - Incumbent) 

North Carolina 

North Carolina is very likely to go Democrat as a result of Thom Tillis’s close alignment with Trump, hurting his support in this traditionally Republican leaning state. Cal Cunningham has been successful in painting Tillis as Trump’s man, incapable of thinking for himself, which was displayed for all to see in Tillis’s vote for Amy Coney Barrett in the week before the election. This came after him saying it was wrong to fill a Supreme Court seat in an election year back in 2016. The Democrats again have an open goal on an issue-based campaign here, highlighting Tillis as disingenuous at best, and a mouthpiece for an unpopular President Trump at worst. 

Prediction: Cal Cunningham (D) to defeat Thom Tillis (R - Incumbent) 

South Carolina

Finally, the Sun Belt state of South Carolina is the perfect illustration of the craziness that the 2020 election has become. Incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham is facing a tough fight against Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, who has narrowed the gap between the two to single digits. For South Carolina, a true-red state that the Democrats have not won in a Presidential election year since 1976, the polls being this narrow is highly unprecedented. The question really is who can mobilise their voters to turn out to the polling booths today. My gut says Graham will just win, but if Biden wins a landslide today then the national swing could just help Harrison over the line. It is one key race to keep an eye on today.

Prediction: Lindsey Graham (R - Incumbent) to defeat Jaime Harrison (D)

Biden’s to lose

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near.

With only three days until voting ends, today marks the penultimate instalment of US Election Watch. On Tuesday, you can expect a final overview of the race, where the candidates stand in each of the battleground states and what to look out for as results come in. To further help you navigate your way through election night, Bournbrook will be hosting a live-blog featuring our reactions and analysis. Today, however, I want to cut through the noise and look at the big picture. To that effect, what do we know about the race at this late stage?

We know that Donald Trump is likely to lose. There are plenty of competing narratives, with people on both sides of the partisan divide desperate to tell you that this isn’t over. That may well be true, but here are the facts.

The president is far behind, as Joe Biden leads nationally by about nine percentage points. Biden’s is the largest lead of any candidate since 1996 and the largest for a challenger on record. In terms of state polling, the Democrat is ahead in enough places to secure 357 electoral college votes, a victory comparable to Barack Obama’s 2008 landslide. 

We know that there is effectively no time left for Trump to mount a comeback. We also know that, despite an eventful election year, the polling has proved remarkably stable. In 2016, the president managed to defy expectations due in part to a late shift among undecided voters. Not only are far fewer undecided this time around, but over half of voters have already cast their ballot. As of this morning, national turnout is at sixty-three per cent of the 2016 total. It is even higher in a number of battleground states. Arizona, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina (among others)  are at over eighty per cent of 2016 turnout. Texas, meanwhile, at over one hundred per cent. We know that most democratic votes are already in the bag, that there is no reason to believe that Trump will win over the few remaining undecideds, or that it would save him even if he did. 

We know that the president is unpopular. We know that no one with his approval rating has ever been re-elected. Joe Biden, meanwhile, is not just more popular than Trump, or less despised than Hillary Clinton. A clear majority of Americans view him favourably, a rare case for a politician in our age. We also know that a clear majority disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, which a plurality of voters considers their most important issue. There is no getting around it. Whether you look at the national polling, the state polling or even the congressional district level polling, it all looks terrible for the president. 

We know that Trump’s remaining hope of victory lies in a systematic polling error larger than we saw in 2016. According to analysis by Nate Cohn at the New York Times, a 2016 size polling error in Trump’s direction would still leave Biden with 335 electoral votes. To win, Trump would need polls to be off by at least one extra percentage point in Pennsylvania, by less than one per cent in Florida and Georgia and by at least another 2 points in Arizona. Again, this is on top of a 2016 magnitude error in the president’s direction. 

We know that the polls will be wrong, in the sense that they are never perfect. If they were, we wouldn’t need to hold elections. What we don’t know is which candidate they are currently overconfident in. We are always fighting the last war in politics. Since the polls underestimated Trump in 2016, most assume they will likely again in 2020. But there is no guarantee of that. 

Consider that most pollsters have made adjustments to their methodology to account for 2016 (in particular, many more now weight by education). They know full well the damage that would follow to their credibility should they miss another Trump upset, and could even overcompensate too much as a result. To that effect, if the polls underestimate Biden to the same extent as they did Obama in 2012, we will see the biggest electoral landslide since 1988 (and the largest for a Democrat since 1964). 

We know that this is a very different race than Trump vs Clinton. Back then, the Democrat was awfully unpopular and widely distrusted. Not so this time. In 2016, Trump was an outsider and a change candidate. In 2020, he is an unpopular incumbent. Four years ago, Trump won due to support from independents, white women and voter over the age of 65, a coalition that has now turned against him. Last time, major news events tended to favour Trump (e.g. Wikileaks, the Comey letter and the Clinton email scandal). This time, they have turned Americans against him (e.g. civil unrest and the coronavirus). 

We should know better than to discount Trump completely. At the same time, with three days left to go, this thing is clearly Joe Biden’s to lose. 

Ten days

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

On Thursday, Trump and Biden met on the debate stage for the final time. The event broached a range of topics, from COVID to race relations to climate change. It was, overall, a significantly more watchable affair than what we witnessed three weeks ago (admittedly a very low bar). This time, Biden was met with fewer interruptions, in part since candidates’ microphones were muted for each opening statement and also because Trump’s advisors likely told him to take it easy. The result was a much sharper Joe Biden than we saw at the first debate and a more civil Donald Trump. 

Opinion polling of debate watchers offers two key takeaways. First, Trump fared notably better than last time, as 39% of voters thought the president won, compared to 28% for debate one (according to CNN). Second, a clear majority still favoured Joe Biden’s performance, whether by 14% as per CNN or 19% according to YouGov. Will any of this matter? Probably not. Ultimately, Trump needed a major breakthrough here and he did not get one. 

Three weeks ago, I wrote that the president was running out of time. Now, with only ten days until voting ends, his position is increasingly dire. Over fifty-four million people have already voted in the 2020 election, almost 40% of the 2016 total. Unless something changes fast, or the polls are off by a large margin, Donald Trump will be a one-term president. Furthermore, the Republican Party at large could be in for a historic drubbing. 

The state of the race 

If this week’s debate is to make a difference in the polls, we won’t know it for a few days. For now, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 9.7% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average, a Trump gain of 0.8% since last week. Despite a minor tightening, Biden’s lead remains the biggest for a challenger (at this late point in the race) since Bill Clinton in 1992. The polling averages in battleground states convey a similar picture, of mostly minor gains for Trump with Biden still clearly in the lead. 

Data: FiveThirtyEight

With so little time left, just how much can the race feasibly change? Below is the Real Clear Politics national average going back to 2004, both ten days out and on election day, alongside the actual result (apologies for using different aggregators but FiveThirtyEight didn’t exist before 2008, and hasn’t published averages before 2016).

Data: RealClearPolitics

As we can see, the average difference between polls at this point in the race and on election day is only 1.1%. Meanwhile, the average polling error between the election day average and the actual result is 1.4%. This means it would be immensely difficult for Trump to close the gap nationally. 

However, Trump does not have to make up all of Biden’s nearly ten-point lead. After all, the polls in battleground states are noticeably closer. At the moment, Biden would survive a 2016-scale polling error in Trump’s direction (the Democrat would still flip Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nebraska’s 2nd District, getting him to 280 electoral votes). 

Basically, Republicans need two things to happen over the next ten days: Biden’s battleground lead to be cut by a few more points followed by a 2016-like polling error in Trump’s direction. Or, to put it another way, Biden’s odds of winning the presidential election are probably whatever the odds you assign to him maintaining his lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely ‘tipping point’ state. Indeed, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast, Trump’s likelihood of winning the election is exactly the same as his odds in Pennsylvania (13%). 

With that being said, if the race does not tighten further, or if the polls are broadly right, or if they are instead off in Biden’s direction, Trump will surely lose. And, in doing so, he will likely drag other Republicans down with him. 

Down the ballot 

Forty-two per cent. That is the current share of the national popular vote expected to go for Donald Trump, as per the FiveThirtyEight average. It is also the same amount expected to support Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. This is not a coincidence. 

In 2018, Democrats regained control over the lower chamber of Congress. That was despite an electoral map which, due to intense partisan gerrymandering, heavily favoured the Republicans. Two years later, they are all but certain to remain in power. While Republicans need a net gain of twenty-one seats in order to flip the chamber, the Democrats are actually expected to increase their majority. The Cook Political Report rates nine Democratic seats are as a ‘toss-up’, alongside seventeen won by Republicans two years ago. 

The congressional map still favours the GOP, but not to the same extent as in 2018. Last year, a court in North Carolina struck down new boundaries proposed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature (which were themselves drawn up after the previous map was ruled as unconstitutional). The result? Two new congressional districts where the Democrats are clearly favoured. 

This year’s election is expected to see historically low levels of ‘split-ticket’ voting, whereby one backs more than one party (e.g. A Democrat for president and a Republican for Congress). To that effect, where Donald Trump is expected to lose ground, Republicans might well go down with him. Even in states which the president is still likely to win, Biden’s relatively strong performance might help his party’s candidates over the top in their individual districts. In Texas, current polling has Trump down eight points relative to his 2016 margin and six Republican seats are under threat. 

While control of the House is almost certainly a foregone conclusion, Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to defend their majority in the Senate. It is, after all, their most effective check on a potential Biden/Harris administration, capable of blocking legislation as well as judicial nominees. Right now, the party controls fifty-three seats, a working majority of three (in a 50/50 vote, the vice president assumes the role of Senate tie-breaker). 

Assuming Kamala Harris is the vice president come January 21st, Democrats need a net gain of three seats to win control of the upper chamber. In reality, this means flipping four, as Republicans are heavily favoured to defeat Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama. As things stand, Democratic challengers lead in five states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine and North Carolina. What do they all have in common? Joe Biden also leads in every one of those states. 

To be clear, Biden is not necessarily the one carrying Democrats to victory. In Arizona, Iowa and North Carolina, the party’s Senate candidates poll better than their presidential nominee. However, in Democratic-leaning states such as Colorado and Maine, a highly divisive president is not what the likes of Cory Gardiner and Susan Collins need. And if Biden has a very good night, Democrats could end up with as many as fifty-five seats, with gains in Georgia, South Carolina, Montana, Texas and Alaska. While this is not a very likely outcome, it is about as likely as Trump winning the election. 

Refining the battleground

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

Having been discharged from hospital last week, Donald Trump has returned to the campaign trail. Yesterday, the president held in-person rallies in Florida, Georgia and New Hampshire, seeking to bolster base enthusiasm with just over two weeks until voting ends. 

On Thursday, Trump and Biden participated in rival town halls, hosted simultaneously on NBC and ABC. The events replaced what was supposed to be the second presidential debate, which ultimately fell through after Trump refused to agree to a virtual format (the Biden campaign rejected an in-person debate, citing concerns that the president could still be contagious with COVID-19). 

Meanwhile, Trump and the Republicans have seized upon a recent story published in the New York Post, which claims that Hunter Biden, younger son of the Democratic nominee, abused family connections during his work for a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, which was the subject of an anti-corruption probe. More specifically, it alleges (via leaked emails) that Biden introduced his father (then vice president) to Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior executive at the company. 

Here is what we do know. We know that, in 2014, Hunter Biden took up a lucrative job with Burisma despite having no experience in the energy sector. Given his father was, at the time, the vice president in an administration heavily involved in Ukraine, this raised concerns over a potential conflict of interest. We know that, in 2016, the Obama/Biden administration pressured Ukraine’s government into firing its chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who it claimed had not done enough to root out corruption. We know that Shokin had investigated Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, but that the case was dormant for more than a year when he was fired. We also know that Shokin’s removal was supported by several European governments, the IMF and Republican Senators. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Hunter Biden had acted illegally while at Burisma. 

Here is what we do not know. We don’t know if the emails unearthed by the New York Post are real. There is no metadata to prove their validity, just a screenshot of a copy. We don’t know if Joe Biden had ever met Pozharskyi or, if he did, whether this was a personal meeting or merely a brief exchange at an official event. Given we are chiefly interested in the presidential election, we don’t know whether these claims will have any impact on the race. 

Earlier this week, the Senate concluded its hearings with Amy Coney Barett, Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Unless something very surprising occurs, Senate Republicans have both the time and the numbers to get Barett confirmed in time for the election. As a result, Joe Biden has faced increased calls (both from the press and from the Trump campaign) to clarify his position on ‘packing’ (or ‘expanding’, whichever you prefer) the Supreme Court should the Democrats win control of both the White House and Senate come November. Thus far, Biden has been vague in his intentions, presumably as he does not want to constrain his options. Whether this approach can be sustained until election day remains to be seen. 

Finally, as of this morning, over 25 million people have already voted in the presidential election. In a number of key battlegrounds, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin, votes cast so far now account for over 20% of 2016 turnout. 

The state of the race 

Before the first presidential debate, I noted that post-debate polling swings tend to subside in the final weeks of the campaign, as voter preferences revert back towards the mean. So far, this has not happened, as Joe Biden leads by 10.5% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average. In fact, his national lead has ever slightly expanded since last week. Meanwhile, here is how the polls have changed in the battleground states.

Data: FiveThirtyEight

As you can see above, the evidence is somewhat inconclusive. In six states, Biden has improved his standing from last week, while Trump gained in the remaining seven. There are two things to be said about this. First, most gains (for either candidate) are small enough to disregard as noise. Second, while Trump appears to be making a small comeback (albeit not everywhere), his numbers are still worse than they were right before the debate (which were already dreadful). To that effect, Joe Biden is performing better in most battlegrounds compared to September 29th, with the exemption of Minnesota, Nevada and Ohio. 

Refining the battleground 

With Biden still leading by double digits nationally and ahead in all but two battleground states, we aren’t looking at a close election. But what if the race tightens in the final weeks? In that case, which states are most likely to put either candidate over 270 electoral college votes? 

First, let’s refresh our memory as to where the race stands relative to 2016. The table below shows how the current polling average compares to the previous election results. 

Data: FiveThirtyEight

Time to narrow it down a bit. We should begin by eliminating two states which are no longer genuinely competitive, that being Minnesota and New Hampshire. When I first outlined what I considered to be the 2020 electoral battleground, Biden led by 6.4% and 8.3% in those two, while Clinton won them by less than 2%. Biden was the favourite to win both in early September, yet a Trump upset remained very plausible. 

Now, the Democrat leads by 8.9% in Minnesota and by 11.4% in New Hampshire. While Trump can still win in either state, Biden is the overwhelming favourite. More importantly, if Trump does make a comeback here, he has likely already won the election. A scenario in which the president flips Minnesota but loses Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin is very unlikely. 

That leaves eleven states. Next, let’s eliminate four which, while currently very competitive, would likely go to Trump if the race tightens. These are Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas. Have another look at the chart above. The president previously won these states by anywhere from five to nine points. Should they flip to Biden (as two of them would do if the polls are right), the election is already over. Yes, states are their own contests, but they are not wholly independent from national trends. To use a UK analogy, if it’s election night 2024 and the Conservatives have just lost Crawley, they are not getting a parliamentary majority. 

Then there is Nevada. The Silver State voted for Hillary Clinton by the widest margin (2.4%) of any 2020 battleground. Despite this, Trump appears more competitive here than in Minnesota and New Hampshire, with the president behind by ‘only’ 6.4%. To be clear, that is still a healthy Biden lead, albeit not quite as comfortable as his current standing in the Upper Midwest. It is also worth pointing out that polls have consistently underestimated Democratic support in Nevada, even in 2016. 

However, the real reason why we should probably not lose sleep over what happens here is that, with only six electoral college votes, Nevada is unlikely to make a real difference. Let’s assume that Biden succeeds in flipping only Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Trump 2016 states where he currently has the biggest lead. Even if Nevada bucks the national trend and votes for its first Republican presidential candidate since 2004, Biden still wins 272 electoral votes. No matter who triumphs here, it is very unlikely to be the ‘tipping point’. 

That finally brings us to the six core battlegrounds where the presidential election will be won or lost: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

Florida

If Trump loses in the Sunshine State, it’s almost certainly game over. With Florida’s twenty nine electoral college votes secured, Biden would only need nine more to win the White House. Those could come from any other Trump 2016 state where the Democrat is currently in the lead, except for Iowa (which only carries six votes). Furthermore, Florida (despite its status as the ultimate swing state) still leans to the right of the nation at large. Therefore, a Biden win here will likely mean pickups elsewhere. 

A recent report by Axios outlines three paths to a Trump victory, as reportedly envisaged by Campaign Manager Bill Stepien. Every single one of them relies on winning Florida. 

Both sides know just how vital this state is, which is why it has seen more campaign spending than any other battleground. Right now, Biden maintains a narrow lead, yet Democrats aren’t taking anything for granted. Still fresh is the memory of 2018 when, in an otherwise wave year for Democratic candidates, the party lost both the Senate and gubernatorial race in Florida. If Biden succeeds here, it will likely be due to the state’s huge elderly population. Once a cornerstone of Trump’s support, over 65s have shifted towards Joe Biden following concerns over the president’s handling of the coronavirus. 

Pennsylvania

Unlike Trump, Biden does not have to win Florida. Pennsylvania, however, is a different story. With twenty electoral college votes, it is the most bountiful prize to be found in the so-called ‘Rust Belt’. Trump’s victory here in 2016 was the first for a Republican in almost thirty years. For Biden, who is currently leading there by just under seven points, the Keystone state is his best insurance option should a ‘Sun Belt’ breakthrough fail to materialise. 

If Biden fails to flip Pennsylvania, his path to 270 electoral votes narrows drastically. He can still win, for instance by flipping Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nebraska’s second district, or Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. However, Trump would be the favourite at this stage. 

Michigan and Wisconsin 

Alongside Pennsylvania, these two former Democratic strongholds cemented Trump’s Rust Belt triumph over Hillary Clinton. Michigan was, in fact, the narrowest Trump victory in 2016, as he carried the Great Lakes State by 0.3%. Wisconsin, meanwhile, was where the Clinton campaign ultimately died, as the state provided her opponent with his decisive 270th electoral vote. 

Now, the two constitute Biden’s most promising targets. He leads in Michigan by 7.8% and in Wisconsin by 7.7%. Given the two are adjacent and demographically similar, a major polling error in one will likely translate across the border. On that note, Wisconsin is the battleground state where polls were off by the greatest margin four years ago. A repeat of that is relatively unlikely, given polling methodology has improved and far more polling has been conducted in both states, yet it remains a possibility. Taken together, the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remains Biden’s clearest path to victory. 

North Carolina 

Until quite recently, the Tar Heel State was reliably Republican, having voted for the party in every presidential election from 1980 to 2004. That changed in 2008, however, when (by the narrowest of margins) it picked Barack Obama over John McCain. Mitt Romney retook North Carolina for the Republicans in 2012 (and Trump beat Clinton here in 2016), but the days of GOP hegemony were over. According to analysis by FiveThirtyEight, the state has voted more and more Democratic relative to the national vote in every presidential election since 2000. 

What happened? In short, North Carolina has become increasingly urban and more college educated. The state’s rural counties, particularly those in its West, remain solidly Republican. Yet North Carolina’s expanding cities, notably Charlotte, it’s biggest, and Raleigh, the state capital, are fast becoming Democratic strongholds. 

While North Carolina is far from a must-win state for Joe Biden, his narrow lead here provides options should things go wrong elsewhere. For instance, as noted above, it could carry the Democrat to victory should Trump pull ahead in Pennsylvania. 

Arizona 

Since the Second World War, the Grand Canyon State has backed Republicans for president all but twice (Truman in 1948 and Clinton in 1996). However, like much of America’s South West, it has become increasingly Democratic. In 2016, Trump carried Arizona by less than four per cent, down about five points over the previous cycle. In 2018, Kirsten Sinema became the first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate race in thirty years. Now, Joe Biden maintains a modest lead over the president. 

With eleven electoral college votes, Arizona may prove decisive in a few scenarios. It could carry Joe Biden to victory should he win Pennsylvania but fail to break through in Michigan or Wisconsin. Like North Carolina, a Biden win here is probably not required but does expand his options. And while our focus remains upon the presidency, Arizona is key to Democratic hopes for taking back the Senate, as their candidate currently leads the Republican incumbent by a large margin. 

Stable race still stable

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

Last week, two days after the first presidential debate, Donald Trump announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, the president was briefly hospitalised at Walter Reed medical center near Washington D.C, before returning to the White House on Tuesday. 

Other members of the administration have since tested positive, including White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Senior Adviser Stephen Miller. Trump, for his part, claims to be doing very well (at least well enough to appear in daily Twitter videos). 

As the White House battled its own internal coronavirus outbreak, Americans watched the one and only vice presidential debate, between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris. The event was far more civil than the Trump/Biden clash last week. A variety of topics came up while many questions were left unanswered, as both candidates frequently ignored the moderator and pivoted to talking points. 

I could spend a little longer delving into it but, honestly, who cares? There is no serious evidence to suggest that vice presidential debates have any meaningful impact on the ‘horse race’. Neither of the candidates dealt a knockout blow and every scientific poll I’ve seen shows Harris won. Let’s move on. 

The state of the race 

While the vice presidential debate likely won’t change anything, we have received a lot of polling since the Trump/Biden clash last week (as well as the president’s coronavirus diagnosis). In short, what may have been Trump’s best chance to mount a late comeback has resulted in an extended Biden lead. As of this morning, the Democrat is ahead by 10.1% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average. 

Twenty four days until election day, this is a colossal lead for the former vice president. The last time a candidate had a larger advantage at this point in the race was Bill Clinton in 1996 (who subsequently trounced his Republican opponent). It is Biden’s biggest lead of the whole campaign and, while Trump can still win, no previous presidential candidate has climbed out of a hole this deep. The only potential comparison would be Harry Truman’s surprise win over Thomas Dewey in 1948. Truman, however, was catching up to his challenger in the final weeks and months, while Trump is going backwards. 

Yet, as we all know, the election will be decided in individual states, not by the national popular vote. To that effect, the table below shows how the polling has changed in the thirteen battleground states since last Saturday. 

Data: FiveThirtyEight

As you can see, Donald Trump has lost ground almost everywhere (in Minnesota, where the president is down nine points, the polling average remains unchanged). Granted, Biden’s gains in battleground states have not been as impressive as his national ones, but we’re really splitting hairs at this point. The Democrat was already ahead in more than enough states to reach 270 electoral votes. Now, his cushion against a potential polling error is even larger. Last week, I noted that Biden would still win if the polls underestimate Trump by 5% in every state. As of today, that number is 7%.  

Since the new year, America has witnessed a brief military confrontation with Iran, a presidential impeachment, a pandemic which has killed over 213,000 of its people, a historic recession and months of protests, riots and civil unrest. However, if all you had been following were the polls, you would assume this to have been the most uneventful election year in history. 

To give you an idea of just how stable the 2020 race has been, I took the RealClearPolitics polling average every week from April 1st to October 7th for the past four presidential elections and plotted it into the graphs below. 

Here is another way to think about it. So far this year, the difference between Biden’s highest and lowest margin over Trump in the national polls is only 5.4%. That is compared to 12.5% for Clinton in 2016, 7.6% for Obama in 2012 and 10.8% for Obama in 2008. 

In 2016, Donald Trump was able to win the electoral college with 46% of the popular vote. Even if he is able to replicate that level of support this year (he is currently at 42%), it will not be enough. With a historically low third-party vote and very few undecideds, Biden is polling significantly better than Clinton at this late stage. Unlike Clinton, he is also breaching 50% in enough states to secure 270 electoral votes. I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat it here - Trump’s base mobilisation strategy is not good enough. 

Usually, when a president is elected by a hair’s breadth, the next four years are an opportunity to expand their coalition. Twenty years ago, another Republican narrowly claimed the White House following a loss in the popular vote. While certainly a divisive figure, George W. Bush ultimately won re-election by a larger electoral college margin than before and got three million more votes than his opponent. No doubt, Bush was effective at mobilising his base, but he also won a higher share of the women and ethnic minority vote than any Republican since. Trump, meanwhile, has done little to appeal to those outside his tent. He claims to represent the ‘silent majority’, but all evidence points to him being the leader of a rather loud minority.  

On the flip side, it is far too late for the president to embark upon a grand persuasion mission. Save a major unforeseen event, his only hope of re-election rests on a record-breaking polling error and abnormally high rejection rates for (predominantly Democratic) mail-in ballots. 

Finally, as we look towards election day, we must remember that we are currently deep into election month, with at least 8.7 million people having already voted. In two battleground states, Minnesota and Wisoncsin, the reported early and absentee vote is now over 20% of 2016 turnout. In Florida, a must-win state of President Trump, well over a million have cast their ballots. This is all happening in a national environment which, if the polls are even remotely correct, is devastating for Trump, making an upset less likely by the day. 

Trump is losing

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

On Friday morning, President Trump announced that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, alongside his wife, Melania. The president happens to fall in at least two at-risk categories, being seventy four and overweight. So far, he is reportedly showing mild cold-like symptoms, having recently been admitted to hospital ‘out of an abundance of caution’. Trump will, of course, be receiving the highest quality care. 

How exactly this might impact the campaign, if at all, is far from clear. On the one hand, it is possible that Trump might benefit from a so-called ‘rally round the flag’ effect, although I remain sceptical. Contrary to popular belief, when Boris Johnson fell ill from covid in March, it did not result in an uptick to his approval rating (which began days before the PM tested positive). Moreover, perceptions of the president are almost wholly locked in, so any meaningful sympathy effect remains unlikely. 

On the other hand, there are a few potential dangers for Trump (besides the obvious health concerns that come with contracting a deadly virus). The revelations will likely shift the news agenda back towards the pandemic, a scenario which the Trump campaign precisely wanted to avoid in the final weeks. Trump’s rallies, one of his most proven methods for generating unfettered television coverage, have now been cancelled. Instead, should his condition deteriorate, news anchors might begin speculating whether he is even physically fit to lead, a criticism which Republicans have frequently levelled at Joe Biden. 

Voters may further question the president’s prior comments where he downplayed the virus. As recently as last week, Trump had claimed that covid ‘affects virtually nobody’. They might also recall how, just days ago, he had mocked his opponent for frequently wearing a mask. Speaking of which...

On Tuesday, Joe Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first of three presidential debates (whether the rest will even happen is now unclear). It was, for the most part, a trainwreck, with Trump attempting to throw his challenger off-balance through constant interruption. The result was hardly Biden’s best debate performance, as the Democrat often appeared flummoxed and unable to complete his train of thought. However, the president’s aggressive tactics likely did more harm than good. 

To be clear, this isn’t my opinion. Republican pollster Frank Luntz hosted a virtual focus group of fifteen undecided voters, and few had anything good to say about Donald Trump’s performance. The president was described as ‘unhinged’, ‘arrogant’, and ‘chaotic’.  Biden, in turn, was thought to be ‘coherent’, ‘presidential’ and ‘better than expected’. 

In the months leading up to the event, Trump and his campaign have scored an immense own-goal by lowering expectations for their opponent, whom they claimed was ‘senile’ and suffering from dementia. According to a third of the focus group, the president’s worst moment came as he seemingly declined to condemn white supremacists. It should have been an easy question, yet it ultimately ended with a number of senior Republicans distancing themselves from their nominee. 

In terms of a more quantitative approach, scientific polls conducted after the debate fared no better for Donald Trump. A CBS/YouGov poll found that voters thought Biden won by a seven-point margin, almost identical to his current national lead. Morning Consult found that voters favoured Biden’s performance by a much larger 16%. In another survey, conducted by Ipsos for FiveThirtyEight, 59.7% rated Biden’s performance as ‘good’, compared to 39.2% for Trump. 

Sidenote: emphasis here on ‘scientific’. Yes, President Trump won a bunch of online ‘clicker’ polls, which are hardly more representative than a campaign rally. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that Twitter is not real life. 

I should repeat what I wrote about the debates last week - it is highly doubtful that they will have a meaningful impact on the race. Indeed, the Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight poll found that almost no-one has changed their voting intention, even as a clear majority thought Biden won. But that is likely good news for the Democratic nominee, since, if the debate was an effective tie, that benefits the candidate who is currently in the lead. 

The state of the race 

There is no other way about it, Donald Trump is losing the presidential election. While the outcome remains uncertain and a late shift is always possible, time is quickly running out. 

We have exactly a month left until election day and Biden leads Trump by 7.6% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average. This time last month, he led by 7.5%, in August by 8.2% and in July by 9.6%. The race has tightened since mid-summer. It has not tightened anywhere close to fast enough. 

Looking at the polls in key states, the trendline for the president happens to be even worse. The table below shows how the polling average has shifted in the thirteen battlegrounds I covered last month. 

Data: FiveThirtyEight

In seven of the thirteen battleground states, Trump has lost ground over the past month. In most cases, the change has been very minor, yet Biden was already ahead and Trump is the one who needs a breakthrough. If the polls are exactly right (they won’t be), Biden wins 369 electoral votes, with 270 needed to secure the presidency. Now, let us assume a uniform polling error in Trump’s direction. If we take 5% off Biden’s margin in each state, he still wins 279 electoral votes. But polling errors can occur in either direction, so let’s say the polls are underestimating Biden by only 3%. In that event, he carries every battleground and wins 413 electoral votes, a historic blowout. 

Covering the Trump/Biden horse race, I can’t help but feel a sense of deja vu. During the 2019 UK general election, the evidence throughout the entire campaign pointed to a comfortable Conservative majority. About a month before polling day, YouGov released its much-awaited MRP model. It predicted the Tories would win 359 seats. 

Naturally, nervous progressives took comfort in YouGov’s stated margin of error. It’s final MRP, released mere days from election day, predicted 339 Conservative seats, yet with a plausible range of 311 to 367. To that effect, the most likely event was a small Conservative majority but the range of possibilities extended from a hung parliament to a Conservative landslide. In the end, Boris Johnson won 365 seats, just two shy of the upper limit in the model. For what it's worth, YouGov recently released its MRP for the US presidential race. It predicts Biden to win 350 electoral votes, with a Trump upset still possible in the margins. 

So, the most likely outcome at this point in time is a sizable Biden victory. A narrow Trump win remains a possibility, but it is no more probable than a Biden landslide. Right now, Trump is ahead by less in South Carolina (a state he previously won by 14% and which I am not even including in my list of battlegrounds) than he is behind in Michigan or Wisconsin, among others. 

Try as hard as you might, it is difficult to find good news for the Trump campaign. In the second edition of US Election Watch (back in mid-July), I argued that Biden will most likely win unless at least one of the following happens:

1. The economy rebounds far better than expected 

2. The pandemic largely fades away 

3. The Biden campaign implodes amid a scandal 

So far, only the first has partially come to pass. The economy has improved, with unemployment falling and household spending rising. But it remains doubtful whether it is rebounding fast enough, or whether it will before election day, as economic recovery ultimately relies on successfully controlling covid. After all, no matter what the public guidelines are, people are less likely to travel and to participate in economic activity if they feel it might threaten their health. 

On that front, over 200,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus. Meanwhile, both deaths and cases have been stagnant for months. And while Trump maintains a small lead on who is best to handle the economy, Biden is miles ahead when it comes to managing the pandemic. 

What else is there? The president’s approval rating, at 44%, is only one point above his national polling. His disapproval rating is two points higher than Biden’s national support. Biden’s favourability, at 49.5%, is at an all-time high, so his campaign is hardly imploding. 

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, is reportedly running out of money. Having spent big throughout the spring and early summer, to no discernible effect, it has now been forced to cut back advertising in a number of key states. At the same time, Democrats are pulling in record figures. Following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the party’s candidates raised more than double the annual GDP of Tuvalu, some $91 million, in 28 hours. Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire and former presidential candidate, recently committed to spending $100 million to defeat Trump in Florida, as the Biden campaign itself continues to outraise their opponent. In August, its fundraising advantage was more than two to one. It claims to have done even better in September. 

There is one area where the Trump campaign is outperforming their opponent, the traditional ground game. While Democrats are only just resuming in-person canvassing, having previously suspended operations due to the pandemic, Republican volunteers have been knocking on doors for months. The result? A notable GOP advantage in voter registration - ‘Of the six states Trump won by less than 5 points in 2016, four - Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania - permit voters to register by party. In all four states, voter registration trends are more robust for the GOP than four years ago’. There is a catch, which is that this will only ever make a difference in a close race. At the moment, Biden is too far ahead in too many places. 

Just in case there is any doubt, Donald Trump can very much still win. I am probably not qualified enough to put a number on it, but there are statistical models built to do just that. As of this morning, Trump’s odds of being re-elected are 20% according to FiveThirtyEight, 17% in Decision Desk, and 13% in the Economist forecast. 

People tend to be bad at comprehending probabilities between 1/10 and 9/10, but 10-20% is quite a lot more than zero. While one in five events are self evidently unlikely, they still happen all the time. If you are a distraught Republican, do remember that Trump’s odds are at least twice as good as getting a double pair in five-card poker. And if you happen to be an overconfident Democrat, realise that they are about as high as the chance of shooting yourself in Russian roulette. 

In practical terms, the fact that Biden is polling at 50% or more in enough states to get 270 electoral votes means that Trump’s base mobilisation strategy is simply not good enough to win. The president has a high floor, in that he has never averaged below 40% nationally, but he has to start cutting into Biden’s support. 

When does Trump have to start making a comeback? Yesterday would be a start. As I have been noting for the last few weeks, people are already voting. Over three million have cast their ballots, many of them in battleground states. In Wisconsin, those who have already voted make up 15% of 2016 turnout. If the race tightens in the final weeks, Biden’s early advantage could prove decisive. To win, Trump needs to quickly close the gap, or hope for a major polling error.

Could the polls be wrong

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

We are just a few days away from the biggest televised event of the campaign. On Tuesday, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will face off in the first of three presidential debates, with two more scheduled for October 15th and 22nd respectively. A single vice presidential debate, between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence, will also take place on October 7th.  

Now, this is the point where I’m supposed to tell you just how much of an impact the debates could have. Yes, voters have seen a lot of Biden, and even more of Trump, but who knows what could happen once the two finally confront each other on the stage? Perhaps one will make a gaffe so embarrassing that the floor will collapse from under their campaign? Perhaps the other will pin them down so hard with Facts and Logic that voters will finally see through their lies and bluster? 

At least that is what I would have told you if I worked for one of the TV networks. The reality is that presidential debates have never mattered that much, and tend to matter less and less with every election cycle. I’ll go into a little more detail below. I will also be covering a subject that often dominates discussion on social media, could the polls be wrong again, and should we trust them? But first…

The state of the race 

Election day is still 38 days away, but many are already voting. To be more specific, nearly 900,000 absentee or early votes have been cast so far in the 2020 election. This includes over 230,000 in North Carolina and almost 170,000 in Wisconsin, both of them crucial battleground states. It is important to keep these facts in mind when going over the latest polls. With millions of people already in the process of receiving ballots, and hundreds of thousands voting as we speak, every day that a candidate is substantially down in the polls is a day when they are losing the election in a very real sense. 

Speaking of which, as of this morning, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 7.2% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average, with the Democrat recovering half a point since last week. President Trump’s approval remains virtually unchanged, at about 43%. It’s not all bad for Trump, however. The polling in Florida (which is, I should note, now the president’s home state), continues to tighten, with Biden now only ahead by 1.7%. That being said, the Democrat has pulled ahead in Ohio, his first lead in the Buckeye State since August. 

The overall picture remains essentially where it was last week, or the week before, or any week going back to April. Biden maintains a healthy lead but Trump is still competitive. As I wrote two weeks ago, a key feature of this election is Joe Biden overperforming Clinton and Obama in historically Republican states, while his lead in traditionally blue states (most notably: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) is hardly insurmountable. In recent election years, you would have expected that, if the race is effectively tied in Texas and Georgia, then the Democrat must be running far ahead in traditional battlegrounds. Not quite this time. What this more or less means is that it wouldn’t take that much for the result to shift from a narrow Trump win to a Biden landslide, or vice versa. 

Could the polls be wrong? 

Biden maintains a solid polling lead, but just how much can we Trust those polls, anyway? Didn’t they say that Trump couldn’t win in 2016? Aren’t there millions of ‘shy’ Trump voters that are embarrassed to tell pollsters how they really feel? Shouldn’t other metrics, such as voter enthusiasm, take priority? Let’s take these one by one. 

Were the polls wrong in 2016? Yes and no. The national polls, which showed an average Clinton lead of 3.2% on election day, were almost exactly right (Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1%, which is well within any margin of error). There were notable problems in state polls. However, it is still important to keep those in perspective. 

Take the three states which ultimately put Trump in the White House: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In Michigan, Clinton led the polls by 3.6% on election day, while Trump won by 0.3%. In Pennsylvania, Clinton led by 2.1% and Trump won by 0.7%. In Wisconsin, Clinton led by 6.5% while Trump carried the state by 0.7%. Only in Wisconsin were the polls off by a considerable margin. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, they showed a race too close to call. 

Sidenote: it is important to remember that a polling margin or error refers to the support for each candidate, not the gap between them. For example, let’s say a poll shows Candidate A with 53% and Candidate B with 47%, with a margin of error of 4 points. What this means is that, accounting for the margin of error, Candidate A should be between 49-57% and Candidate B between 43-51%. Even with a 6% gap, the race is very much competitive. 

The problem in 2016 was less so with the polls and more with how they were interpreted, both by election analysts and the general public. Casual observers tend to assume that the job of an opinion poll is to say which candidate will win, when it is really more about the plausible range of outcomes. 

In 2012, the final polling average in Michigan showed Obama ahead of Romney by 4%, whereas he actually won the state by 9.5%. Therefore, even though the polls correctly predicted an Obama victory and missed a Trump upset, the 2016 polls (3.3% off) were actually more accurate than the 2012 polls (5.5% off). Unfortunately, people tend to complain only when the polls miss the winner, when that is not necessarily their job. 

When it comes to how the 2016 polling was (mis) interpreted by professional election analysts, the issue came from assuming polling errors in different states to be independent from each other. Let’s say that Trump had a 30% chance of winning each of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Now, the odds of three 30% events occurring back to back are fairly slim, which is why you had some forecasts showing Clinton with a 98% chance of winning. However, polling errors are likely to be replicated in demographically similar states, such as the three above (some forecasters, such as FiveThirtyEight, recognised this and gave Trump much better odds). 

That’s not to say that there weren’t significant issues with the polls themselves. Most notably, a failure to weight samples by education. Many state polls in 2016 had disproportionate amounts of graduates, which were (and still are) far less likely to vote Republican. This year, far more pollsters are weighting by education. Furthermore, there was a serious lack of high quality polling in states like Wisconsin, which were mistaken to be fairly safe for Clinton. That is certainty not the case this time around. 

But what about the so-called ‘shy’ Trump voter effect? Could it be that many Republicans are afraid to tell pollsters their true opinions as a result of a ‘social desirability bias’? In short, there is little to no evidence to support this theory. If shy Trump voters did exist in anything close to significant numbers, we would expect to see two things happen:

1. Trump performing notably better in online as opposed to live telephone surveys, where they do not have to speak to another person. 

2. Trump overperforming the polling in Democratic states, where ‘social desirability bias’ would be at its most strongest. 

An in-depth study by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), found no notable difference between polls with or without a live interviewer during the 2016 election. They also found no evidence that ‘pro-Trump areas were systematically under-represented in national or state polls’. Meanwhile, Trump tended to underperform his polling in heavily Democratic states such as California.

Furthermore, a simple glance at a precinct-level map of the 2016 election results will tell you that most Trump voters live in places full of other Trump voters. In fact, since Democrats are so heavily concentrated in urban areas, we might as well instead be talking about a shy Biden effect. Indeed, the following statements, endlessly regurgitated on social media, are wholly contradictory:

1. Trump voters are shy to admit their true voting intention 

2. The polls must be wrong because my area is absolutely swimming in Trump/Pence signs. 

Finally, what about the so-called ‘enthusiasm gap’? It is true that Trump voters are more excited about their candidate than their Democratic counterparts. However, enthusiasm about a given candidate does not necessarily translate into higher likelihood to vote. 

This is especially the case in re-election years, when the race tends to become a referendum on the incumbent. To that effect, while Democrats might not be too enthusiastic about voting for Biden, they are very enthusiastic about voting against Trump. If the ‘enthusiasm gap’ meant much, we would see Trump performing much better among likely voters. At this late point in the race, there isn’t much evidence of that. 

Opinion polling is imperfect, polls have been wrong before and will be wrong again. It is entirely possible, if unlikely, that state polling will be off by a similar margin to 2016. It is also just as likely that they will underestimate Biden, as they did Obama in 2012. After all, every poll comes with an indicated margin of error for a reason. However, regardless of their imperfections, they remain the best method for assessing the state of the race at any given time. There is no getting around the fact that, most of the time, the candidate who is ahead in the polls wins. 

What of the debates? 

To quote John Sides, associate professor of political science at George Washington University... ‘That presidential debates can be “game changers” is a belief almost universally held by political pundits and strategists. Political scientists, however, aren’t so sure’. 

Despite the huge amount of preparation candidates do for the debates, and how much the events are hyped up by TV networks (who obviously have a monetary incentive to do so), there is little evidence that they have ever changed the outcome of a presidential race. That is not to say that debates have no impact on the polling. They frequently do. However, post-debate shifts are often a mirage. 

In fact, if the previous two elections are of any indication, the most predictive week in presidential polling is now, just before the first presidential debate. In 2016, Clinton led nationally by 2.3% on the eve of the debates. The final polling average had her ahead by 3.2% and she won the popular vote by 2.1%. In 2012, Obama led by 3.1% before the first debate. His lead dropped to 0.7% by election day and he ultimately won by 3.9% nationally. In an average election year, the race will ultimately revert to where it was just before the first debate. 

Debates are likely to have a greater impact when more voters are undecided. To that effect, the 2020 election has among the fewest undecided voters ever at this point in the race. Meanwhile, factors that typically reduce uncertainly, such as high polarization, will likewise reduce the effect which the debates could have. When most voters are as committed to their candidate as they are now, and as averse to their opponent, there is little either can say or do to change their mind. 

Put it another way, an environment in which the debates can create a meaningful shift in the race is one where the polling is relatively close, many voters remain undecided and polarization is low. In every case, the opposite is now true. If Donald Trump is able to win re-election, it probably won’t be because of what goes down on Tuesday. 

The third parties

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

Ever since the founding of the Republican Party in 1854, the United States has, arguably, maintained the most rigid two-party system anywhere in the developed world. Every presidential election since 1852 has been won by either a Democrat or a Republican. The last, and only, US president to be elected as an independent was George Washington himself (and he ran unopposed). 

This political duopoly is just as strong on the congressional level. Since the Second World War, a total of only thirteen independent and third-party candidates have been elected to the House of Representatives. The last time one was successful was in 2004. Independents have had more luck in Senate races. Two currently serve in the upper house, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Otherwise, the duopoly maintains its grip. 

Of course, that has not stopped some from trying. With every presidential election comes a new host of independent and third-party candidates. Occasionally, they even do quite well. In this edition of US election watch, I will take you through the motley of presidential hopefuls seeking to challenge America’s political duopoly, and what impact they might have upon whether Donald Trump wins re-election. But first… 

The state of the race 

Until quite recently, the relationship between national and state polls was one where Joe Biden maintained a strong lead overall but President Trump remained more competitive in individual battlegrounds. This was hardly surprising, given that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and Democrats tend to pile up votes in large states (notably California and New York) which are hardly competitive on the presidential level. 

However, over the past few weeks, this trend has seemingly begun to reverse. As of this morning, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 6.7% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average. This is about one point lower than his lead last week and his lowest overall since early June. And yet, Biden’s odds of victory have barely deteriorated, if at all. Recent state polls have made for much better news for the Democratic nominee. 

Statistically speaking, week by week changes tend to be fairly insignificant. Therefore, in order to better appreciate the wider trends, let’s compare how the polls have moved since just before the party conventions, just over a month ago. On the eve of the Democratic convention, Biden led Trump by 8.4% nationally, decreasing by just under 2% since. 

However, across the thirteen ‘battleground’ states I identified last week, Biden’s lead has fallen only by an average of 0.4%. In four of them, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas, the Democrat has actually improved his standing. The good news for Trump is that his most significant gains have come in Florida, a must-win state for the GOP, where Biden’s lead is now 3.2% lower than it was pre-convention. 

So, the overall picture this week is of Trump making modest gains nationally and statistically meaningless gains in most battleground states. There are two explanations for this. First, it is possible that GOP messaging at their convention has been effective at galvanising support in firmly Republican states, but less effective at convincing swing voters in places that actually matter. 

Second, the polls could simply be wrong. It is doubtful, for instance, that Biden’s national lead is the same as in Wisconsin and two points lower than in Minnesota, both states which are generally expected to vote more Republican than the country as a whole. Maybe Biden has closed (or at least tightened) the electoral college/popular vote gap which has haunted Democrats since 2016. For now, there’s no way to really tell. 

Finally, as this article was ready to be sent off early this morning, news broke that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, supreme court justice and liberal icon, died of cancer at the age of 87. The event sent shockwaves through Democratic circles. Even if Joe Biden wins in November, should Donald Trump and the Republican Senate majority confirm a replacement before January 20th (inauguration day), they could ensure a conservative majority on the court for a generation. 

In 2016, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to let President Obama appoint a successor. McConnell, in a break from convention, argued that the process had to wait until a new president was in office. Safe to say, it is already clear that he does not intend to follow his own precedent. Ginsburg’s death will likely energise voters on both sides of the divide. The stakes could now hardly be any higher, especially when it comes to Senate races. 

The third parties 

Before we proceed, let me make one thing abundantly clear. The odds of any third party or independent candidate winning the presidency this year are about as close to zero as you can get. The vast majority of them are only on the ballot in a handful of states, totalling far fewer than 270 electoral votes. More pertinently, Joe Biden and Donald Trump currently make up about 94% of national voting intention (and the rest are mostly voters undecided between the main two). If there was any sign of a serious challenge to the duopoly, we would almost certainly know about it. 

It wasn’t always like this. In 1996, Reform Party candidate Ross Perot won a sizable 8.4% of the national vote. In 1992, he got 18.9%, arguably helping tilt the electoral college against incumbent George H. W. Bush and towards Bill Clinton. Going further back, pro-segregationist candidate George Wallace won 13.5% of the vote, and five states, in 1968. All the way back in 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a third-party candidate, beat incumbent Republican William Taft into third place, securing 27.4% of the vote and six states (as a result, Democrat Woodrow Wilson won an electoral college landslide). 

Even though the White House has been occupied by either a Democrat or a Republican for over 150 years, other candidates have sometimes delivered a major ‘spoiler effect’. Indeed, in the aftermath of the 2016 election, many observers pointed out that Donald Trump’s margins over Hillary Clinton in the critical battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were smaller than the share of the vote won by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. In 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore to the White House by just over 500 votes in Florida. Meanwhile, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader got about 97,000 votes in the Sunshine State. 

The spoiler effect argument should be a familiar one to our UK readers. Due to the first past the post electoral system, every general election is filled with cries of ‘Don’t vote X here, you’ll let Y in!’ Similarly, almost all US states allocate their electoral college votes through a winner-takes-all model (as noted in last week’s piece, Maine and Nebraska allocate some of theirs on the basis of who wins in individual congressional districts). 

However, be it America or Britain, claims that X only won because Y took votes from Z are often hard to prove. To that effect, we don’t actually know whether Y voters would have supported Z if their person wasn’t on the ballot. Maybe some of them would have voted for X instead, or simply stayed at home. We must not forget that voters are individuals, not blocks to be moved around at will. 

While Jill Stein voters could have put Hillary Clinton over the top in the three states where Trump ultimately won the 2016 election, this argument only works if the overwhelming majority of Stein voters would have both turned out and supported Clinton. That being said, Ralph Nader’s absence in 2000 would have very likely handed the presidency to Al Gore, given the sheer disparity between the latter’s margin and the former’s vote share in Florida. 

Sidenote: Why do candidates with no chance of winning run for president? There are a few reasons. For some, it is an opportunity to generate publicity for a particular cause or for their party. While the Greens have no shot at the presidency, they are occasionally competitive in local races. Others will tell themselves that it’s their democratic duty to provide more choice to voters, and ‘hey, maybe the impossible could happen’. And for many more, it might just be a massive ego trip. After all, who doesn’t want to be introduced as ‘Former Presidential Candidate’ at any after dinner speech they give. Those words would certainty look good on any Twitter bio… 

Looking ahead to November, here are all of the third-party/independent presidential candidates currently on the ballot in at least one state, ordered by the number of electoral votes they can theoretically win. 

Jo Jorgensen (Libertarian Party), Howie Hawkins (Green Party), Gloria La Rica (Party for Socialism and Liberation), Rocky De La Fuente (Alliance and Reform parties), Don Blankenship (Constitution Party), Brock Pierce (Independent), Kanye West (Birthday Party), Brian T. Carroll (American Solidarity Party), Alyson Kennedy (Socialist Workers Party), Bill Hammons (Unity Party), Phil Collins (Prohibition Party), Dario Hunter (Progressive Party), Jade Simmons (Independent), Jerome Segal (Bread and Roses Party), Blake Huber (Approval Voting Party), Mark Charles (Independent), JR Myers (Life and Liberty Party) and Joseph Kishore (Socialist Equality Party). 

That’s a mouthful, let’s break it down a bit. Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party nominee, is easily the most serious candidate among all of the above (granted, that isn’t saying much). The Libertarian ticket is the only one of the third parties to be on the ballot in all fifty states and Washington D.C. Jorgensen is also among the only two third party candidates to regularly register at all in the opinion polls. The other is Howie Hawkins, the Green Party nominee, who tends to poll anywhere between zero and one per cent whenever a pollster bothers to include him. Together, the Libertarian and Green parties are the most established third party offerings in contemporary America. 

All of the other candidates are on the ballot in states worth less than a combined 270 electoral votes. Most voters haven’t heard of them and their impact on the race is microscopic, with maybe one exemption. Kanye West, the billionaire rapper, announced his candidacy for president via Twitter on July 4th. Subsequently, some have suggested that West’s bid was a disturbing side effect of his bipolar disorder. Others claimed that it was all a giant publicity stunt for an upcoming album. 

Whatever the case, West maintains that he is serious. His campaign has successfully got on the ballot in twelve states, including Iowa and Minnesota, and is engaged in  ‘write-in’ efforts in five more. The Democrats, meanwhile, claim that West is a spoiler candidate aiming to syphon away votes from Biden, something which the rapper doesn’t exactly deny. 

Indeed, West has been cautious not to criticise the president and has, reportedly, held regular discussions with Jared Kushner, the senior White house advisor and Trump’s son in law. In some states, West’s efforts to get on the ballot have been aided by Republican operatives, including in Wisconsin, where he was ultimately disqualified after missing the deadline by fourteen seconds, not to mention using bogus signatures. 

Clearly, both Democrats and Republicans believe that West has the potential to hurt Biden in a number of key states. There are a few problems with that, though. The case for West as an effective spoiler rests on the implication that black Democrats will vote for him because he is black, which is a suggestion entirely without evidence and, how should I put this, somewhat morally questionable. And if West’s race is an important factor, who’s to say that he will attract Democrats, as opposed to the few black voters who backed Trump in 2016 (or, for that matter, white Republicans who are uncomfortable with either Trump or Biden)? 

Despite the wide range of candidates, some better known than most, the evidence clearly points to this being among the worst elections for third parties and independents in recent memory. Biden and Trump’s combined support is, at this point in time, substantially greater than the two party vote in 2016. Unlike last time, both the Democrat and Republican nominees are very well known, while the election will likely prove to be a referendum on the incumbent. Polarisation is at an all time high and, as far as both sides are concerned, the stakes are substantially greater than they were four years ago. Naturally, the potential for a spoiler is always there, however, both parties probably have better things to be concerned about. 

Breaking down the battleground

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

With less than two months to go until November 3rd, we really are in the home stretch. Both candidates will soon be preparing for the first round of debates, scheduled for September 29th, while their campaigns ramp-up activity on the ground and on the airwaves. To keep up the pace with new developments, US Election Watch will, from now on, be reporting to you weekly. 

After taking a detour to cover Senate races last week, it is time to take a deeper look at the electoral college, and the various paths both candidates have towards 270, the magic number of electoral votes required to secure the White House. But first...

The state of the race 

Last week, I noted that, as far as the polls are concerned, this presidential election has proved remarkably stable. Indeed, as of this morning, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 7.6% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average, virtually unchanged from last week. I am somewhat going to give the game away here, but, to quote one Twitter user, the overwhelming majority of this year’s election punditry is ‘finding new ways to say Biden is ahead, but the race isn’t over’. 

The rather boring truth about election analysis is this: the candidate who leads in the polls usually but not always wins. To that effect, the person who was ahead at this point in the campaign has won eight out of the last eleven presidential elections. 

In terms of state polling, the latest figures are mostly good news for Joe Biden. The Democrat has extended his lead in Pennsylvania, from 4.5% to 5.1% and in Michigan, from 6.6% to 7.7%. He also maintains a steady lead in Wisconsin, at 6.5%. Should Trump lose all three, and the rest of the map remains unchanged, Joe Biden will win the election. The president’s approval rating remains essentially where it was last week, at about 43%. 

Defining the ‘Battleground’

Two popular terms which you have probably seen floating around, and which are often used interchangeably, are ‘battleground’ and ‘swing’ states. They are, however, not the same thing and we should make a clear distinction. ‘Swing’ states are those which tend to, well, ‘swing’ to either side between elections. ‘Battleground’ states, meanwhile, are those which happen to be competitive in a given election cycle. 

The battleground will include traditional swing states, such as Florida, but may also contain those which have, until recently, leaned heavily towards one party, such as Texas or Minnesota. There are also historical swing states that, largely as a result of demographic change, are no longer that competitive on the presidential level, such as Virginia and Colorado. 

With that disclaimer out of the way, what are the battleground states to watch in 2020? Naturally, considering there are no universally accepted criteria, it depends on who you ask. Regardless, here is what I think they are when considering current polling and historic trends:

Trump 2016 

Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine 2nd District, Michigan, Nebraska 2nd District, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin

Clinton 2016

Minnesota, Nevada and New Hampshire

There are a few things you may have noticed here. First, the vast majority of these states were won by Trump in 2016. This is to be expected, considering the president (who won 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232) is both playing defence and is substantially down in the polls. Second, two of these are not states at all. Maine and Nebraska allocate some of their electoral votes on the basis of congressional districts, two of which are competitive this year (unlike both states as a whole). While each district has only one electoral vote, there are scenarios where they could prove decisive. 

Finally, this is a very broad map, at least by historical standards. The reason for this is that, while Donald Trump remains competitive in the so-called ‘rust-belt’, Joe Biden is significantly overperforming Clinton (and, indeed, Obama) in the ‘sun-belt’, with a number of traditionally Republican states potentially set to vote blue for the first time in twenty years (or, in the case of Texas, over forty years). 

The road to 270

Given the president’s current standing in the polls, Donald Trump’s path to victory is narrow but relatively clear. While the 306 electoral votes Trump secured in 2016 did not constitute a blowout, they do give him some room for error. What follows are a few plausible scenarios. 

Sidenote: All of the maps you are about to see were created using 270towin.com. While I cannot cover every possibility, I do recommend you play around with their interactive tool yourself. 

If the election is to be again decided in the rust-belt, with the rest of the map remaining static, Trump only has to hold one of either Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. 

Trump avoids a rust-belt rout

There is also Minnesota, a state which Clinton carried by a mere 1.5%. The Trump campaign has spent a lot of time and resources there this year and for good reason. It constitutes among the most likely states to swing into the Republican column come November. If the president succeeds there, he can safely lose all three of the above battlegrounds. That being said, the latest polls still give Joe Biden a healthy lead.

Minnesota to the rescue

There are two more Clinton 2016 states which remain competitive, Nevada and New Hampshire. The latter is a state which Trump lost by less than half a percentage point four years ago. While the latest polls there show a clear Biden lead, it is comparable to other North Eastern battlegrounds. New Hampshire has also shifted to the right in every election since 2004, so a Trump upset here is not to be discounted. The president lost Nevada by a more substantial 2.4%, but it is far from safe for Biden. Specifically, Biden’s apparent weakness among the state’s Latino population, traditionally a bedrock of Democratic support, may spell trouble. 

Nevada is arguably the most under-polled state of any 2020 battleground, with only a single survey conducted there all summer. That poll showed a modest Biden lead of 5%. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll has Trump down only 4%. With an economy which heavily relies on tourism, it has also been among the worst hit by the coronavirus. While Trump’s handling of the pandemic remains poor in the eyes of most voters, it remains to be seen whether his focus on re-opening the country might close the gap in the Silver State. Nevada and New Hampshire have only six and four electoral votes respectively, so Trump will have to win them both in order to offset a rust-belt rout. 

The above scenarios do, however, rely on the president holding his ground in the rest of the country, which brings us to the numerous path open to his opponent… 

The most obvious path towards a Biden victory relies on succeeding where Hillary Clinton failed and re-taking the trio of traditionally blue states in the North East. As noted above, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are enough to put a Democrat in the White House.

The trio comes home

Failing a decisive breakthrough in the rust-belt, Biden’s relative strength in the South, including a host of historic Republican strongholds, opens up a number of opportunities. First, we have Florida, the perennial swing state. While some states have shifted Democrat, such as Arizona, Virginia and Texas, and some have shifted Republican, such as Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Minnesota, the Sunshine State remained ultra-competitive for at least two decades. In fact, it has gone with the overall winner of every presidential election since 1996. 

Without Florida, Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes becomes extremely narrow. For Biden, we may call this the Florida plus one strategy. Assuming he wins there, any one of the battleground states not coloured in below is enough to put him over the top. 

Florida plus one

Joe Biden can still win without Florida, but the race then becomes much more competitive. His remaining paths mostly rely on winning a mix of rust-best and sun-belt states. Biden could, for instance, carry Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, or Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. He could also lose all three of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but pull out a sun-belt win with Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

How Biden can win with the sun-belt, even if Trump takes Florida, and keeps the rust-belt

There is always one more option, one which almost comes across as a joke. In this scenario, everything stays exactly the same since 2016, with the lone exemption of a Biden upset in Texas. 

Texas decides

This is not a likely scenario, for one big reason. While Texas has become more Democratic in recent election cycles, and while the polls currently have it in a virtual tie, it still leans noticeably to the right of the country as a whole. Therefore, if Biden wins here, he has also probably already won Florida and Arizona, rendering the Lone Star State’s 38 electoral votes ultimately irrelevant towards the outcome. 

In other words, the odds of Biden losing traditionally Democratic-leaning states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, while also pulling out a win in what is still Republican-leaning Texas, are slim. Yet it remains far from impossible. Something which Texas Democrats love to tell you is that theirs is not so much a Republican state as it is a non-voting state. They may have a point. In 2016, voter turnout in Texas was the fifth-lowest in the country, at just over 51% (this is, however, only about 5% lower than the national average). The argument is that a considerable registration and mobilisation effort, particularly among young and Latino Texans, can put Biden over the top. It’s plausible, but I would not bet on it. 

There is one final scenario we should consider, which is that no one wins. You may have noticed that 538, the total sum of electoral college votes, happens to be an even number. While it is very unlikely that both candidates end up on 269 electoral votes (for what it’s worth, FiveThirtyEight has the probability at under 1%), it is not impossible. Here is one example of such a map:

Biden wins Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. All else remains the same. The college is tied.

What happens in this scenario? The short answer is that Congress decides the election and Trump most likely remains in post. The slightly longer answer is that the House will choose the president and the Senate will choose the vice president. In the House vote, each state delegation would have one vote. While the Democrats control the House and are likely to hold it in November, the Republicans will still probably have majority representation in most states. As for the Senate, it is unlikely that Democrats will take control in the event their candidate loses at the top of the ticket. That being said, it isn’t that unlikely, and we could end up with Trump sharing the White House with a Democrat. For the sake of everyone’s sanity, I hope it doesn’t come to this. 

Update: this article was amended at 1:25pm on 12/09/2020 to account for the recent NYT/Siena polls in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Harris on the ticket

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

On Monday, the Democratic Party will meet for its national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Originally scheduled for July, the event was delayed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with all speakers now expected to participate remotely from across the country. The primary function of the affair remains the same, however. Joe Biden will officially become the Democratic nominee, joined by his preferred candidate for vice president. 

Accordingly, the biggest news this week was Biden’s decision to appoint Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate. What are the possible consequences of this pick? Read on to find out! But first… 

The state of the race 

With 80 days left until polling day, Joe Biden remains a favourite to defeat President Trump, as the Democrat leads by 8.5% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average. He also maintains a smaller but nevertheless significant lead in the battleground states. 

That being said, there is reason to believe that the race has narrowed (albeit very slightly). Biden’s lead over Trump has decreased by half a percentage point nationally since four weeks ago but also by 1.4% in Florida, 1.3% in North Carolina and 1.2% in Pennsylvania (to name a few key states). However, these are hardly major shifts and Biden’s position remains quite solid. 

The President, for his part, has so far struggled to dig himself out of his unfavourability hole. Donald Trump’s approval rating stands at about 42%, well below what it needs to be should he hope to remain in the White House. Historically speaking, job approval has been a fairly accurate predictor of an incumbent’s share of the popular vote. And, as William Galston of the Brookings Institution points out, “no incumbent with a pre-election job approval below 48% (George W. Bush in 2004) has ever received a second term”. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has been unable to damage Joe Biden’s comparatively decent ratings, even following a recent change in advertising strategy. Will they now have an easier target in the form of Kamala Harris? 

Harris was, in many ways, the safe choice for Biden 

When choosing a running mate, presidential nominees have traditionally taken several factors into consideration. A VP pick could, for instance, be used to build bridges within the candidate’s respective party. In 2016, Trump’s decision to select Mike Pence was widely perceived as an attempt to secure the evangelical Christian vote, a vital part of the Republican coalition. Barrack Obama, who ran to the left of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 democratic primary, picked Joe Biden at least in part in an effort to reassure the party’s moderate wing. 

Then there is the fabled “home-state effect”. The idea here is to pick someone who helps the ticket geographically. Is Michigan a vital swing state this election cycle? Great, then pick a Senator from Michigan! Unfortunately, the data we have on the home-state effect suggests it to be moderate at best. There is certainly no historic precedent for a VP’s state deciding an election. 

A candidate may also pick a running mate they think will generate the most excitement. This was likely John McCain’s thinking when he chose Sarah Palin (who turned out to be a horrific liability). Or they can pick someone very boring and hope that everyone ignores them (see: Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine). Of course, electioneering and party management aside, let’s not forget that the vice president holds a vital constitutional role. Should the president die, resign or be removed from office, the vice president will assume the presidency. To that effect, one’s running mate should ideally be someone qualified for the top job, and with whom the president tends to get along. 

Amid all the speculation leading up to Biden’s decision, Kamala Harris possessed a number of advantages. 

As a former presidential candidate herself, she has already been vetted by the electorate. In other words, since Harris is already a national figure, voters know who she is and the Trump campaign will find it harder to drastically alter her perception. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 94 per cent of voters have heard of Harris following the announcement (compared to 79 per cent before), with 45 per cent having a favourable view of the Senator (with 37 per cent unfavourable). 

In terms of party management, Harris descends broadly from the Democrats’ centre-left wing. While her progressive credentials do not quite match up to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, Harris has a liberal Senate voting record and ran to the left of Biden in the primary. You can never please everyone in politics, but Harris was probably destined to offend the fewest Democrats (at least of those who were seriously considered for the role). 

Moreover, Harris is relatively young (at 55, she is younger than Biden by 22 years, Trump by 19 and Mike Pence by 6). And while I know that many roll their eyes when one brings up the demographic/historical significance of her candidacy (she would be the first woman and person of colour to become Vice President), there are still millions of Americans for whom that is important. Therefore, despite being a relatively safe pick, Harris remains an exciting one for much of the Democratic base (certainly if you ignore the very unrepresentative left-wing Twitter crowd). The Biden campaign claims it has raised over $34 million in two days since Harris joined the ticket. 

Sidenote: Harris also happens to be the first Democrat from West of Texas to appear on a presidential ticket. Her home state of California has produced six presidential and vice-presidential nominees, all of them Republicans (and four of them were Richard Nixon). 

While Biden hardly needs any help winning California (where Trump is down by some 32 points), there is a geographic element at play here. As you may well know, the presidency is not the only thing on the ballot in November, with Democrats hoping to keep their majority in the House of Representatives and retake the Senate. When a sitting Senator steps down, as Harris would do should her and Biden win, a replacement is chosen by the state’s governor until a special election is held (which, in this case, would be in 2022). Was Biden to pick, say, Elizabeth Warren, her replacement would have been chosen by Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, a Republican. In California, the task falls to Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. This could be the difference as to whether Biden can rely on a Democrat-controlled Senate during his first two years in office. 

Danger ahead? 

Despite her strengths, there is a chance that Biden’s pick could ultimately hurt the Democratic ticket. Having served as both a Senator and as California’s attorney general, Harris is well qualified. However, that also means she has more baggage for Republicans to exploit. Her tenure as attorney general, and earlier as a San Francisco district attorney, does not quite match up to her liberal Senate voting record. It would indeed be strange to see the Trump campaign attack a Democrat for being too strong on law and order, although they might still try. 

Then there are the things she said about Biden himself. Expect future Trump attack ads to feature clips from the second Democratic primary debate, when Harris famously criticised him over his approach to race relations. Expect to see such ads run in states including Georgia and North Carolina, where Democratic hopes relly on high African American turnout. 

Will it work? I’m not so sure. First of all, when it comes to race, most Americans don’t exactly view President Trump as an authority on the subject. More importantly, most Democratic voters, including black voters, have already seen the debate in question, after which they voted Biden anyway. 

Finally, it is worth noting that Harris lost the Democratic primary, quite badly so. Fraught with fundraising, strategic and organisational issues, her campaign closed down shop before a single ballot had been cast. So has Biden picked a fairly lacklustre campaigner? Maybe so, although I wouldn’t rush to judgement, not least because a crowded primary field with well over a dozen candidates provides a poor comparison for November. Regardless, Harris is not going to be in charge of the Biden campaign, so the point is rather mute. 

The big picture 

If history tells us anything about vice-presidential picks, it’s that they largely don’t matter. Yet this time could be different. Not because Harris might significantly hurt or aid the Democratic ticket (she will, in all likelihood, do neither), but because her selection tells us a lot about the future direction of the party. 

First of note is that, if elected, Biden could well be a one-term president. He will be 82-years-old in January 2025 and has previously described himself as a transitional figure. To that effect, as vice president, Kamala Harris would automatically be the frontrunner to succeed him. If she assumes the presidency in 2025, we are potentially looking at twelve years of Harris in the White House (or, should Biden serve two terms, sixteen years). 

This would represent a significant victory for the party’s liberal wing, but a defeat for those advocating a more radical policy agenda. On the one hand, as noted above, Harris is not exactly a moderate. She supports legalising marijuana, boasts an “F” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA), supports the ‘Green New Deal’ and proposed a (watered down) version of Bernie Sanders’ signature ‘Medicare for All’ plan. 

Yet she is also not quite a progressive champion akin to New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, be it on healthcare, education or the environment. The Overton window in the Democratic Party has shifted to the left in recent years, but it may be a while before Sanders fans get their much-coveted political revolution. 

With regard to identity and representation, Biden’s pick likely spells the end for two white men ever again appearing on a Democratic presidential ticket (which last happened in 2004). The party’s broad electoral coalition continues to represent the growing diversity of America as a whole. Its leadership will probably continue to reflect that.

Behind Biden’s support

Welcome back to Bournbrook’s regular series on the state of the US presidential race, your impartial guide to the campaign and what you can expect as election date draws near.

Last time, I examined Joe Biden’s polling lead and the unique challenges it poses to Donald Trump’s re-election hopes. With the Democrats still in a very strong position, it is now time to delve deeper into what lies behind Biden’s support and what has changed for Trump since his surprise victory four years ago. But first…

The state of the race 

As noted above, Joe Biden’s decisive lead in both national and state polls has held steady over the past three weeks. With a month left until the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, the party’s presumptive nominee currently leads President Trump by 9.0 per cent in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average.

The president’s position in state polls is only slightly less precarious. In the crucial battlegrounds of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Biden leads by 9.1, 7.6 and 7.7 percentage points respectively. Assuming Biden is able to hold on to every state won by Hillary Clinton in 2016, those three alone are enough to swing the electoral college. Such grim prospects have led to a major organisational shake-up within the Trump campaign, as the president replaced Brad Parscale, his campaign manager, earlier this week.  

What changed (and didn’t) since 2016

Biden has a massive lead, but how does the composition of his current support base differ from Hillary Clinton’s? To better understand Biden’s support, we have to look at demographics and how different sections of the electorate have moved since 2016.

The first thing to note is that these shifts mostly predate Biden’s candidacy. To a large extent, Biden has inherited the national success achieved by Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, when the party regained control over the House of Representatives. To that effect, what follows is a comparison of exit polling from both 2016 and 2018, as well as recent polling on the 2020 race. 

A note on sampling error: unlike exit polls, which are conducted on Election Day and typically involve a very large sample size, polls commissioned during the campaign carry a larger margin of error. While a standard polling margin of error is about +/- 3 per cent, demographic sub-samples can go as high as +/- 8 per cent. Similarly, just as different polls produce different results with regard to overall voting intention, they will also differ in their demographic sub-samples. Keep this in mind. However, the trends noted below are well clear of standard polling error and are depicted in a variety of current polling on the 2020 race. 

The gender gap (it’s huge)

Among the most fascinating features of the 2020 election is that, while Biden is ahead of Trump by a large margin overall, the two are virtually tied among male voters. The CNN poll in question has the president leading by 2 points among men, with Biden holding a gargantuan 27 point lead among women. This isn’t entirely new. Clinton won women by 13 points in 2016, who also favoured Democratic congressional candidates by 19 points in 2018. 

Safe to say, this is a huge problem for Republicans, not least because women tend to be marginally overrepresented in the American electorate. Part of the issue is Donald Trump himself, who has been plagued by sexual assault allegations ever since he ran for president. Yet the Republican party at large has also consistently made decisions that have alienated women, from picking overwhelmingly male House candidates (there are only 13 Republican women in Congress, compared to 88 Democrats), to favouring hardline positions on abortion, to frequently falling afoul of the #MeToo movement (from Roy Moore to Bret Kavanaugh).

Alongside the party’s historically poor standing among people of colour, this remains a key concern for Republicans going forward. Speaking of which…

The GOP remains, predominantly, the party of white America 

Since 2000, Republican presidential candidates have, on average, won 7.6 per cent of the African American vote. This is a shockingly low figure. No other demographic divide in US politics comes even remotely close, yet Republicans have now relied upon white voters for so long that barely anyone seems to raise an eyebrow. 

In keeping with this tradition, President Trump won 8 per cent of the African American vote in 2016, which is essentially where polls have him right now. To that effect, his performance here is actually no worse than the average Republican nominee. As far the as Biden camp is concerned, the most important metric with this demographic is not voting intention, but turnout. 

Republican standing among Latino voters is better, but still poor. George W. Bush won 44 per cent of the Latino vote in 2004, the party’s best since records began, however, subsequent GOP nominees have hovered around 30 per cent.

Conversely, Republican candidates won an average 57 per cent of the white vote in the last five presidential elections (the same proportion that voted for Trump in 2016). The extraordinary racial divide in US party politics is no accident. As Claire Malone writes (in this highly recommended piece): 

‘Since the mid-20th century, the Republican Party has flirted with both the morality of greater racial inclusion and its strategic benefits. But time and again, the party’s appeals to white voters have overridden voices calling for a more racially diverse coalition’

For decades, a consistent Republican lead among white voters has translated into electoral success. However, the party may soon be running out of road. In 2000, white voters represented 81 per cent of the US electorate. In 2016, it was 70 per cent.

Demographic change now threatens to turn historic GOP strongholds into marginal battlegrounds, Arizona and Texas most prominent among them. The prospect of a Democratic Texas is a particular nightmare scenario for Republicans, as the Lone Star State’s 38 electoral college votes are alone enough to flip the 2016 election result. 

While this remains an unlikely prospect this year, demographic change may prove decisive should the race tighten. According to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, if turnout and voting preferences were to remain the same since 2016, Joe Biden would still flip Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin based on demographic change alone, easily winning the election.  

Education, education, education 

From America to Eastern Europe, age and education are fast becoming prime indicators of voting behaviour (usually at the expense of social class). In 2016, Clinton had a 10 point lead among graduates, whilst Trump led by 7 points among non-university educated voters. In 2018, the Democratic lead with graduates had extended to 20 points. Crucially, the two parties were now tied among non-graduates, still a majority of the electorate.

So far, Joe Biden has successfully maintained the coalition which won Democrats’ the House in 2018. He has also made substantial inroads into Trump’s core base, non-university educated whites. Trump won this group by some 37 points in 2016, but this lead has shrunk to about 16 points today. 

This should not necessarily cause surprise, as Joe Biden’s relative strength with white, non-university educated Americans played a large role in his victory over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. It also suggests a dramatic improvement over 2016 with regards to rural voters (who are substantially overrepresented in this group).

While ‘down the ballot’ races will be covered in-depth in a later feature, this does not bode well for dozens of Republicans contesting marginal House seats this November. 

What can Donald Trump do? 

In 2013, as Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes lay in ruin, the Republican Party published the ‘Growth and Opportunity Project’, a one-hundred-page report into why it lost and how it could hope to win back power. It is a deeply thorough and remarkably frank autopsy. Here are some highlights: 

‘The GOP today is a tale of two parties. One of them, the gubernatorial wing, is growing and successful. The other, the federal wing, is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future.’

‘Public perception of the Party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.’

‘The perception, revealed in polling, that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates on the federal level, especially in presidential years.’

‘The nation’s demographic changes add to the urgency of recognizing how precarious our position has become… If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them and show our sincerity.’ 

‘If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.’

The report made a number of recommendations. In short, the Republican Party had to engage seriously with ethnic minorities, women and the youth. That would involve, among other things, moderating the party’s tone on immigration and calling for comprehensive immigration reform, developing a real presence within community organisations, promoting women and younger people to leadership roles and encouraging them to run for office. 

Then came 2016. To the initial horror of the GOP establishment, the party nominated Donald Trump, an old, white, immigration hardliner with a string of sexual assault allegations. It then proceeded to win the presidency and both houses of congress anyway. 

However, the long term demographic trouble for the GOP has not gone away. In fact, it continues to get worse. Donald Trump faced the most unpopular Democratic nominee in all of recorded history and still lost the popular vote, just as Republicans have lost the popular vote in six out of the last seven presidential elections.

The party’s core base, non-college-educated whites, is shrinking every year. In a few more election cycles, Texas will likely become a real swing state and the Republican advantage in the electoral college will all but disappear. 

Is there anything which Donald Trump can do? Unfortunately for Republicans, the kind of measures outlined in the party’s 2013 report would need years to implement. Demographic re-alignment, meanwhile, is a process that takes decades. Trump has months, and perceptions of him are mostly fully formed. That is not to say that he cannot win with his 2016 coalition. This would involve reversing his current polling deficit by at least 5 points, winning over most remaining undecideds and converting at least some current Biden voters. He could moderate his tone. He could encourage Congress to pass a second comprehensive stimulus package. He could replace Mike Pence with a moderate, possibly a woman of colour. 

As things stand, however, Joe Biden will most likely win unless at least one of the following three things happens:

1. The economy rebounds far better than is currently expected.

2. The COVID-19 pandemic largely fades away, possibly with the help of a vaccine.

3. The Biden campaign implodes amid a major and as yet unforeseen scandal. 

The bad news for Trump is that all three are largely outside of his immediate control.

Biden extends lead

Hello and welcome to Bournbrook’s new regular series on the state of the US presidential race. From now until 3rd November, this is your impartial guide to the campaign, how the candidates are performing and what you can expect as election date draws near. 

The state of the race 

With four months left to go, Joe Biden finds himself in the strongest position of any presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1996, as the presumptive Democratic nominee currently leads President Trump by 9.3% in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average. 

Given the substantial institutional advantages historically enjoyed by incumbents, this is a remarkable lead. Yet it is making many Democrats nervous. They have, after all, seen it all before. Hillary Clinton (mostly) led Donald Trump in the opinion polls throughout the 2016 campaign. She ultimately won the national popular vote by just over 2% but lost in the Electoral College system. 

SIDENOTE: The Electoral College is the constitutional body which officially elects the US president. There are a total of 538 votes, divided between fifty states plus Washington DC, roughly based on population. A majority of 270 votes is needed to secure the White House. Four times in US history, the candidate who won the college also lost the popular vote: in 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. 

Still traumatised by Clinton’s shock defeat, Democrats are terrified of complacency. Indeed, they are currently just as likely to distrust the polls as the president’s own supporters. 

However, Biden’s current polling lead is much higher than that enjoyed by Clinton at this point four years ago, or frankly at any point in the 2016 campaign. While Donald Trump continues to hold a mild advantage in the electoral college (as the crucial swing states still lean to the right of the country at large) Biden’s lead extends to battleground states.

Biden is ahead of Trump by:

10.7% in Michigan

9.6% in Wisconsin

8.1% in Pennsylvania 

7.3% in Florida 

4.8% in Arizona 

He does not have to win all of the above. Assuming Biden is able to hold on to every state won by Clinton in 2016, he need only flip Florida and Arizona OR just the three ‘Rust Belt’ states in order to secure the presidency. Biden is also marginally ahead in traditionally Republican Georgia, North Carolina and is virtually tied in Texas. He needs to win none of these states, but it goes to show how many paths the Democrat has and how wide is the battleground which Donald Trump must defend. 

The current national polling holds another worrying sign for the president. Not only is Joe Biden’s lead huge, but the Democrat now regularly polls at over 50%. This is very unusual for this point in the race. Normally, with four months left until polling day, support for both candidates is in the forties as millions of voters remain undecided. That Biden is able to breach the 50% threshold now suggests that there are fewer ‘swing voters’ to go around and thus less room for Trump to mount a comeback. 

A done deal?

No. If the election were to be held next week, outcomes range from a narrow Biden win to a Biden landslide. But the election remains four months away. Donald Trump’s standing in both national and state polls was less tenuous until mid-April. Since then, the president’s standing has been damaged by rising public dissatisfaction with his handling of both the Coronavirus outbreak and the nationwide protests and violence which followed the police killing of George Floyd.

In early March, when examining the reasons as to why Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic primary, I wrote this: 

A huge number of Americans are exasperated at the state of private healthcare and crushing student debt. Yet the economy is doing well, unemployment is low and wages are growing. While most Americans might approve of individual reforms, they remain sceptical of revolutionary change. Change is scary, especially for the majority of the country who are mostly getting along just fine.

Donald Trump’s re-election hopes have always rested on centre-right voters who, while often disapproving of his temperament, are sceptical of cultural and economic change. Yet the response to Coronavirus has plunged the US (and much of the world) into recession. Unemployment remains at around 13% while tens of millions rely on federal subsidies that might soon be running out. Congress (split between the Republican-controlled Senate and a Democrat House) has thus far proved unable to agree on a further stimulus package. Meanwhile, the protests have exasperated centre-right concerns regarding the president’s temperament and leadership style. 

US presidents tend to get re-elected. Since 1900, only five have been defeated by a challenger: William Taft (1912), Herbert Hoover (1932), Gerald Ford (1976), Jimmy Carter (1980) and George H.W. Bush (1992). Three of the five contests (1932, 1980 and 1992) took place against the backdrop of recession. 

With Coronavirus cases reaching a new high in the US, President Trump has made a clear gamble in prioritizing economic recovery over public health. States are being urged to open up while social distancing measures are dramatically relaxed. To that effect, a much better than expected recovery in time for November 3rd presents Trump’s best hope of victory. 

While the polling shows a large Biden lead, most Biden voters say they are voting against the President instead of for the Democrat. If Trump’s approval ratings do not improve, and the election is effectively a referendum on the President, Donald Trump will lose. But there is every chance that Biden could implode, Trump’s ratings could recover and soft Republican voters are reminded of their ingrained partisanship. Biden remains, to many voters, a relatively unknown quantity, while the Republican campaign still has time to change his image (for the worst). 

It must also be noted that Trump does not have to entirely overcome Biden’s current polling lead to win. Considering the aforementioned Republican advantage in the electoral college, the president might still succeed with a 3-4% deficit in the popular vote. Should the race tighten in the coming months, as I expect it will, this remains a realistic outcome.