At this stage of the presidential election cycle, I think that it is informative to take a look at the current state of the polling, especially in key battle ground states, and comparing those poll results to the election results in 2016.
Yes, I know, the thinking is that the polling was wrong in 2016, but really it was as far off as you might think. The polling you heard the most about in the media before the 2016 election involved the national polls which had Clinton up by an average of 2.7% on the eve of the voting. However, she did win the popular (national) vote by 2.1%. so the national polls were pretty spot on.
It was the polls of the battleground states that were off, but again not as off as you might think. Before the election those single state polls in battle ground states were close, but they had Hillary winning by small margins. Trump won primarily by winning Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 1%, Pennsylvania by 1.2%, and Florida by 1.3%.
Right now, Biden is ahead in the national polls by an average of 7.2%. Remember that going into the election Hillary’s lead in the national polls was only 2.7%
All of the swing states – Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – are in play again this time around in 2020. Could Trump win the Electoral College again by pulling off narrow victories in the majority of those states? Yes, it’s possible, but it is going to a harder task this time around because right now Biden has much higher winning margins in the polls of those states than Clinton ever did. Of course we still have almost two months to go before November 3rd.
With all of the current polling data available, Nate Silver, the polling statistics guru, gives Trump a 25% chance of winning, with Biden having a 74% chance. The remaining 1% chance is that the election will end up as a tie in the Electoral College which would have to be broken by the new House of Representatives when it convenes for the first time January 21, 2021. The House is still expected to have a Democratic majority. For comparison, Silver gave Trump a 35% chance of winning in 2016. But remember, neither 25% nor 35% equals 0%. According to Silver’s calculations, Trump still has a one in four chance of winning.
It is very difficult to provide an adequate representation of the full comparison of how the results of the 2016 presidential election compares to what we know so far about the 2020 election. So I developed a spreadsheet that provides all of the details. I think you will find it very interesting. Click on the download button below to bring up the spreadsheet. (It is best viewed on a computer monitor or perhaps a tablet like an iPad.) It should be self-explanatory, but it will probably take you a few minutes to understand the format because it is so data-dense.
2020 average national and state polling data was copied from the Nate Silver’s 538 website.
Cajun (Rick Guilbeau) 9/12/2020