Hours from now will be the first of three presidential debates between Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Republican nominee who is… the incumbent President… Donald Trump…
thanks 100,000 voters across the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin…
And speaking of voters, many in several states are already casting their ballots as you are reading this either by taking advantage of early voting or doing so by main due to COVID-19 concerns.
Here are some of the websites that I have been looking at and you should too
STEADY AS SHE GOES
National
polls have been pretty stable since March which was when Biden became the
prohibitive Democratic nominee and the COVID-19 pandemic began to ravage the
country.
Another thing is Trump’s job approval by aggregate has remained steady as well. The only time when more people approved of his job as president was VERY early in his presidency but since then more have disapproved.
Since March 2017, Trump has remained above 50% disapprove for three years when it briefly dipped below 50%. To 49.7% disapprove. And then back above 50% disapprove where it has remained since.
Heading into the first debate, the average Trump job approval is disapproving leading 52.4-43.8.
In comparison to previous presidents running for re-election, Trump’s job approval is 5 points lower than Obama and W. Bush, and 13 points behind Bill Clinton and Reagan. Obama, W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Reagan went on to win re-election. If there is any positive news, he is running better than George H.W. Bush’s and Jimmy Carter’s approvals. Unfortunately, they are the most recent presidents who were defeated for re-election: H.W. Bush in 1992 and Carter in 1980.
And those respective elections were not close
So far, the national polls are following this alignment with Biden leading by 7 in the Real Clear average.
Trump has a solid base of 44% that will remain unmoved no matter what happens.
COLLEGE LESSON
But remember loyal reader, it is not about who wins the popular vote. You can ask Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Grover Cleveland, Samuel Tilden, and Andrew Jackson about how much the popular vote means. It is about who can amass a majority of electoral votes and that number is currently 270.
Hopefully the folks who were alive in 2000 and 2016 take those lessons to heart and remember the consequences going forward
Per Real Clear Politics Top Battlegrounds, Biden is currently leading in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The Cook Political Report recently moved Arizona to lean Biden. Despite the musings from the Trump campaign, Biden is expected to hold what Hillary Clinton won in 2016 which was 232 electoral votes. Adding Arizona would put the Biden-Harris ticket at 243 electoral votes, short of the goal by 27.
I used 270towin.com’s combination detail to determine what the paths are to 270 each candidate has under the following parameters: states that are light are from 2016, Cook’s update of Arizona is shown in darker blue, and Real Clear’s battlegrounds are in tossup. Biden-Harris has five paths to the White House while Trump-Pence of staying in has three paths, all of them involve winning Florida.
As of this post, Real Clear shows Biden leading Florida by 1.1 and FiveThirtyEight’s numbers show a tad better Biden lead of 1.7.
Since 1996, as Florida goes, so goes the nation.
And it was very true 20 years ago
IT’S
NOT 2016
Biden’s consistent polling lead has led to many supporters of the Clinton-Kaine ticket four years ago to overreact that Biden’s lead is not as safe as Clinton’s lead was.
The issue is that the final national poll average was close to the final national popular vote of Clinton 48-46. As I stated in the previous sections, it came down to how the electoral college spat out a Clinton popular vote plurality. There were other factors as I have hinted in previous posts such as 100,000 voters across the close states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Other factors in play in 2016: The rise of third-party voters in those states. The first presidential election post-Shelby County, the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and allowed Republican controlled states to implement tougher restrictions on ballot access. A thirsty media so desperate for a horse race that they hounded one candidate over everything in her political career and holding her to a different standard while allowing the other candidate to cruise through without much of a challenge on his positions or financial interests. The weaponizing of social media and the convenient leaks from outside provocateurs with assistance from the Trump campaign. The refusal by Republican leadership in Congress to join Barack Obama in calling out Russia for meddling in our election.
There is also the difficulty of a political party holding the White House beyond two terms. There are exceptions – George H.W. Bush in 1988, the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were in the White House for 20 years, Republicans in the White House 1897-1913 and 1921-33. All but one of those instances I have cited were in a time prior to the 22nd Amendment and access to the ballot box was VERY limited. In the post-22nd Amendment enactment era, Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton nearly did it.
The key word is NEARLY.
The reason why H.W. Bush was able to do it was because even though Michael Dukakis did better than Walter Mondale (and I’m being very generous in describing that improvement) and there was a strong swing towards the Democratic ticket in 1988, it wasn’t enough to make the election competitive.
I am a believer of that it wasn’t just one factor that cost Clinton the 2016 election but the consensus is what ultimately led to Clinton’s defeat was the Comey letter dropping when it did described in detail by FiveThirtyEight in its post-2016 coverage.
I bet a lot of people are unaware that Comey told lawmakers in a letter the Sunday before the election that Clinton should not face charges after a review of new emails.
Unfortunately, the damage was done.
Another reason why 2020 and 2016 are not the same: compare where Biden is at this point to where Clinton was 4 years ago.
If there is one election you should compare 2020 to, it is 2018 when Democrats flipped the House. If you convert the House Popular Vote – which the Democrats won by 8.6 points – to Electoral Votes which is done by tabulating the House popular vote in every state plus DC, you end up with a result of Biden 311-227.
Two years ago, Nate Silver presented this idea and noted that the 2018 House Popular Vote to Electoral Vote map looked a lot like the 2012 map and played around with other scenarios in how a Democratic candidate could use the 2018 results to their advantage.
PROJECTION
My initial projection for the 2020 electoral college is as follows
Safe Biden: 182
Likely Biden: 36
Lean Biden: 30
Tilt Biden: 41
Tossup: 80
Tilt Trump: 6
Lean Trump: 38
Likely Trump: 21
Safe Trump: 104
Without Tossups
|
ELECTION 2020, POTUS |
EVs |
|
TRUMP |
204 |
|
BIDEN |
334 |
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