JOE BIDEN HAS THE ADVANTAGE, BUT THINGS COULD CHANGE

 

…Trump with George Stephanopoulos at a Town Meeting. Trump didn’t do too well

 

It’s too early to think of “winners and losers” for November 3^rd

 

Almost every analysis of the 2020 election today says the same thing: “Joe Biden has an advantage over President Trump, but data analysts won‘t go so far as to predict the ultimate winner outright.” 

That answer is of course, because public opinion could change!   As before, Trump could outperform his polls!  The warnings they repeat are true and important, but there’s a better way to think about the crucial weeks ahead. If you look to the critical dates, you’ll be able to tell whether your preferred candidate is hitting his benchmarks in the polling.  If not, and only then, you can give yourself permission to start getting worried.

But, no one needs to panic today.

Right now, neither side needs to start freaking out.  Yes, Biden is leading by about a seven point national margin, and by even larger leads in some local polls.  The major forecasts agree that he’s still the favorite.  But the race is still close enough for either candidate to win.

In all the elections from 1952 to 2016, it has been completely normal for the mid-September polls to miss the final poll margin by roughly five points.  That sort of improvement would take Trump from a seven-point popular-vote deficit to a two-point loss.  Unfortunately, that is the territory where the president could still win the electoral college……again.  However, similarly, if Biden could gain just three to five points, Democrats could win in a historic landslide.

In recent elections, where the electorate was more polarized and polls were less volatile, you could paint a somewhat grimmer picture for Trump.  Between 2000 and 2016, the poll average in mid-September was often roughly three points off the final outcome. But even if Trump only improved his margin by this much, he’d still have a chance, ever so slight, to win the electoral college.

The real key is for Biden to win the critical states that Trump won in 2016, and to also win the popular vote nationally.

In short, Biden is doing better, but neither candidate is clearly missing his benchmarks.

Now in late September and early October, if Biden is still holding on to his lead, Trump supporters should start to get nervous.

Look at it this way, on Sept. 29, Biden and Trump will participate in the first presidential debate.  If Trump hasn’t made serious inroads by then, that’s a seriously bad sign for the Republicans.  It’s probably also a bad sign for the GOP Senators seeking re-election.

A sustained seven-point margin for Biden would signal that Team Trump is out of arguments, because we’ve been watching that Trump’s tried just about everything to slow down the former vice president. 

Before this point, in the later part of the month of September, the Trump campaign will have had every opportunity to shift the narrative. The voters already knew about the Covid-19 virus and all the protests, and there were no scheduled events such as debates or conventions to suck up the airtime.  During this whole month, Trump has free rein to make whatever argument he wants without interruption.  If he fails to move voters, that’s a sign of deep weakness, and, on a simple mathematical level, Trump might find it difficult to make up four to five points in just a month.

Now in late October, is Trump within four points of Biden?

Let’s face it, October is going to be a mess. There are debates every week from Sept. 29 to Oct. 22, and both campaigns will be unloading all their opposition research.  Everyone in the media will be jumping on any minor development and trying to figure out whether this is the moment a basically stable race gets crazy.

That might sound fun to any poll-junkies, but if it’s stressing you out, then skip the polls and the horse-race commentary until Oct. 26.  That’s the Monday after the final debate, and it’s roughly a week before Election Day.  At that point, we should have some inkling of whether the debate season has changed the picture.

By that time, Biden wants to make sure he has a lead of four points or more.  Trump still has a roughly even shot at winning the electoral college if he loses the popular vote by two to three points.  A four-or-five-point Biden lead would give the Democratic challenger a bit of padding.  In fact, Trump would have to find a way to shift the race at the last minute, or open an eye-popping gap between the electoral college and the popular vote, or else benefit from a polling error to win.  And don’t forget, there is a bunch of early voting this time around, so the polls during this time may not make any sense as many of the votes will possibly all be in the mail or already in the ballot boxes.

Going into Election Day, Biden will want a lead of more than three points on Nov. 3.   In fact, preferably by a lot more..

There’s no magic polling number that would guarantee victory for Biden or Trump on Election Day, especially with all the early voting.  In theory, Trump could win the electoral college while still losing the popular vote by five points.  But then again, Biden could still lose some of his advantage and still win the presidency by winning the national popular vote by one or two points.

But if Biden is ahead by more than three points, he’ll be the odds-on favorite.  Trump would still be very much in the game at that point and the pollsters could have underestimated Trump, as they did in 2016.  But polls are equally likely to misfire in Biden’s direction.  And if Biden builds a bigger lead, maybe in the high single digits, he’ll approach the point where Trump could outperform the polls by a large margin and still lose.

The point is that we’re not there yet.  No one can tell you what the final result of this election will be.  But if you need to ration your polling consumption, focus on those times above when tuning in will actually tell you something of what’s happening.

Copyright G. Ater 2020