It’s starting to build: Media are buzzing that the Democratic Party’s likely nominee for president, Joe Biden, has a polling edge against President Donald Trump. And a big one at that.
The Hill (8/12/20) said Biden is leading in some key battleground states. Politico (8/11/20) shows Biden with a 10-point national lead. Real Clear Politics is constantly updating its aggregation of polls, but as of now shows an overwhelming advantage for Biden. The Wisconsin State-Journal (8/10/20) reported that Biden is polling well in the all-important battleground state. And CNN (8/16/20) said that Biden went into the convention with a “historically strong” polling position.
And why shouldn’t we believe that the odds are against Trump? USA Today (8/9/20) reported that unemployment is still at historic highs. The Covid-19 pandemic still rages in the United States, not only killing more than a thousand people a day, but hobbling the economy and turning going back to school into a death-defying act. Team Trump is looking to curb mail-in voting (Politico, 8/8/20) and even floating the idea of postponing the election (NBC, 7/30/20), both indications of desperation.
But, of course, 2016 taught us a lot about polls: Even though many polls showed that Hillary Clinton was ahead, things were closer than they often appeared, with some media giving the impression that Clinton had won before it was over. Poll expert Sam Wang was so confident that Clinton would win that he promised to eat a bug on TV if he was wrong, which he did (CNN, 11/12/16). The New York Times (10/18/16) gave Clinton a whopping 91% chance of winning. Polling groups like Pew Research (11/9/16) embarked on self-reflection about how their predictions in 2016 could have been more accurate.
Today’s polling almost comes with the understanding that media need to be more careful in interpreting these numbers. So we all need to ask, “Is it different this time?”
Wayne Steger, a professor of political science at DePaul University, told FAIR: “Biden’s lead in national and battleground states is bigger than Clinton’s was in 2016 at this time, so he has more cushion to absorb variations due to voter turnout.”
“Trump and Clinton both had historic negative ratings,” he added. “This year, that is only true of Trump. That means Trump has a much higher hill to climb in 2020 than in 2016.” Steger noted that pollsters are taking more into account than last time: “Education is something that more pollsters seem to be using in their weighting of sample respondents, so polls should be even more accurate with respect to the vote.”
Historian Allan Lichtman’s model (New York Times, 8/5/20) predicts a Biden victory—though it takes some squinting.
Also in Biden’s favor is the Lichtman test (New York Times, 8/5/20). Allan Lichtman, a historian at American University, has predicted all but one presidential outcome since 1980 — he got Trump right, however, and also rightly predicted he’d be impeached (NPR, 5/12/19)—with a set of 13 questions that are divorced from polling numbers, but instead reflect on historical voting outcomes related to the incumbent party’s successes and failures.
But even Lichtman’s clairvoyance is fragile. For one, his prediction in the Times only gives Biden a slight advantage. More than that, he deducted two points from Trump on the ground that he is not charismatic, based on the idea that his antics only appeal to a small segment of the public, and that he has not had any major foreign policy successes. Trump’s entire persona is based on his stage presence — whether one likes him or not, it’s impossible to deny that he draws eyeballs.
And Trump could point to his pulling out of the Iran deal and revising NAFTA as evidence that he is both a tough actor and a pragmatic negotiator. As John Yoo co-wrote in a pro-Trump op-ed in the New York Post (8/10/20):
The Trump Doctrine is about renewing American sovereignty…. Protecting that sovereignty has led Team Trump to withdraw from multilateral agreements that limit US freedom of action, including economic action, such as the Paris climate accords, or that place it at a disadvantage to competitors such as China and Russia, such as the outmoded Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Every voter won’t see these as good things—some will consider them disasters, and redouble their support for Biden—but the Trump campaign can certainly portray them as international milestones. In addition, Trump can use his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem to prop up his image as the most pro-Israel candidate (The Hill, 2/26/19). The main point is that the Lichtman test is based on some subjective interpretation.
Politico (6/17/20) reports that polling today still suffers from some of the same problems that misread the tea leaves four years ago. Nate Silver (538, 8/12/20), whose website is one of the top outlets for poll coverage, said that it’s simply too early to count Trump out of the race, despite what polling data say. (Historically, polls are much more accurate two months before the election than they are three months out—New York Times, 5/25/16.)
These big numbers could potentially backfire on Biden, creating a sense of security that all is sealed. A “we got this in the bag” attitude could keep the Biden ticket from putting in the hard work it takes to unseat an incumbent president. It might also keep the anti-Trump voter from donating to the campaign, going to swing states and knocking on doors, all the things that need to happen to win an election.
And as Jamelle Bouie wrote at the New York Times (8/4/20), Trump still has the potential to eke out an Electoral College victory, even if Biden wins the popular vote.
All of this is to say that Biden’s lead in the polls shouldn’t be treated as a foregone conclusion. Not that polling should be ignored, but this is a time for media to focus less on fluctuations in polling data and more on the reasons why citizens should cast their votes.
Featured image: Real Clear Politics‘ chart of national polling averages. (The blue line is Joe Biden, the red line is Donald Trump.)
Biden is one horrible “senior moment” during the first debate away from crashing and burning. His handlers have kept him locked away from public scrutiny, but they can’t do it forever. And people will be watching for a bad stumble. It’s a huge rick the DNC and the liberal media took when they put it all behind his candidacy.
In their minds they’ve already won, they defeated the progressive candidate. They couldn’t care less whether they win in November or not. They’ll raise billions playing the part of the “resistance” while they continue to give Trump and the GOP everything they want.
Surely one should not. But there is a huge difference this time.
In 2016, if identity politics liked it or not, Hillary Clinton was connected with Bill Clinton’s horrible reduction of the last bits of welfare state. And she had persuaded Obama (who is responsible, of course) to bomb Libya. Leaving a broken state and so many were and are killed. Hillary Clinton was highly unpopular. At the same time the “yes we can” Obama years were rather “no, we don’t want to” (in his first 2 years he could have changed a lot, but didn’t). People were for Sanders (or a really leftist woman, this was not about persons).
So – the center Democrats lost against Trump, after 8 years of frustration with Obama. Without 2008-2016 – no Trump.
This time a nightmarishly horrible president with a lot of rather reactionary Republicans leads the country. A majority is sick of this “postmodern president”, this pompous full-of-himself-man.
I hope the Republicans will lose. They will lose because of Trump and themselves. Not because the center Democrats had any visions. They do not have. Nobody fights climate change really. It was Obama who made the (weak) Paris agreement of 2015 an “unbinding offer”. A catastrophe. But we had nice speeches with great actors for the climate, oh yeah. There you have Obama, and there you have the center Democrats.
I hope majorities in your divided country are sick of Trump – he of course was not “making America great again”. Two conservative parties are reality, and the Republicans are a nightmare. So Biden will win. Media of course will be besides themselves in Europe and in your country, yes we can, yes we can, etc etc.
We’ll see where things are after the debates and as soon as he starts taking questions from any real reporter. Biden isn’t as sharp as he needs to be. He’s often confused. While the two men are the same age, their cognitive abilities are very far apart. Dislike Trump all you want, but he will smoke Biden in the debates (unless you get another Donna Brazil or Candy Crowley operative).
The media will be beside themselves in every country. The media are highly biased toward the left. This is the first FAIR article that seemed very even handed. They don’t live up to their tag line (challenging media bias).
Tim- Against Hillary Clinton, Trump did historically bad in the debates. He lost 2% after EACH DEBATE.
All the polls accurately showed this drop. That has never happened before to a Presidential candidate.
Arguing that Trump is going to “smoke” anybody in the debates is a ridiculous statement based on his past performance. Trump only does well with his base when his opponent doesn’t have a mic.
Biden handled himself very well against FAR more demanding opponents during the Primary. He fended off Bernie Sanders, who is no sloucher, and also his current VP, Kamala Harris, who is laser-sharp. So I guess I’m not sure where you are grabbing your evidence from. Has Biden made gaffes? Sure. Has he been tone-deaf? Absolutely. But suggesting that a guy who can barely complete 1 sentence in standard English is going to beat the guy with a stuttering problem seems like wishful thinking, and not so much based on fact.
If I were a gambler, I wouldn’t ‘bet the farm’ on a Biden victory. Perhaps the pollsters are more-heavily weighting factors like turnout percentages and electoral votes this time around, but here in suburban Wisconsin I’m certainly seeing a lot of Trump signs in peoples’ yards and very few Biden ones, even during with the national Democratic Convention (‘virtual’ as it is) taking place in nearby Milwaukee this week. It’s not at all clear to me that an electoral majority of US voters are ready to move away from vacuous, flamboyant politicians and policies towards something more humanitarian and progressive, but prove me wrong America….please!
PS – Clarification – I don’t mean to imply that Biden is humanitarian and progressive. Although his campaign and the MSM somewhat tries to promote him as such at-times, any knowledgeable progressive knows that to be untrue. The last sentence in the above comment was meant as a general lament about our political condition.
The polls are worthless and inaccurate. The Cato Institute just published a study stating that 62% of Americans say they have political opinions they are afraid to share. With 52% of Centrist liberals who feel they have to self‐censor, as do 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives. I wonder why that is, when people have been fired just for stating President Trump was our president on their social media accounts. People have admitted that when they received phone calls from polls, they have lied in fear of being doxed or retaliated against.
The Democrat party has been cow tailing to their most leftist base while taking their centrist liberals and moderates for granted, now it’s going to cost them in this election.
I know many people who didn’t plan on voting for President Trump, up until just recently. This election they are voting for President Trump on this one important issue. That one issue is the recent rise in violence and riots across the country. The Democrats have embraced the rioters and looters by not arresting or pressing charges against them. Four nights of the DNC Convention and not one person speaks out against the violence and chaos in the streets. No plans or policies were mentioned. Their whole “Defund the Police” movement, has backfired. Most minorities will tell you, they don’t want to defund the police, leaving their neighborhoods vulnerable. Every police officer across the country and their families are now going to vote for President Trump. The Democrats haven’t offered the American people anything but “President Trump is destroying our country.” No, it’s the Democrat lead cities and states that have the highest crime, highest deaths, highest unemployment, biggest budget deficits and yet they blame it on President Trump. People are seeing through the lies and disinformation. There’s your poll, so don’t let it be a shocker, when President Trump is our president another four years.
“he got Trump right, however”
No he didn’t. His prediction was that Trump would win the popular vote. Trump did not win the popular vote.
Who can possibly forget Clinton laughing about the brutal murder of Gadaffi?
In addition, my big fear was that she could get us into a war with Russia that would see us all killed.
The situation today is that Biden is less bad than Trump and so I hope people will vote for him in the swing states.
If Trump actually withdrew from Syria and Afghanistan that would really help his chances.
Another point in Trumps favor is that, not only did he promise controversial and specific things in his campaign (which politicians rarely do) but he then actually fought to implement them. Everything from destroying Obamacare, destroying Iran Nuclear agreement, building the war, renegotiating trade agreements, etc. This is in contrast to most politicians. Obama, for example, promised healthcare with public option and no mandate, and then delivered Obamacare with no public option and with a mandate.
Finally Democrats and the media lost a lot of credibility with bogus Russia-gate conspiracy and over-hyped impeachment. They responded by upping the alarmism but they are losing effectiveness.
However COVID and the collapse of the economy is in democrat’s favor.