Here’s why Biden’s lead is big and could get bigger.
Opinion by
Columnist
September 24, 2020 at 8:45 a.m. CDT
I get
it. After 2016, Democratic voters, pollsters and the entire mainstream media
are spooked about getting the election “wrong.” They want to assure us over and
over again that the polls could be wrong and that the race could be really,
really close. Yes, but it could also be that the national polls
— just like in 2016 — have the race pegged exactly right.
To
refresh your memory, the 2016 national polls were not wrong; the interpretation
was. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 2 percent; polling averages
put her lead at about 3 percent. (Some state polls were certainly off, but more
often than not had the races right within the margin of error. Some
78,000 votes in three states going
the other way would have given her the presidency.)
We are
all well-attuned to the potential for the popular vote to diverge from the
electoral college vote. However, as the popular vote lead gets bigger, the
potential for a different result in the electoral college drops.
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver provides
a sliding scale:
The
good news for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is that he is doing
extremely well in national polling. His lead has hovered around an average of 7
points in FiveThirtyEight’s average and
in the RealClearPolitics average.
With
the exception of one outlier, every poll released on Wednesday had Biden with a
lead of between 6 and 11 points. Taking Quinnipiac’s numbers, we see a
now-familiar pattern: Biden has a huge lead with women (20 points) and has
closed the gap with men (he is down only 1 point); he has recaptured White
women, whom Clinton lost by 9 points (Biden is up 2 points); and has turned
Clinton’s small deficit of negative 3 points with White, college-educated
voters into a huge lead (24 points) — while improving just a tad with White
non-college-educated voters (Clinton was down 27 points; Biden is down 24).
Biden has also improved with seniors (now even) and with younger voters (he is
up 31 points).
State
polls are beginning to reflect a substantial Biden lead. The New York Times and Siena
College polls released Thursday show Biden with a narrow lead
in Iowa (45-42) and tied in Georgia. Trump should have secured these states,
both of which he won easily in 2016, long ago. In Wisconsin, Michigan and even
Arizona Biden leads in multiple polls.
Beyond
the numbers, several factors should allay Democrats’ habitual anxiety. First,
for all the caterwauling from Democrats about the Biden campaign (Not out
enough! Not progressive enough!), this is among the best-run and
best-financed campaigns I have witnessed. The Biden team deserves credit — if
for nothing else, for shutting out the noise of under-informed consultants and
disregarding Twitter’s self-appointed experts. It has both harnessed the left
and enticed a steady parade of Republicans (Cindy McCain being
the latest) to back him.
Second,
the mainstream media is spectacularly awful at predicting what events may help
President Trump (e.g., civil unrest, an open Supreme Court seat). Trump has the
unique ability to provoke a backlash among critics equal to or greater than
whatever benefit he derives from the nonstop flow of incendiary rhetoric,
knee-jerk actions and reality aversion. Stunts such as jamming through a new
justice are not helping matters. As CNN reports:
Nearly
six in 10 Americans say that the president elected in November should be the
one to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
That
finding comes as a plurality of the public says that President Donald Trump’s
choices for the court have changed it for the worse (38% say so) and most
disapprove (at 54%) of the Senate’s rules changes that have allowed Supreme
Court nominees to move forward to a vote with the support from a simple
majority rather than the traditional 60 votes.
Third,
the consistency with which Trump enablers blow themselves up — from Sen. Ron
Johnson’s (R-Wis.) empty, compromised report on
Burisma to the smackdown of Sen.
Rand Paul (R-Ky.) by the usually mild-mannered Anthony S. Fauci — should remind
us that Republicans have been remarkably ineffectual both in their anti-Biden
attacks and Trump defenses. Outside the cocoon of right-wing media, they often
appear feckless and inept.
This is
where the usual caveats appear (things can change overnight!). However, I am
hard-pressed to come up with a series of events that could change the direction
of the race. From everything we’ve seen, Biden is more than holding his own in
the final stretch of the race.
