Biden Will Win. Republicans Should Understand Why.
Joe Biden is going to win.
I have been wrong before. I will be wrong again. And maybe I’m wrong today. But we do not have any significant data to suggest Donald Trump was ever in a position to win reelection, or that he is closing the campaign with any sort of momentum needed for a come-from-behind victory
Four years ago, we did have such data. In the RealClearPolitics national polling average, Hillary Clinton’s lead shrunk nearly six percentage points between Oct. 18 and Nov. 3, before ticking up a bit at the end. Her share of support throughout the duration of the general election campaign never reached 50%, an indication of soft support.
Moreover, the Trump train was clearly accelerating in those final two weeks, if you looked at RCP’s state poll averages. Clinton’s Michigan lead plummeted from 10 to 3.6 points and her Pennsylvania lead narrowed from 5.6 to 2.1 points. In Florida and North Carolina, Trump erased Clinton’s small leads completely to become, however barely, the front-runner. Trump also took the lead in Ohio in mid-October and never looked back.
(Wisconsin was the one state he flipped where the polls did not show a late surge. But as RCP President
Tom Bevan noted to me on Twitter, there were no Wisconsin polls taken after Nov. 2, which was six days before the election. In turn, there was no ability to detect any late surge.)
Today, Trump is enjoying no such acceleration. Biden’s
RCP national lead, as of early Monday morning, is at a healthy 7.2 points, roughly the same as it was 10 days prior. Since the end of the party conventions, Biden’s lead has remained between 5.9 and 10.3 points. Going back nearly 14 months, his lead has never been smaller than four points. And his average share of support as of Monday morning is at 51.1% and was above 50% throughout October. Biden’s lead has been, and is, strong, sturdy and stable.