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As of Sunday evening, Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by an average of 8.9% nationally. Biden is leading by 4.3% in battleground states. RealClearPolitics
Also as of Sunday evening, The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Biden an 87% chance of winning the electoral college. FiveThirtyEight
The right is cautiously optimistic about Trump’s chances in battleground states.
“Right now, Joe Biden is vastly outspending Donald Trump on television advertising, particularly in the top markets of Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Harrisburg. But… do voters draw conclusions about these two guys based upon television ads? Trump is on television all the time. He’s not exactly shy. And Joe Biden has been around forever. Americans of all political stripes are really, really familiar with them…
“Do we really think they’ll change their mind because of another serving of stock footage of solar panels or a gravelly voiced announcer narrating an attack ad? Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent way more on television advertising — and on overall campaign spending as well, and we all remember how that one turned out. Clinton’s campaign spent $768 million while Trump’s spent $398 million.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
“The Trump team believes it is investing shrewdly in door-to-door canvassing and phone calls, in contrast to Democrats who are spending on TV to the exclusion of traditional GOTV operations. In general, Trump needs to juice his rural turnout while dampening his urban and suburban [losses]…
“In 2016, there was a lot of alarm about suburban Republicans being disaffected by Trump, but they came home at the end. The Trump team is hoping the same happens again… The Trump team is skeptical of the traditional model of polling, and believes it is giving a distorted picture of the race. It feels good about Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, and thinks Arizona is close and could break Trump’s way. Then, assuming Trump has held the rest of his 2016 states, it’s a matter of picking off one of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania.”
Rich Lowry, National Review
“Reportedly [Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien is] telling aides that winning Georgia, Iowa, Florida, and Ohio will be the ‘easy part.’ And you know what? I think he’s right. Trump will win those four. Iowa and Ohio were so red in 2016 that it’s hard to believe Biden can flip them now even though polling has them neck and neck. And if Biden does manage to flip one or both, it won’t matter; he’ll have wiped Trump out on the rest of the map…
“Georgia was close-ish in 2016, tilting to Trump by five points, but everyone believes that a red southern state will ultimately stay with the incumbent. And Florida is Florida. Republicans have registered a bunch of new voters there and polling in recent cycles has consistently underestimated the GOP’s strength. It’s probably underestimating Trump again now. I’d bet on him there too. But then things get hairy.”
Allahpundit, Hot Air
“Closing the gap won’t be easy. Mr. Trump must prosecute the differences between Mr. Biden’s very liberal statements during the primary (e.g., ‘We are going to get rid of fossil fuels’ and ‘I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts’) and his attempts now to make those comments disappear…
“The president must close on his strength—the economy—on which people trust him more than they do Mr. Biden. Gallup recently asked Americans if they are better off today than four years ago. An astonishing 56% said yes, despite the pandemic and recession. By comparison, 45% said yes as President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election came to a close and 47% at this point in President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign.”
Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal
“In 2016, Trump won by winning battleground states that few expected him to win. Right now, he’s polling slightly and relatively better in those states than he did four years ago… One hundred days out from election day, Biden was up nearly 6 points in battleground states, at a time Clinton was only up 2.3 points. [As of last Wednesday] he’s up 4.9 points at a time Clinton was up 5.1 points…
“Biden is averaging a 7-point lead in Pennsylvania, but Clinton was averaging a nearly identical lead there four years ago — before Trump won it narrowly on election day. Likewise, Biden’s Florida lead is very similar to Clinton’s lead four years ago. Trump won Florida. Biden is not performing as well in Wisconsin as Clinton was four years ago. Trump won that state. Biden is doing less well in Michigan, according to the polls, than Clinton did four years ago. Trump won Michigan… Four years ago, pundits said the race was over because of how Trump was polling. According to those same polls in the same key battleground states, he’s doing a bit better than he was doing four years ago.”
Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist
The left is optimistic about Biden’s chances in battleground states.
The left is optimistic about Biden’s chances in battleground states.
“At this point, you should be saying something along the lines of, ‘But, wait, Trump was supposed to lose Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016, too.’ And that’s true. In fact, the polls in those states right now look an awful lot like the polls four years ago. In fact, Michigan is closer now than it was then, but Trump won it anyway. There are several reasons that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, though…
“First, the race in both states has been much more stable than it was four years ago… Second, that polls in each state were off the mark — by 3.3 points in Michigan and 3.8 in Pennsylvania, relative to the FiveThirtyEight averages — has added scrutiny to the numbers this year. Pollsters who underestimated Trump’s support in 2016 are aware that they did so. It is safe to assume that poll results have therefore been calibrated to avoid a similar mistake and, therefore, to better estimate Trump’s actual support.”
Philip Bump, Washington Post
“Despite Trump's chiding, Biden is largely supportive of fracking, and only backs banning it on federal lands and offshore, which would have minimal impact in Pennsylvania. In addition, fracking job figures touted by the industry — and repeated by Trump and Mike Pence — are wildly inflated… In 2017, only 26,000 jobs in Pennsylvania were directly related to oil and natural gas extraction, of which about 18,000 were created by the fracking boom…
“Some recent polling suggests that a stronger stance on fracking by Biden, as adopted by his running mate, Kamala Harris, would play well with most voters in Pennsylvania, who overwhelmingly support strong climate action and clean energy… 83 percent of voters in the state think climate change is a serious problem and 58 percent look unfavorably at lawmakers who oppose strong action to combat it… According to [another recent poll], 52 percent of voters in the state oppose fracking, mirroring a gradual shift against the industry.”
Nina Lakhani, Salon
“Conventional wisdom says that Clinton lost Wisconsin because she infamously did not visit the state at all during the final seven months of the 2016 campaign. But that’s probably not true; Clinton devoted a lot of effort to winning Pennsylvania and still lost there, for instance. Instead, Wisconsin probably got redder in 2016 for the same reason that Pennsylvania and other Midwestern states did: demographics…
“White voters without a college degree in Wisconsin went from supporting Mitt Romney 52 percent to 47 percent in 2012 to supporting Trump 56 percent to 38 percent in 2016… [But] according to a Siena College/The New York Times Upshot poll of Wisconsin from early October, Trump led Biden just 50 percent to 44 percent among white voters without a bachelor’s degree — much closer to the 2012 margin than 2016’s… The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Biden an 88 in 100 chance of winning the state.”
Nathaniel Rakich, FiveThirtyEight
“A new Quinnipiac University poll of likely Georgia voters finds former Vice President Joe Biden at 51% and President Donald Trump at 44%… Biden seems to be leading or is quite competitive in a lot of states that Trump carried fairly easily four years ago. These include the aforementioned Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and even Texas…
“If the national race tightens, these states will probably fall into Trump's column. For now though, Biden is leading in the national polls by about 10 points. That's 8 points better than Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by in 2016. And remember, Biden's lead is also significantly wider than where the final national polls put Clinton's lead in 2016… the national swing model is implying that at least two states that haven't gone blue in a generation (Georgia and Texas) could do so this year. If past big swings are any precedent, they very well could.”
Harry Enten, CNN
“In a series of speeches in battleground states, Biden has consistently touted his ‘Build Back Better’ platform to create millions of jobs through government spending, his plans to repeal Trump’s tax cuts on the wealthy and big corporations, and his ideas for creating a 21st century workforce by investing in green jobs and a caregiving workforce… It appears to be working. In a CNN poll released Oct. 6, Biden and Trump were in a statistical dead heat on the question of who would better handle the economy: 50% of likely voters said Biden, while 48% said Trump. When CNN asked the same question to registered voters in May, Trump led by 12 points.”
Charlotte Alter, Time
