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Election predictions continue to give Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy an edge, but are bolstering Donald Trump’s re-election chances in some key states, which yesterday Thursday had a last televised debate more calm and apt to attract the favor of the undecided, who will decide the outcome of this unusual campaign on November 3.
After yesterday’s face-to-face in Nashville, the last of the two that were finally held between Trump and Biden, the instant polls give the Democrat the winner, who could see that favorable performance rewarded with an improvement in the polls, although the polls nationally they have remained almost unchanged since the summer.
According to the survey CNN, he 53 percent rate Biden as the winner of the debate, with 39 percent considering Trump prevailed, who maintained a calmer tone than in the previous meeting. Data for Progress (affiliated with Democrats) published similar results (52 percent-41 percent, in favor of Biden), while YouGov widened the Democratic margin (54-35).
Trump would have needed a great victory among those who saw the debate (a non-representative segment of the general electorate) to transfer his performance in the Nashville debate to voting intention, something that everything indicates that it will not happen.
FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of national polls gives Biden a vote intention of 52.1 percent at the national level, 9.8 percentage points above Trump, while the simple mean of RealClearPolitics gives the Democrat a margin of 7.9 points ahead of the Republican president, an advantage that has remained largely unchanged since July.
The perception of mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic by the Trump Administration seems to have been key in the voting intention of Americans and has contributed to create this distance between Biden and Trump, who in spring were technically tied.
BIDEN ADVANTAGE, BUT INSUFFICIENT
However, Trump has cut distances in two of the states that will be most decisive in the results on the election night of November 3: Pennsylvania and Florida.
In Florida, Biden has gone from having a margin of about five points two weeks ago to only three points, within the usual error bands and below the mismatch between polls and the final result of almost 5 percent of the 2016 general elections.
In Pennsylvania, Biden leads by about six points to Trump in voting intentions, so it is not a comfortable margin to ensure an incontestable result for the Democrat and face the doubts about a Democratic victory raised by the president, who has criticized the vote by mail as fraudulent without evidence.
Biden leads Trump with minimal margins and up to 8 points in all states considered key in these elections, because they can tip to one side or the other of the scale, in the Midwest, in the Southwest and in the East of the country.
Further, Trump maintains only a minimal advantage of two points in the average of Texas polls (half a point, according to FiveThirtyEight), a Republican fortress that since 1976 has given 38 electoral votes to Republicans, of the 538 at stake.
A Democratic state of Texas would be a cataclysm of historic dimensions for Republicans, who without California’s 55 electoral votes and those of the “Lone Star” state would have to change all their electoral mathematics for years and surely moderate many positions in a it was post-Trump to attract a more diverse group of voters.
MASSIVE PARTICIPATION
The massive participation in early voting and by mail in these elections also adds renewed concerns to Republicans, who are generally hurt if this figure is high, since it implies a greater influx of African Americans and Hispanics to the polls, groups with a higher percentage of Democratic voters.
More than 50 million Americans have already voted early, representing a 35 percent turnout 11 days before Election Day, a sign that augurs a historic participation despite the coronavirus pandemic, which has led many to vote by mail.
In the critic Texas, early voting is already 70 percent of all participation in 2016, according to official data compiled by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, a phenomenon that in addition to having caused long lines to vote has analysts and astonished researchers.
After several electoral cycles warning of the importance of the Hispanic vote, 2020 could finally be the year in which the participation of the Latino minority, as well as African Americans, traditionally affected by suppression policies, turn the political universe upside down. American.
