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- With less than two weeks to go to Election Day, Democratic candidate Joe Biden has a roughly 10 percentage point lead over President Donald Trump in an average of national polls.
- National polls in 2016 were as accurate as any presidential election since 1968, even if Trump’s surprise victory surprised millions of Americans.
- Business Insider answered some of the most common poll-related questions for the 2020 election.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
After a hotly contested presidential race in November 2016 that shocked the nation, people around the world clamor for an idea of what may happen in 2020.
Polls and political polls are easy to get confused with due to their complexities, averages, and varying methodologies, which is why Business Insider answered some of the most common questions related to 2020 election polls:
What do the polls say?
In the presidential race, Biden currently leads Trump by roughly 10 percentage points in an average of FiveThirtyEight national polls. Decision Desk HQ, an election forecasting company, predicts that Biden has an 86.7% chance of winning the election.
If Biden wins in November, it is likely due to his strong leads in a handful of critical states, including Pennsylvania, a state that Trump won in 2016 by less than one percentage point and has 20 electoral votes. Biden leads Trump by an average of 6.2 points in state polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, and DDHQ predicts that Biden has a 74% chance of winning Keystone state given that advantage.
While he still leads in many changing states, Biden’s lead in Florida, a key changing state, is sharp. Florida has 29 electoral votes, the second-most of any state, and Trump won it in 2016 by just 1.2 percentage points, or nearly 113,000 votes. In an average of Florida polls, Biden currently leads Trump by 3.3 points and DDHQ suggests he has a 62.7% chance of winning at Sunshine State.
Could the polls be wrong?
Yes. Chances are high that the polls are “wrong” and have not accurately predicted the final election results. The biggest question on election night will be “how wrong” the polls were.
Incorrect polls are one of the most common criticisms of the 2016 presidential election, but the truth is that the polls did not deviate much. Trump, for example, beat national polls in 2016 by only about 2 percentage points. In fact, the polls were as accurate as they have been in any presidential election since 1968, according to Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight.
While the polls were slightly off in 2016, the effects were magnified as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s lead in swing states was incredibly slim. Just one day before Election Day, Clinton and Trump were at a standstill in North Carolina and Florida. As Nov. 3 approaches, Biden is currently about 3-4 points ahead in those states and in a better position than Clinton.
According to surveys, which states are closest?
According to FiveThirtyEight, the nine closest races are in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Of these, Biden currently leads in all but Ohio and Texas.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, the votes in the swing states are as follows:
- An average of recent surveys in Texas They estimate that Trump leads the lone star state by just 0.5 percentage points. If Biden can change the Texas Democrats for the first time since 1976, he is almost guaranteed a victory in the electoral college.
- Biden is ahead in the polls by an average of 3 points in North Carolina, a state that Trump desperately needs to bolster his reelection chances. Much of the results in North Carolina will be released on election night, as the state is on the east coast, whose polling stations are among the first to close. Additionally, absentee ballots in North Carolina are validated prior to Election Day, allowing them to be counted more quickly.
- Ohio it’s still a tough state for Democrats to win after Obama, and Trump currently leads the state by an average of 1 percentage point in polls, though RealClearPolitics estimates his lead may be as low as 0.6 points.
- In Georgia, Biden currently leads the polls by about 1-1.2 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics. The state has not voted for a Democratic candidate since President Bill Clinton in 1992.
- Iowa is similarly polling Georgia and an average polling estimates that Biden has an advantage of up to 1.2 percentage points over Trump in the state of Hawkeye. Trump previously beat Clinton in state by 9.5 percentage points in 2016.
- Biden currently leads in Arizona by an average of about 3.5 percentage points in the surveys. Trump won the state in 2016 by 3.5 points, the same margin by which he currently falls behind.
- Trump is currently behind Biden by an average of 3.3 percentage points in FloridaBut the race may be even closer as RealClearPolitics estimates that Biden was up just 1.5 percentage points.
- In Pennsylvania, Biden leads Trump by an average of 6.2 percentage points in a state that Trump won by just 44,292 votes in 2016. State is a must for Biden.
- Lastly, Biden has an average advantage of 6.6 percentage points in polls in Wisconsin, according to FiveThirtyEight. Trump won the state in 2016 by less than one percentage point of the final vote.
To win the election, a candidate must receive at least 270 electoral votes. The inflection point state is the state that would provide the winner with the 270th electoral vote necessary to win the election and is based on the victor’s margin of victory.
FiveThirtyEight also predicts that the states most likely to be the turning point in the presidential election are Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.
What surveys should I trust?
For the highest levels of precision, it’s best to look for independent third-party surveys that use a random sample. FiveThirtyEight has a helpful tool that aggregates national surveys and rates each pollster based on their methodology and historical accuracy.
Politicians and campaigns traditionally love to cite internal polls, but these polls should be approached with a fair amount of skepticism. If an internal survey “leaks,” it could be done intentionally and with a purpose.
With internal surveys, campaigns can choose which questions to ask, the wording of the questions, and the order. Additionally, campaigns often forget to publish the voting methodology or the surveys in their entirety. Without knowing these details, internal surveys should not be given too much weight.
