US elections: how Donald Trump could still win



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In reality, Joe Biden should win this election. The United States is currently being overwhelmed by the third corona wave, the worst yet; clinics are filling up with patients, most Americans don’t trust their president’s crisis management.

Nationally, Biden is on average 8.5 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, and even Arizona and Georgia, once conservative strongholds, are within the reach of Democrats. Polling website FiveThirtyEight sees Biden as the winner with an 89 percent probability. And yet Trump may win in the end.

What could happen?

The short answer: a lot would have to go wrong for Biden in a lot of places. In some (few) states, opinion polls could be significantly wrong, but not catastrophic, with their forecasts; furthermore, after the ballot, the two candidates in one or more states could be so close together that a vote recount is necessary.

Democrats still remember the traumatic year 2000, when Al Gore narrowly lost to George W. Bush in Florida after intervention by the Supreme Court, a body now run by a Clear The conservative majority is dominated. Trump could also clinch victory with a mix of voter intimidation and legal gimmicks, despite the majority of voters favoring Biden. voted. Or a combination of all these scenarios.

Trump is helped by a distortion built into the system

Biden is ahead in polls in many major states, but not unattainable. Although most democrat models view the Democrat as a front-runner, a Trump victory remains plausible, writes Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight.

Trump is helping the 538-vote electorate in America’s presidential election give smaller, more rural (and more conservative) states more weight than larger, urban (and more liberal) areas. Back in 2016, Trump could only win against Hillary Clinton with this system-built distortion in favor of the Republicans. Clinton received nearly three million more votes nationwide than Trump, but lost key states and thus a majority of the electorate, one of the reasons Democrats are calling for this body to be reformed or abolished.

Unlike Clinton four years ago, Biden sits nationally in a thick poll mattress that has held steady for months, but his lead in many swing states is pretty slim in some areas. Of the six decisive states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), Trump has recently achieved a bit in four states, even if Biden continues to lead everywhere by at least two percentage points. In Pennsylvania, Biden currently averages 4.8 percent ahead, but that’s not a dramatically good lead.

It needs to win back voters in those states that Democrats have neglected for years, particularly in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In Michigan and Wisconsin at least, things are looking good for Biden.

If Florida and Pennsylvania win, they will become a favorite

But if he loses in Pennsylvania, where polls are tighter, things will quickly get grim from a demoscopic standpoint: In Florida, Biden leads by an average of just 2.5 points, which could also be broken if the polls in Pennsylvania were already in. wrong. If Trump wins these two states, he will go from favorite to favorite: In this case, FiveThirtyEight sees an 84 percent chance that the president will win.

Trump would have to be very lucky for that. Turnout among Republicans should explode; enthusiasm for Biden should be less than expected, especially among young African Americans; voter turnout among Democrats would have to purr, for example, due to riots outside polling stations; Trump’s campaign team should win legal skirmishes over missing ballots in many areas of the country; and the few remaining undecided voters would have to turn to the Republicans.

An army of lawyers

As unlikely as it may seem given the polls, it’s not impossible. Trump’s median approval ratings have risen from a low in late July, when only 40.4 percent of citizens were satisfied with his administration, to 45.6 percentage points, which is also likely related to better forecasts. economical. A poll conducted Saturday in Iowa found Trump a surprisingly seven percentage points ahead, suggesting he still has a strong foundation with women and independent voters in the state.

In addition, Trump’s team has sent a small army of lawyers to crucial states to torpedo the Democrats’ chances of achieving a narrow election result. In Texas, judges on Monday denied a request by Republicans to get rid of 127,000 voter ballots turned in by polling stations. In Pennsylvania, Republicans could try to block absentee ballots that arrive after polling stations close.

Trump has been flying around the country like a man possessed for days, making three, four, five appearances a day and thousands of fans each. He is leading the most energetic and explosive election campaign and has successfully built his base. This choice has yet to be decided.

Icon: The mirror

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