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There are just over 40 days left until the US presidential election. In some states, voters are already beginning to cast their votes, and Donald Trump is still far behind rival Joe Biden in the polls. Their lead was bigger, around nine percentage points. But in the average of all national polls, Biden is currently still six percentage points higher than Trump.
Is that the end of the elections? Or does Trump make a surprise comeback like 2016 against Hillary Clinton?
It is well known that whoever is ahead in the absolute votes does not necessarily win the elections. We remember: to become president, a candidate must obtain a majority in the electoral college, which ultimately determines the head of state, through victories in the individual states. The majority in this body is 270 votes. Trump was able to win against Hillary Clinton in 2016, although he had a total of a few million fewer votes than her.
This is exactly where things get tricky: As Trump’s 2016 victory shows, the mood in America is hard to pin down. The results of the new voter polls are released in the US every day, also from the major federal states.
The variety can be confusing. There are always outliers in one direction or another, so it is always worth keeping an eye on the average of all current polls, for example on summary pages on the internet like Realclearpolitics or FiveThirtyEight.
Joe Biden is way ahead of Donald Trump in national polls
Photo: Telemundo / imago images / ZUMA Wire
In principle, national surveys are generally more reliable than surveys in individual states. At the same time, state polls can show the direction in which the political environment is developing. Some polling institutes also say they improved their methods after the 2016 election. That gives hope that state polls are more accurate today than they were four years ago.
Campaign teams define “safe” states for themselves, which they assume they will definitely win. Then there are the “reasonably safe states” and finally the so-called battlefield states, that is, states that could lean in one direction or another. Generally speaking, there are currently about a dozen states. The electoral campaign focuses on them.
With the available polls, different scenarios can be developed for the outcome of the November 3 elections. Three of them are particularly interesting.
Scenario one: the blue wave
After Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 election, most experts have become cautious in predicting the outcome of an election. But what if the race is over? If Joe Biden’s lead over Trump in the polls matches the real situation?
That would be the Democrats’ dream scenario: They could expect a “blue wave” (named for the color of the party). If you add up the states where Biden is currently way ahead according to polls, he already has about 278 votes on the election committee (see graph, rounded values).
In this scenario, Biden would win the same states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, as reliable Democratic strongholds like California and New York. In addition, she would recover old strongholds of her party from the “rust belt” that Trump won in 2016: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. If you then add the “Battlefield State” Arizona in the Southwest, that would be 289 votes on the election committee.
Is this realistic? Yes, if you believe the polls: In all of these states, Biden currently holds the lead in the polls. In Michigan and Wisconsin it is more than five percentage points. In Pennsylvania and Arizona, it is around four percentage points ahead.
Plus, with a true “blue wave,” there would be states where Biden currently has a slight edge: Florida and North Carolina. Here Biden is very thin in front of Trump. In North Carolina, for example, it is 1.1 percentage points. Altogether, Biden could get more than 330 votes in the electoral college in a landslide victory.
Scenario two: Trump’s triumph
The scenario of a resounding victory for Donald Trump has not yet been ruled out. For example, because many of the surveys in the states are wrong. Or: Trump has managed to change the mood in major countries in recent weeks, for example through convincing appearances in television duels with Biden.
It is also difficult to calculate what effects the death of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the fight now beginning to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court could have. Is that the “October surprise” that is turning the race upside down? Or is another major event happening that shakes things up?
In the scenario of Trump’s triumph, the president would repeat his 2016 electoral victory and win additional states. Trump and his people are targeting New Hampshire and Minnesota in particular. Clinton was barely able to defend any of the states against Trump in 2016. There is a fairly high proportion of white non-college voters, Trump’s main electorate.
Can a “red wave” be successful? Yes, with good luck. It is very probable? Probably not.
Those who believe Trump could make another spectacular comeback would probably be wrong, says Charlie Cook, one of Washington’s most experienced polling experts, in a new analysis. A major problem for Trump is that he has little opportunity to target new voters outside of his loyal base. This is evidenced by his approval ratings, which had remained constant across the country for years between 41 and 43 percent, even now, shortly before the election.
“Events don’t change your reputation,” Cook says. “The vast majority of voters decided a long time ago whether they like her or not, whether they approve of her actions and whether they would support her candidacy.”
Also, in 2016 Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, who was much less popular with the electorate than Joe Biden. The Democrat is now clearly ahead of Trump in virtually every popularity poll, and he also scores much better than Clinton four years ago. That shouldn’t improve the chances of Trump creating a “red wave.”
Scenario three: a fairly narrow Trump or Biden victory
This scenario currently seems particularly plausible. Here one would assume that both Trump and Biden can win some states out of the pot of “battlefield states.” Both could also conquer states where no one expected this. It would be the scene of chaos.
The president and his people are convinced that in many places they are doing better than polls show. Given the problems with the polls in 2016, that can’t be ruled out. Trump and company assume they can win Pennsylvania, including Florida. Even if Michigan and Wisconsin lost, a Trump victory would still be possible under certain conditions.
The Trump folks have identified Nevada as a wavering new candidate, previously reliably attributed to Democrats. Some new polls show that Joe Biden is losing the approval of Latino voters here, as in Florida.
Conversely, Biden could also win states that have so far been reserved with Trump. Iowa has recently become a potential new destination for Biden, as has Georgia to the south. There, Democrats primarily want to mobilize black voters against Trump.
Either way, the result in this scenario would be close, maybe even too close. For example, 268 votes to 270. In this case, individual voters could refuse to vote for the winner of their state in the Electoral College ballot. A tie of 269 to 269 votes is also possible in the Electoral College.
If there is no winner in the Electoral College, the newly elected House of Representatives will decide who will be the president. However, this works in a complicated way: voting is not based on the real majority, but on the majority in groups of representatives of individual states.
Each of the 50 states has only one vote. So if a state, say Texas, has more Republican MPs than Democrats, that state is likely to vote for Trump, and so on. At the moment, under this bill, Republicans have the required majority of 26 votes. This would probably also be the case in the new House of Representatives. Trump could remain president.
