The polls were big mistakes: it took Biden an inch to beat Trump

This year’s presidential election in the United States was unprecedented in many ways and brought with it the excitement we expected from it in advance. Polls projected a smooth victory for Biden, but polls also significantly underestimated Trump in 2016, so we couldn’t build on that. In any case, the chances of an election were Joe Biden, and while Trump wasn’t a possibility either, his victory would have been a surprise.

By comparison, as the polls closed more and more and official results began to be released, Trump’s superiority showed astonishment. He soon won three major states on the battlefield, Florida, Ohio, and Texas, his lead seemed small in Georgia, North Carolina, and in the north, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, although the processing was low, he had a huge lead. Then the ballots began to arrive, and Biden gradually preceded Trump in the remaining states on the battlefield until he finally won the election.

We knew there would be more Democratic votes in letter ballots, but we didn’t think so much.

It is important to say that a visual translation of Biden does not mean that the Democratic candidate has subsequently reversed the position. Votes by letter were also part of the general public vote, if there hadn’t been an epidemic and lots of ballots by letter, we would certainly have seen a Biden advantage in those Member States, even with low prosecution, and then it wouldn’t have seemed like Trump won for a few hours.

How smooth was it?

If we take a look at the Electoral College, where the vote is decided, we can see a significant advantage from Biden. With the states already secured, Biden has 279 votes, Trump only 214. Votes are still counted in various member states, but the competition is over because Biden can no longer lose 279 voters and needs 270 to win. If the competition is decided in the four remaining Member States, the map will probably look like this:

We can almost certainly write Georgia for Bidne (16 voters), who would have 295 voters. Votes are being counted in the state, so we can’t announce a winner yet, but the Democratic candidate’s 12,000-vote lead is unlikely to persist after the count. Arizona, on the other hand, is doubtful, it can easily get Trump (11 voters), Alaska sure (3), North Carolina will probably withdraw, the most likely result being 295-243 in favor of Biden.

Based on this, it may appear that Biden won an easy victory, even though he was actually only an inch away.

Let’s look at the states of the battlefield where the competition is decided. Here we see that in many places the difference was below 1 percentage point. In Georgia, for example, Biden’s lead is minimal, 0.2 percentage points, but he has beaten Wisconsin by 0.6 percentage points and Pennsylvania by 0.7 percentage points (in the latter, the result can change between 1 and 2 tenths).

If he had been knocked out in both Pennsylvania and Georgia, and hadn’t had Arizona and North Carolina (where he currently has a chance), he would no longer have won the election., since it would have had only 259 voters, and Trump had 279 votes with 12,000 votes in Georgia and 45,000 in Pennsylvania,

therefore, fewer than 60,000 votes won the US presidential elections.

It is no coincidence that it was in these states that Trump attacked the election result. If all goes as expected and your lawsuit is dismissed in Pennsylvania and Georgia loses after the recount, you have no choice but to admit defeat and endure 0.04% of the total votes cast.

How much did the polls fail?

We’ve said beforehand that Biden has such a huge lead in the polls that it’s only with extreme inaccuracy that Trump’s actual support may be greater than Biden.

In the end, this is exactly what many predicted: Trump’s support was indeed higher than they measured, they were quite wrong in many undulating states, everywhere in favor of Biden:

Biden was lucky that it wasn’t evenly distributed: Because the polls were most flawed where Trump had a chance in the first place – in Ohio and Texas, and where Biden had a big lead (Michigan and Pennsylvania) – there was a minor error. We’ve seen a change in Florida compared to the polls, but that still fits with Biden. And in Georgia, it was a blessing for Biden that the polls did not at all underestimate Trump’s support; Had that been the case, the Democratic candidate could have been in trouble:

Since votes are still counted in some states, there may be a difference of a tenth or two at the end, but the big picture doesn’t change. It must be said here that the surveys were, on average, larger this year than in 2016, then the error was 3.3 percentage points, this year 3.9 percentage points. Again, Biden is fortunate that the error distribution favored him:

if Pennsylvania and Michigan get it wrong both this year and 2016, Biden will lose the election. But it was in these places that they made the least mistakes.

Overall, therefore, Biden will have a large majority in the Electoral College, which may be necessary in extreme cases due to legal princes and counts (if, for example, Pennsylvania is taken away, Georgia already matters). In these critical states, however, the difference was quite large. Clearly, the outcome of the US presidential election really only took an inch.

Cover image: Getty Images