Biden’s lead in the polls is most evident in the suburbs, where he is winning a historic amount of support for a Democrat.
Biden has increased a margin from 52% to 43% among suburban voters in the ABC News / Washington Post poll.
Other polls in the past month show that Biden is even better among suburban voters. The latest Quinnipiac University poll has Biden ahead by a 56% to 34% margin with suburban commuters. The NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist poll has Biden outpacing Trump between 60% and 35% among suburban voters. Fox News has Biden with a similar advantage of 55% to 33%.
Our CNN poll in early June had Biden with a 14-point lead in the suburbs.
In the average of all the polls, Biden is ahead by almost 20 points with suburban voters. This is a historical margin, if it is maintained.
The fact that Biden is doing so well in the suburbs should come as no surprise. The suburbs are a kind of revolutionary vote in our current political environment. In other words, the suburban vote reflects the national vote closer than the urban or rural vote.
Biden’s leadership in the suburbs reflects that he is doing significantly better than Hillary Clinton. Four years ago, at this time, Trump was beating Clinton by a 45% to 35% margin in the ABC / Washington Post poll of suburban voters.
In other words, we are seeing an improvement of almost 20 points for Biden compared to where Clinton was at this point in the 2016 campaign.
A look at the final polls and post-election polls from four years ago shows anything from a small Clinton lead (for example, 5 points in the Fox News final poll) to a small Trump lead (for example, 4 points. in the exit survey).
If it were to return over time, the exit poll data reveals that no Democrat has won the suburban vote by more than 5 points since at least 1972, when the first exit poll was conducted in a presidential election.
(I should note that different pollsters define “suburb” differently. Some use a postal code definition and others simply ask, for example. However, by none of the commonly used definitions, has a Democrat done as well as Biden is currently doing so) since at least 1972.)
Winning Democratic candidates tend to lead to the suburbs, though none of the respondents have Biden ahead of them. In 2008 (the best year for Democrats in this century), Obama won in the suburbs by 2 points in exit polls. The final ABC News / Washington Post poll made him win in the suburbs by 5 points.
Lyndon Johnson in 1964 was perhaps the only Democrat in the past 70 years to probably double-digit win in the suburbs. He won overall by 23 points that year. Although no data is available from that year’s exit poll, United States National Election Studies show it fared 10 points worse in the suburbs than it did nationally.
The clear difference between the 1964 and 2020 elections is that Biden, at this point, is getting ahead of his national numbers in the suburbs. Biden’s overall lead in the polls with a suburban crosstab averages about 13 points.
You can see this dynamic in a state like Pennsylvania. In the latest Monmouth University poll, Biden leads 53% to 40% overall among registered voters. He gets a 54% to 35% margin in the swing areas from suburban Philadelphia to northeastern Pennsylvania. Clinton gained those counties by just one point four years ago, as she lost the state by 1 point.
In fact, suburbs have been a problem for Trump and Republicans during the Trump presidency. It was the suburbs that gave Democrats their majority in the House in 2018. They collected the vast majority of their net profit from 40 seats in the suburbs.
Looking at the polls right now, it looks like the suburbs could be making Republicans again. Unless Trump changes him in the suburbs, he could go on to be a one-term president.
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