Point out three outcomes – VG

With increasingly unpleasant personal attacks, it becomes the fever of the US presidential election campaign. Following the chaotic debate in Ohio in September, there is great excitement for the latest debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump before the Nov. 4 election.

The duel will take place in Nashville, in the state of Tennessee, at 3 pm until Friday, Norwegian time; you can follow it here:

Preset trump

You can discuss how important debates are to who people actually vote for.

But Donald Trump has a lot to gain if he makes a good figure.

Because even though he has faced the rival after a strong explosion two weeks ago, he is still behind in the latest polls:

But this is not what determines who wins the presidential race and can be described as the most powerful man in the world. In the United States, it is not necessarily the one you receive plus votes, he becomes president.

I kept up to date on the VG poll: Recent measurements, forecasts and news.

The president is elected through voters who appoint 538 of the so-called electors, who in turn elect the president. The number of voters in each of the 50 states varies by population, with California having the most at 55.

The presidential candidate who gets 270 voters has a majority, and this is how it looks in the polls before the last debate:

Today’s latest measurements give us three realistic results, says researcher Hilmar Mjelde from the Norwegian Research Institute (NORCE).

• A top Biden win
• A narrow victory for Biden
• A Trump victory

“I think it is out of the question that Trump will get more referenda than Biden, because there are roughly five percentage points more Democrats than Republicans in America,” says Mjelde.

Get information: Here’s how Trump can secure four new years

The researcher points out that there are two types of predictions:

The first are the so-called structural models, which analyze how long the president’s party has been in office and what state the economy is in, and which indicate that there are now 50-50 candidates. In-office presidents are typically re-elected, but it depends on how good the economy is, Mjelde notes.

– The second type of prediction is continuous opinion polls. They indicate a 75-80 percent chance of a Biden win. But they also show that Trump is taking a step back now.

VG follows the debate from Nashville; here are the new rules:

“External shock”

The backdrop for this year’s presidential election is very special, with a corona pandemic that has hit the United States hard. This also makes the election outcome more difficult to predict, the NORCE researcher believes.

– Before the pandemic, I’d say Trump wins, clearly, because he’s only been in office for four years and unemployment dropped to three percent in February. But this year I am unusually insecure. We really have no tangible clues when a so-called “external shock” like the pandemic occurs. Such incidents throw the entire country into great uncertainty, and we don’t really know how predictable actors like voters will act, Mjelde tells VG.

Divided by Trump: Brothers Kim and Phillip haven’t spoken in three years.

Democratic tailwind

As it stands now, even traditional Republican states like Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas could go Democrats this year, according to an average of polls from the Gallup FiveThirtyEight website.

Statistics compare Trump’s chances of winning with the chance of rolling a six on a die, or it raining in downtown Los Angeles, which averages 36 days of rain a year.

The trend is clear, says Sigrid Rege Gårdsvoll in Amerikanskpolitikk.no: Joe Biden is more likely to win.

– I base it on forecasts and trends, not just opinion polls, he tells VG.

Watch the video – that’s why Hanna (24) votes for Biden, even though she doesn’t believe in him:

Lean states keep leaning

What both candidates and statisticians are particularly concerned about now are the so-called inflection states. An average of polls shows that Joe Biden leads by 4.2 percentage points over Donald Trump in the important states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona.

But according to Real Clear Politics, this is just 0.4 percentage points higher than Hillary Clinton’s leadership in these states on the same day four years ago.

And as you know, he ended up losing to Trump.

Confused? Get a simple explanation of why tab states are important:

Sigrid Rege Gårdsvoll at Amerikanskpolitikk. Does not say that North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa are states she follows most closely now.

– There are states where Trump has been assumed to win, but where Biden is now starting to get it right, he says.

He also points to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, where Trump decided the 2016 election, in addition to Minnesota.

– All four are really the most important tip statuses for Biden. If he takes them, I think this should be decided by Biden. And of course Florida is always exciting, says Gårdsvoll.

Texas is also on the list of states to watch now, says Civita adviser Eirik Løkke.

– A more moderate candidate would easily win in both Georgia and Texas, but one doesn’t like Trump’s “little presidential demeanor.” If Texas becomes democratic, it will be the first time since the 1960s.

Now Texas can go “blue”: “It’s a shame to be an American”

Watch video – VG verified the accusation of racism in the ranks at polling stations in Georgia:

Trump can still win

One lesson many took from both the 2016 presidential election and the Brexit vote the same year is that opinion polls cannot be blindly trusted. That’s what American expert Erik Mustad reminds us.

– There are still good reasons to believe that Trump can be re-elected. Opinion polls point in the direction of Biden’s victory, as it did for Hillary in 2016, but then the polls failed. In other words, if we see a repeat of 2016, Trump is doing well. If, by contrast, opinion polls are more accurate, Biden has a good chance.

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We don’t know if this election is more like 2016, or like 2008 when Obama steadily led, as Biden does now, says NORCE researcher Hilmar Mjelde.

– We do not know if new voting errors will appear, and if there is a real movement in the electorate in the last two weeks, as in 2016. It counts positively for Biden that so many will vote this year. This indicates that opinion polls will be more reliable, for methodological reasons. The measurements are less reliable in elections with low turnout, says the researcher.

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