Don’t think the election is safe because of Biden’s huge poll lead. Here’s three reasons Trump could still win.
1 - National polls don’t really tell us much
Joe Biden’s nine-point lead in national polls is roughly the same as Hillary Clinton’s three weeks out from the 2016 election. We already know national polls don’t tell the whole picture: Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, but lost the electoral college. We should be looking at state polls in key swing states to get an idea of how Biden’s going.
Biden’s lead is much narrower when you look at the states that will decide the election
Florida: Biden +1.4
Pennsylvania: Biden +4.4
Michigan: Biden +7.2
Wisconsin: Biden +6.1
North Carolina: Biden +2.7
Arizona: Biden +3.9
2 - State polls are less accurate than national polls
In 2016, the state polls were more inaccurate than the national polls. On average, they overestimated Clinton’s voteshare by about three points. Predicting turnout, already a challenge for pollsters, has become even harder during the pandemic.
“[Voter turnout] is a perennial difficulty for pollsters and survey researchers, which the pandemic is making even thornier,” said Dr Kabir Khanna, election analyst at CBS News.
3 - There’s more uncertainty over whether all ballots will be counted
Mail-in ballots are rejected more often than in-person ballots because 1) they can arrive late, ruling them out of being counted and 2) the voter sometimes forgets to sign the ballot.
In 2016, 1% of all absentee ballots were rejected. That’s a lot of ballots - Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each by less than 1% against Clinton.
Mail-in ballots overwhelmingly favour Democrats, and more mail-in ballots are being sent in this year than ever before. Pollsters simply do not know how much of an impact that’s going to have on election night.