April 14, 2020

Why Biden’s Polling Lead vs. Trump Isn’t as Solid as It Looks

Consider two important measurement differences: battleground states versus other states, and registered voters versus likely voters.

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NY TIMES

President Trump and Joe Biden begin the general election campaign locked in a highly competitive contest that remains fought along the lines of the 2016 presidential election, according to national and battleground state polls.

If anyone holds the early edge, it is Mr. Biden. He leads by an average of six points in national live-interview polls of registered voters. But the election will be decided by voters in the battleground states, not registered voters nationwide, and there the story is not nearly so clear or rosy for Mr. Biden.

At the moment, a reasonable estimate is that Mr. Biden is performing four or five points worse among likely voters in the critical states than he is among registered voters nationwide. As a result, he holds only a narrow and tenuous edge in the race for the Electoral College, if he holds one at all.

Even under ordinary circumstances, with seven months to go until the election, there would be plenty of time for the race to change. This cycle, the country also faces a pandemic and a severe economic downturn with the potential to upend the race.

Already, an initial uptick in the president’s approval rating has dissipated, perhaps because a rallying effect has given way to more focus on the administration’s coronavirus response. There will be many opportunities for the polls to shift again, and the president faces many downside risks without a return to normal life and to economic growth before the election.

But at least for now, the polls suggest that American voters are divided along familiar lines, despite countless events that seemed to have the potential to redraw them.

The president begins the campaign with strong support from the white working class who powered his upset win four years ago. He leads among white voters without a college degree, 61 percent to 32 percent, in an average of live-interview polls conducted since March 15, matching or perhaps even exceeding his margin over Hillary Clinton in methodologically similar polls conducted late in the 2016 campaign.



The percentage-point Democratic lead by voter group in pre-election polls of registered voters
60
40
20
0
-20
Nonwhite
White
White, 4-year degree
White, no 4-year degree
2004
2008
2012
2016
2020
By The New York Times | Source: Upshot analysis of live-interview R.D.D. poll data from the Roper Center, ABC/Washington Post, CNN/SSRS, Monmouth University,

The results suggest that Mr. Biden, despite his reputed appeal to blue-collar workers, has made little to no progress in winning back the white voters without a college degree who supported Barack Obama in 2012 but swung to Mr. Trump in 2016.