Biden Got Some Of His Best Polls This Week
After Democrats’ great midterm election, the 2020 election could be a second consecutive Democratic wave. According to FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts, Joe Biden has an 84 in 100 chance of winning the presidential election, Democrats have a 68 in 100 chance of flipping the Senate and the party has a 94 in 100 chance of keeping the House. Altogether, there’s a 65 in 100 chance that Democrats will have full control of the federal government next year.
Democrats’ hopes — and Republicans’ fears — for another blue wave grew this week with the release of several polls that were among Biden’s best of the entire year. It’s hard to tell exactly why this is happening given all the news of the past couple weeks, but no matter how you slice it, it’s not good for President Trump. For instance, a national poll from CNN/SSRS gave Biden an eye-popping 16-point lead among likely voters. Monmouth University also gave Biden an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania in a high-turnout scenario and an 8-point lead in a low-turnout scenario. Quinnipiac University backed that up with its own Pennsylvania poll showing Biden up by 13 points, and added a Biden+11 Florida poll and a Biden+5 Iowa poll for good measure.
At the same time, some other high-quality pollsters produced more subdued results in a few key swing states, although they hardly qualify as good news for Trump. Siena College/New York Times Upshot put Biden at 45 percent and Trump at 44 percent in Ohio and gave Biden a 6-point edge in Nevada. And Marquette Law School, polling its home state of Wisconsin, returned a result of Biden 47 percent, Trump 42 percent. Those results in Ohio and Wisconsin are especially significant given Trump probably needs to win them in order to secure a second term.
What to make of all these polls? Throw them in an average, of course. And FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages do suggest that Biden is widening his lead, although the degree varies depending on which state you look at. (Nationally, though, Biden has gone from a 7.3-point polling edge two weeks ago to a 9.4-point lead today.)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/biden-got-some-of-his-best-polls-this-week/