This 538 analysis does explain the strange Trump tactical moves to Nevada and Minnesota, as they see their secondary targets instead of their main swing state targets. We can count on the race tightening and the margins are closer in the swing states.
We’ve moved past Labor Day and into the home stretch of the 2020 election cycle. Joe Biden still leads in national polls by about 7 or 8 percentage points, and state polls also show a relatively stable race, with most — excluding those in Florida — containing good news for Biden. However, don’t count President Trump out yet. He still has a roughly one-in-four chance of pulling off an upset.
- On Wednesday, as part of his upcoming book on the Trump presidency, “Rage,” veteran journalist Bob Woodward revealed that Trump downplayed the severity of the coronavirus to the American public. The question, of course, is whether this revelation will move public opinion against Trump; he’s already gotten middling marks for his handling of the pandemic.
- At the very least, we know Trump didn’t become any more popular following the conventions. On average, polls asking Americans whether they have a favorable or unfavorable view of both Trump and Biden showed that Biden gained a few points in popularity. His net favorability rating (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) improved from -2 percentage points before the conventions to +3 after. Trump, on the other hand, didn’t get even a small boost — his net favorability dropped from -13 points to -14.
projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...
1. It's a closer race in the Electoral College, with Biden ahead by perhaps 4-5 points in the tipping-point states.
2. Our model expects the race to tighten by a point or so because of improvement in the economy.
Because Democrats are determined to freak out every time a single poll shows President Trump doing the bare minimum (no matter what all other polling shows), another anxiety-fest erupted on Tuesday over a new NBC News/Marist poll finding a dead heat in Florida, with both candidates earning 48 percent of likely voters.
That same poll also found Democratic nominee Joe Biden under-performing badly among Florida Latinos, with Trump leading among them by 50 percent to 46 percent, whereas Hillary Clinton won the demographic group in 2016 by 27 points.
By contrast, the NBC poll also found Biden tied with Trump among Florida seniors (a group Trump won by 17 points last time), and Trump leading Biden among whites by only 15 points (Trump won them by 32 last time).
But, fueling the angst, a new Bendixen and Amandi poll finds Biden and Trump almost exactly tied among Latino voters in Miami-Dade County, where Democrats must run up huge margins.
[...]
Given that Barack Obama won Florida in 2008 and 2012, while Hillary Clinton lost it in 2016, the anxiety is perhaps understandable.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
Short-attention-span Theater.