I just took a look at 538’s polling aggregates from 2016.
- On October 16, Clinton led Grand Nagus Drumpf by 45.4%-39.2%, a difference of 6.2%.
- Clinton peaked on October 26 at 46%, to 39.6% for the Nagus, a 6.4% lead.
- On election day, November 8, the final polling aggregates were 45.7% for Clinton, 41.8% for the Nagus, a difference of 3.9%
- Clinton ended up winning the popular vote 48.2%-46.1%, a 2.1% difference, 1.8% less than predicted.
- Both Clinton and the Nagus outperformed their final poll numbers; she by 2.5%, he by 4.3%.
- From June 8 to November 8, Clinton never broke 46% (let alone 50%) and hit that peak only once. Her low was 40.6%, in late July.
- Clinton’s biggest lead was 7.5%, 45.6%-38.1%, in early August.
- The Nagus’s highest polling average was 42.3%, three days before the election.
- The Nagus got within 0.2%, 40.8%-40.6%, on July 30.
- The Nagus’s numbers rose dramatically in the last week of October, while Clinton’s fell slightly then recovered slightly.
Now, let’s look at 538’s polling aggregates today, October 16, 2020, as of 8:45 a.m.:
- Biden leads the Grand Nagus 52.4% to 41.7%, a 10.7% advantage, Biden’s largest of the campaign thus far.
- Biden’s lead has been steadily increasing since September 28 — the day before the first debate.
- Since early June, Biden has been at or above 50% consistently, except a for couple of blips in late July and early August. He’s never been below 49.5% in that time.
- Biden’s lead a month ago today was 6.9%. His smallest lead since June was three days after that, at 6.6%.
- The Nagus has never led Biden; the closest he’s gotten is 3.4%, on April 13.
- Since February 27, the Nagus’s peak is 45.6% on March 6. Since June 1 his peak is 43.5%.
I suppose now is the time for the platitudes about how anything can happen and there’s still time and don’t take anything for granted and there’s vote suppression and so forth, so let’s all stipulate to all of that. As a Mets fan I know full well the risks of allowing oneself to be even mildly optimistic about anything.
That said, the obvious takeaway from the data cited above is that Biden is doing quite a lot better than Clinton did; Grand Nagus Drumpf is also doing better, as the incumbent, than he did as the putative challenger in 2016. The key, to me, is that Biden has achieved two things that Clinton never did: (1) a polling majority (i.e., >50%), and a fairly consistent one at that, and (2) a double-digit lead. For all the ultimately-misplaced certainty that Clinton would win easily four years ago, she really didn’t poll that well; that she never hit 46% except for a momentary blip in late October is really astonishing. Biden, today, is almost 8½ points better than that. Clinton never led by double digits; the closest she got was 7.5%, which Biden has now bested by 3.2 points.
Know hope.