The 59th quadrennial Presidential Election in American history is set: it will be the incumbent Donald Trump (R) against Joe Biden (D) in a race that will feature the two oldest major-party nominees in history, with Trump being age 74 in November and Biden age 77. With Bernie Sanders dropping out of the Democratic Primary earlier this week, the general election contest has been sealed and now it’s time to begin turning towards the match-up between Biden and Trump. The two have been jostling in the distance for months, with Biden and Trump trading punches over the last four years, including one ill-fated attempt by the President that managed to get himself impeached. It is also the first time since 1984, and just the 3rd time in history, that a former VP has faced an incumbent President in a general election. With so much history involved and the stakes so high, this article will serve as a preliminary, spring-time preview of the 2020 US Presidential Election. We will break down where things stand now in terms of national and state-level polls, as well as what to expect moving forward. Let’s dive right in:
Where things stand currently: National Polls
pollster |
dates |
biden (D) |
Trump (r) |
biden margin |
youGov |
4/5-4/7 |
48% |
42% |
+6 |
monmouth |
4/3-4/7 |
48% |
44% |
+4 |
cnn |
4/3-4/6 |
53% |
42% |
+11 |
cnbc |
4/3-4/6 |
44% |
39% |
+5 |
qpac |
4/2-4/6 |
49% |
41% |
+8 |
ibd/Tipp |
3/29-4/1 |
47% |
41% |
+6 |
harris |
3/24-3/26 |
55% |
45% |
+10 |
abc/wapo |
3/22-3/25 |
49% |
47% |
+2 |
fox news |
3/21-3/24 |
49% |
40% |
+9 |
Emerson |
3/18-3/19 |
53% |
47% |
+6 |
nbc/Wsj |
3/11-3/13 |
52% |
43% |
+9 |
AVERAGE |
----- |
49.7% |
42.8% |
+6.9 |
The above chart takes the most recent national general election poll released by 11 pretty reputable pollsters. There are some important things to note: first, because not a ton of polls are being released right now, the dates span nearly a full month. That means that some polls, like the final one from NBC/Wall Street Journal, occurred before the Coronavirus was even really setting in. That makes this chart a bit of a hodgepodge. However, the chart shows one clear and consistent finding, and that is that Donald Trump is trailing in every national poll. He has not led a single national poll since mid-February, and that includes even those released by his good buddies at Rasmussen Reports (their most recent poll showed Biden +4).
Even more interesting, 8 of the 11 polls have Biden leading by at least 6 points, a margin that’s been pretty consistent over the course of the Democratic Primary in Biden-Trump head-to-head polls. Just one poll has Biden leading by less than 4, the one conducted by ABC/Washington Post. The good news for Trump is that ABC/WaPo is an excellent pollster and if you could choose to have your best poll in any poll listed here, it may well be that one. The downside is that the poll in question was conducted during the height of Trump’s “rally around the flag” period in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. More specifically, the ABC/WaPo poll actually gave him a positive approval rating, something that the course of Trump’s presidency has not been borne out often, to say the least. Thus, one would expect that since Trump’s approval seems to have ebbed since that mid-March moment of national solidarity, if ABC/WaPo conducted a new poll, the President would probably be trailing by more.
For further evidence of this point about consistency, let’s take a look at the tracker from our handy friends at RealClearPolitics. The adjacent graph shows RCP’s rolling average of the Trump-Biden national head-to-head numbers. Since December, 2019, Trump has never trailed Biden by less than 4, but also never by more than 7.4. I don’t always agree with the way that RCP calculates its polling average, but that’s a conversation for another day and the central message of the graph is clear: polls of Biden-Trump have been very, very stable over the course of several months. We will revisit the significance of this later.
So that’s where things are in the national picture right now. But most people who even follow politics superficially remember that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral college, meaning that a Biden lead nationally doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s destined to win the election. That is a good point. If we look at the 2016 margin, Clinton won the popular vote by 2.09% and lost the tipping point state (Wisconsin) by 0.77%, meaning that Biden would need to win the national vote by about 3% to win the electoral college, which as of right now, he’s doing pretty comfortably. Some have argued that the electoral college/popular vote split could stretch as high as 4 or 5 points in this election, but that is, right now, all guesswork. Still important to keep in mind.
Where things stand currently: State Polls
For this we’re going to take a look at the swing states likely to decide the 2020 election: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. Some of those states are less crucial than others and that will become clear in a moment. For now, let’s take a look at what the polls are showing us. The map to the right shows the standing of current state-level polling in the head-to-head general election match-up of Trump vs. Biden.
As is seen on the adjacent map, Biden generally leads Trump across the map, in nearly all key states. However, many states are very close at this time. Counting only states not pictured on this map, Biden begins with 190 electoral votes in the bag, while Trump only has 125. Biden has comfortable polling leads in Minnesota, Virginia, and Colorado, although two of those three states have limited polling, to say the least. Those three states comprise 32 electoral votes, which would bring Biden up to 222. If Biden were to carry Nevada and New Hampshire, two close-ish states that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, in addition to Michigan where he has a decent 5 point polling lead, that bumps him up to 248 electoral votes. The question would then become, how does Biden get to 270?
The good news for the former Vice President is that he has polling leads of 3-4 points in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, states totaling 46 electoral votes, which would put him well over 270. The polling suggests that either Arizona or North Carolina, but more likely the former, would be the tipping point state if the election were held today, and in that state Biden leads the polling average 48%-45%. That 3 point margin suggests an electoral college/popular vote split of around 3 or so points, if Biden is leading by just over 6 nationally, a number in line with what was witnessed in 2016. Beyond Arizona, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, Biden also has narrow (1-2 point) leads in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin, states that would turn the general election into an electoral college blowout if Biden were to carry them (351-187).
On the flip side though, Trump is also in tenuous position in two Sun Belt swing states: Georgia and Texas, where he has similar 1-2 point leads. Those two stats also carry a ton of electoral votes, 54 combined between the two states. Democrats have failed to crack the nut in either Texas or Georgia, but they came close in 2018. Trump should not take these two states for granted just because they have consistently gone Republican in the past, like Hillary Clinton did with Wisconsin in 2016. The polling right now points to those two states being very competitive. However, they are, again, not the tipping point states. If Biden is carrying either Texas or Georgia, he will already have won the presidency because he would have carried Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and others first.
So, as we stand right now, Joe Biden is in a solid position in state-level polls. He has 3-4 point leads in the states he needs to win the electoral college, which are the type of leads that are both not quite close enough to be termed true tossups, but also not quite big enough to feel great, either. One more thing that is important to note: the cluster of states with lots of electoral votes could easily make the election go from a nailbiter to a landslide in a hurry. For example, using the above polling map, if every state were to vote for the current polling leader, Joe Biden would win 351-185, not counting two competitive Congressional Districts in Maine (2nd CD) and Nebraska (2nd CD) which could go either way. But if Trump were to beat his polls by just 2 points nationally (as he did in 2016), the race would be a much closer 294-242. And if he were to beat his polls by just 3 points nationally, he could very well win a second term by a paper thin 270-268 margin. But this goes both ways. If Biden were to beat his polls by just 2 points nationally, he would win 405-131. Essentially, 5 points in national popular vote margin shifts could be the difference between a Trump second term and a Biden blowout of epic proportions. The electoral college is very strange.
Where we are headed: COVID-19, the economy, and the general election
At the time of this article’s publication, there are 208 days between the present and November 3, 2020, the date of the 2020 Presidential Election. That is just under 7 months, and a lot of time for things to change. The 2020 election presents a number of wild cards at play beyond what is seen in a typical election: the Coronavirus and a national economy rapidly hurtling into a recession. Starting with the former, there are two components to look at. The first is how it will affect the President’s standing, with Trump casting himself as a “Wartime President” and trying to use his management of the pandemic as a case for re-election. As stated earlier, for a time in mid-March, Trump did get a clear bump in his approval rating, and continues to enjoy a modest one, although it has fallen from its peak by a couple points among registered voters. While it is certainly true that voters could reward Trump if the pandemic subsides in a timely manner, that seems rather unlikely given that views of the President have been very resistant to change throughout his term. Furthermore, there is evidence that the public seems to be souring on the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, including both a CNN poll out this week and anecdotal evidence from polling firm PPP.
The second component to look at is how the Coronavirus will actually affect the voting process. While your author is not a public health expert, it does seem unlikely that a shelter-in-place order will still be in effect nationwide in November, although the chance of a second wave of COVID-19 appearing in the fall is a possibility. However, questions such as “how many Americans will be returning to ‘life as normal’ by November?” and “will Americans be afraid to wait in a voting line in November?” are very real and at this time, do not have clear answers. Democrats in the Congress have been pushing for nationwide vote-by-mail, while national Republicans have been pushing back. From a pure elections security standpoint, national vote-by-mail should be a necessary preparation to conduct the November election, but partisanship often doesn’t care much about elections security. All of that said, while the President seems to clearly believe that a national vote-by-mail system would advantage Democrats, that does not seem to be clearly true, as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on American voting behavior has not been studied in any shape or form. As a result, how the crisis affects the November election’s ability to happen, and how any obstacles would change vote shares, is very much up in the air right now.
A second wild card is the state of the nation’s economy. Unless you have been living under a rock, it should not come as a surprise that the national economy has been in free fall for some time, with the unemployment rate likely already over 10% and could possibly surpass 30% in the most grisly estimates. GDP growth in Q2 of 2020 could be -25% or worse, and projections for Q3 are not great, either. Generally speaking, a recession in the final year or two of a President’s first term has been a death knell for incumbents seeking re-election. The last four incumbent Presidents to lose re-election, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, all battled recessions in their final two years in office. So, a recession developing over the course of this year, which seems to be almost certain to occur, would seemingly be very, very bad news for President Trump.
Furthermore, the economy has almost always been Trump’s strongest re-election pitch. His highest marks as President have been on the economy and a stock market hitting record highs as recently as 7 weeks ago, as well as a 50 year low unemployment rate as recently as a month ago, were two facts Trump would bring up almost constantly in speeches and interviews. Those facts are both no longer true. Instead, the opposite has occurred as the economy has quickly unraveled. From a messaging standpoint, this would clearly make the President’s life harder in his tough re-election battle. Moreover, the current polling that has been much discussed in this piece almost all happened before the scope of the economic crisis became clear. In many ways, voters still haven’t begun to comprehend the scope of the situation and even if they have, it is largely still coupled with the fear and panic of the pandemic. The big question is when/if Americans begin to blame Trump for the economy, likely after the pandemic begins to subside. The conventional wisdom throughout the Trump Presidency has consistently been that an economic crash would lead to a historic landslide defeat. It is tough to say if that still holds true or not. What is clear, though, is that Trump being blamed for a recession is the only kind of event that could make the national polling go from its current state (bad) to atrocious for the President. This is the other wild card to monitor and it would seem that Biden has more upside here than Trump does.
Similarly, the general election has *just* begun. At this point in 2016, Clinton actually led Trump by more than Biden does currently. However, as one can see in this link, the graph of the Clinton-Trump general election polls was far more bouncy than what we have seen with Biden. In both December, 2015, and early February, 2016, Trump and Clinton were nearly tied in the polls, something that has never happened in the Trump-Biden polling we have going back well over a year. Over the course of the 2016 campaign Clinton would go on to open big leads before seeing it slip again, something that happened in the waning moments of the campaign. That just simply hasn’t happened with Biden and Trump yet. The moments of “narrower” polls show Trump down 4, instead of tied, and the moments of “wide” polls show Trump down 10. Given his historically stable approval rating, perhaps stable general election polls shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Finally, the typical coalescing around the presumptive nominee may not have happened yet, either. This is likely true since Biden literally only became the presumptive nominee this week (duh). There is some anecdotal evidence in Wisconsin from both the PPP and Marquette University polling departments that undecideds in the Badger state are predominantly Bernie supporters who have yet to get behind their party’s nominee. It is possible then that Biden’s lead over Trump could increase once voters move past the primary and to the general election. Trump, to his credit, is going to do everything he can to stop that consolidation and his recent tweets, attempting to sow discord in the Democratic base, are evidence of that. In many ways it’s just taking a page out of his playbook from 2016, one that worked very well. In 2016, Trump won voters who disliked both himself and Clinton convincingly. In current 2020 polls, Biden leads those same voters by a similarly wide margin. Trump needs to change that and he needs to do so quickly. That would include tarring Biden to make himself look better by comparison and convincing Bernie voters to stay home, in order to win re-election. Whether he can or not is a key storyline to watch throughout the general election.
Conclusion
So where does this leave the general election at in totality? As a whole I would say that right now, Joe Biden begins as a modest favorite over President Trump, but with the caveat that there is lots of time to go and things can change quickly. His national polling leads have consistently been a bit above the threshold of what would be expected to win the electoral college for nearly a year now, and his state level polls, while not suggesting an election that is anywhere close to being in the bag, do also consistently point to Biden being favored. The wild card complications of the recession and the general election just now getting underway both suggest that there is probably more upside for Biden than for Trump, unless one believes that Trump will prove to be a vastly more skilled campaigner and/or debater, which the Trump team would definitely argue. While the campaign can and will change over the course of the next 7 months, I would err more on the side of believing that the general fundamentals of the race will change less than they will more.
In the end, the 2020 Presidential election is one with still high degrees of uncertainty. If I were classifying it in the race rating style of “likely, lean, tossup”, I would probably classify it as “tossup” but, the seldom-used “tilt” rating works better. In this case, it would be “tilt Democratic”. Biden has a small but consistent edge in the numbers but the high degree of uncertainty, both in time until Election Day, as well as in polls, muddle the picture. As stated in the state polling section, the range of outcomes is very wide: everything from a Trump victory to a Biden landslide is a possibility in play and the national shift required between those two outcomes is not very wide. Again, maybe as little as 5 or so points. While I would be surprised if Biden lost the popular vote, or won it by more than 10, I would not be surprised if he garnered anywhere from 240 to 425 electoral votes. This is going to be a strange election with a lot of close states. If they all fall to the right, Trump could very well return to Washington victorious. If they all fall to the left, Joe Biden will be ringing in unified Democratic government. And if they fall rather evenly, Biden would probably win, but with a tight US Senate that could go either way. Expect a contentious general election but one that, for now, starts with a small Democratic edge in favor of the former Vice President.