Even as curves have bent, the numbers are still too high, and the 36-65,000 death toll from Trump’s inaction remains part of the 114,000 US death toll.
What’s happening, in fact, is that Trump is losing, that he has been unable to expand his support and is relying on his 2016 strategy of being the best-liked disliked candidate in order to win. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows that this isn’t working and that Biden’s margin of support over Trump remains both constant and a function of his own relative popularity compared to the incumbent president.
Consider it from another perspective. If we look at the distribution of the margins between the candidates over the last 250 days, you can see that the Trump-Biden contest in 2020 has operated on a much more narrow range — spread over a range of only 3.5 points. In 2016, the range was more than 12 points.
Of course, there are 150 days to go in which to see similar shifts. If we compare an equivalent period, from 250 to 150 days before the election, 2020 still stands out. In 2012, the contest between Obama and Mitt Romney only covered 4.5 points, but that’s still a wider range than what the current race has seen.
The particular problem for Trump here, of course, is that the range isn’t hovering around the midpoint of the graph. Instead, it’s hovering in a position that gives Biden a 4- to 8-point national margin. A 4-point win in the popular vote might not be enough for Biden to win the electoral college, depending on how things shake out. An 8-point win, though, almost certainly would be.
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