We’re a mere forty days out from the 2020 presidential election and as of the writing of this article only six days out from the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
I’d be lying if I said that I was confident that the debates will have no impact on polling but honestly were living in the year 2020 so I wouldn’t be surprised if the debates threw a few curve balls our way regarding polling changes. Regardless, going into these debates Biden has had a long, continuously stable lead over Trump for the entirety of this election cycle.
To those people who keep trying to relitigate 2016 by saying that 2020 is no different than that election I ask this; If 2020 is the same as 2016, why has Biden had the most stable and a very comfortable national lead for the entirety of this year? Sure, Hillary Clinton almost always had a lead over Trump in the national averages but that lead tended to fluctuate pretty dramatically month to month. At the end of June 2016, Clinton had a seven-point lead, end of July it was a one-point lead and the end of August had Clinton back to a five-point lead. From June to the tail end of September, Clinton came within a one-point margin in the national average with Trump twice.
So how does Biden compare? Well, I’ll let a tweet I put out on September 23rd do most of the explaining here. In that same June-September time period that saw Clinton dip to a one-point lead twice, Biden has yet to even drop below a five-point lead. The closest Trump has gotten to Biden in the June to September time period was the start of June when the lead for Biden was only +5.9.
This election has been remarkable for a few different reasons, yet one of those is the incredibly stable, comfortable lead that the Democratic challenger has had over the incumbent Republican president. I ran across a graph from the NewStatesman that compared the average lead in each presidential election to the current averages for 2020 and my god, you can really see why this election is boring and predictable when you see it for yourself.
Look, you can say whatever you want about my pointing this out. If you want to call me partisan for pointing out the fact the Democratic challenger is currently killing the incumbent president in the averages, go ahead, though I’d urge you to better understand what it means to be partisan if that’s the case. This won’t change the fact that Biden continues to hold a remarkably stable lead over the president.
Things can certainly change in the next forty days as we draw closer to election day, I always point this fact out. My gut feeling is that if things haven’t changed in the last seven months, I don’t imagine they’re going to change now. This election is an election full of firmly decided voters with very few people still undecided as to whom they want to support. Trump is rapidly running out of time to turn things around for himself and his party and if the last seven months have been any indication on how that’s going to go for him the answer is very clearly ‘It’s going badly’.