It is the received wisdom of the people who call themselves experts on these things that the race for the White House “officially” begins on Labor Day. Somehow we’ve been finding something to talk about here every Wednesday since the first of the year but let’s bow to the wisdom of the “experts” and say:
The race is on.
If you believe the polls, Joe Biden is well ahead, though his numbers of late have been slipping. According to the Real Clear Politics average of national polls, Biden has a 7.1 percentage point lead over President Donald Trump.
As we have often said, national polls are interesting but in the end of limited value. We don’t hold a national election for president. Presidents are elected via 50 individual state elections.
As is always the case, in most of those 50 states it is pretty clear who will win. States like California and New York always go for the Democratic nominee. States like Texas and Tennessee always go for the Republican. The election will therefore boil down to only a handful of states – the states that the talking heads refer to as “swing states.”
In 2020 those states are believed to be Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona. In all six of them, the big polling organizations have Joe Biden in the lead.
Most of the legacy media believes – and apparently wants you to believe – that Joe Biden is going to win the election.
But the question must be asked, how is this different from 2016? As of Labor Day week 2016 virtually none of the “experts” believed that Donald Trump had a chance. In this space four years ago, we weren’t quite as sure of a Clinton victory. But the headline of our post on August 24, 2016 did read, “Small is the gate and narrow is the road.” That piece went on to quote grim polling numbers for Donald Trump, including a then nine-point deficit against Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania. Trump went on to win Pennsylvania, albeit by a very narrow margin.
All of this to say that the experts – including the brand name pollsters – got it wrong four years ago and could very well be setting themselves up to get it wrong again.
The Trump campaign for its part seems quite optimistic. At a campaign event last week in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the president took on the question of his polling numbers directly.
We have the real numbers. We’re leading everywhere. We are leading everywhere. I’m telling you, I think…I think we’re way ahead of what we were four years ago and there’s far more enthusiasm. Our base is bigger. It’s stronger.”
There are places other than the big-name polls to which we can look for guidance. You’ve probably never heard of Trend Macrolytics. But they’ve correctly called every election since Dwight Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson in 1952. That’s a record of 17-0. The only thing Trend Macrolytics has gotten wrong in that time is the margin of victory.
They have Trump winning with 410 Electoral College votes.