If we go by the pre-election polls that track the preference of registered voters, it seems Democrat nominee Joe Biden has an edge over current US president Donald Trump in the 2020 US presidential election. According to the latest CNN poll of polls, Biden is 10 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump in national polling average. The national polling average of Joe Biden is at 52% while Donald Trump looks way behind at 42%.
CNN includes only the prestigious polls in its poll of polls exercise and all the latest poll figures from different poll outfits included in the exercise tell that Biden has a clear advantage over Trump in the polls on November 3.
The present table shows poll figures from some leading US publications, including CNN, New York Times and Fox News. Trump has always bashed CNN and New York Times and has been sympathetic to Fox News which supports conservative politics in America, a politics synonymous with Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
But going by the numbers, it seems all have resigned to the fate Trump is going to have. CNN, Trump’s favourite fake news outlet to bash gives Biden an edge of 12 percentage points while Fox News polls find Trump is 8 percentage points behind Biden. According to a report in The Washington Post, Rupert Murdoch, who controls Fox News, is sure of Trump’s loss in the upcoming election and adds that the unforced errors by Trump and his administration in handling the coronavirus pandemic are behind the low polling numbers he is getting.
Biden looks in a comfortable position when we compare the 2020 poll of polls with the 2016 poll of polls when Donald Trump was against Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton. The 2016 US presidential election was held on November 8. Just one day before the election, on November 7, Clinton’s margin over Trump was reduced to a narrow 4 percentage points. She was at 46% while Trump was at 42%. A poll by The Washington Post and ABC News poll put Clinton’s margin even lower to 2%.
In August 2016, Hillary was 10 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, 49% to 39% in post-convention polls but slowly Trump picked up the numbers, narrowing the margin. Also, the Republican Party was up against the eight years of a Democratic government in The US led by Barack Obama and anti-incumbency could have been a critical factor.
But this year, Trump’s rival Biden has seen a widening margin over his Republican rival as the day of election gets near. In September, ahead of the first presidential debate, Biden was ahead of Trump by more than 8 points, according to NBC News polling average. And he has widened his lead to 12 percentage points now, just a day before the polls on Tuesday, the latest CNN poll of polls says.
Add to it the anti-incumbency factor, of poorly handling the coronavirus crisis. The US is the most affected country by the pandemic with over 92 million cases and over 231,000 deaths so far. According to a project by FiveThirtyEight, 67% Americans are worried by coronavirus infection and 57.2% disapprove Trump’s response to the crisis.
Biden is also leading in the key swing states that Trump won on 2016 the CNN polls released on Saturday show and as per the CNN analysis, any loss in these states would make path more difficult for Trump ahead.
The New York Times put the Biden’s chances as, “No matter the polling method, Biden is ahead. Online polls or automated phone polls, the lead stays steady.”
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