Four years ago at exactly the same time , average polls gave only about 2% advance to Clinton . Biden has a better margin now (and more stable than Clinton’s) . Less people expected to vote for independent candidates.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e...s/trump-vs-biden-national-polls-2020-vs-2016/
That leaves out some very key factors, namely the nature of independent candidates and undecided voters.
1) Biden's numbers are steadily dropping, Trump's are steadily rising and of Americans polled who identify as already decided, only 5% of that group suggest they may change their minds.
2) If you trust NBC/WSJ's polling this week, 11% of Americans say they're undecided. If true, that's a massive number this close to the election.
3) It's not that there are less people voting for independent candidates. There are no credible independent candidates.
In 2016 there were two very formidable third-party candidates: Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, both of whom the Clinton Campaign and DNC spent millions of dollars smearing because they were seen as rising threats to Hillary.
Jill Stein ended up scoring about 1.5-million votes in the November 2016 elections, the vast majority of those being pissed-off Bernie Sanders supporters who were angry at the DNC for fucking Bernie over and rigging the convention.
Gary Johnson ended up with a whopping 4.5-million votes, and while a small number of those were identified as angry Bernie people, and a slightly larger group identified as angry conservatives who didn't consider Trump a true conservative, the vast majority of Johnson votes were from pissed off establishment Republicans (like myself) who were enraged at Trump for hijacking the party and pissing away the election and we weren't going to honor Trump with our votes after handing the election to Hillary. And of course, we ended up wrong on that.
Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary by about 3-million votes. That means, had Johnson not run, or had Trump not pissed off the GOP establishment (or had Trump not been the nominee), the Republican candidate could've very easily beaten Hillary in both the electoral college and the popular vote.
So the two most important questions: Where do those 2016 independent voters go? Where do the current undecided voters go?
In 2016, a little under 140-million Americans cast their votes in the November elections, and all projections are that the 2020 count will be significantly higher. In theory, that means at least 14-million Americans may still be unsure which candidate they'll vote for, and in theory most of them will decide in October. So then the question is, what events are projected to take place in October and do those events positively or negatively affect Trump? And we all know what the main ones are: live debates, possible vaccine approval, SCOTUS nomination process and, most importantly, the left losings its shit over all three and "peaceful activists" now threatening to riot burn down major cities if they don't get their way.
Personally, and I've said it before, I think polls are bullshit, particularly as pertaining to Trump. What we learned after the 2016 elections were over is that--and probably because Trump is such a toxic, divisive subject--a clear number of Americans being asked, "Who are you voting for?" will answer "not decided" or simply decline to answer because they're ashamed to admit that they plan to vote for Trump. How many? That was never determined. But it became clear that you cannot easily poll Trump.
In any event, most of my friends at the RNC are still projecting a Trump defeat. Of course, these are the same friends who assured me of a Trump defeat last time. The difference this time is nobody is betting hard money on it and most of those operatives are also very quietly making January contingency plans should Trump manage to pull off a win again.
