Last Call For Biden, His Time Con't

CNN pollster guru Harry Enten finally talks about a very real possibility: a blowout by Biden in November that sees him get 400 electoral votes.

 

If you were to look at the polling right now, there's a pretty clear picture. Biden has leads of somewhere between five and eight points in a number of states Trump won four years ago: Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those plus the states Hillary Clinton won get Biden to about 290 electoral votes. 

If you add on the other states where Biden has at least a nominal edge in the averages (Florida and North Carolina), Biden is above 330 electoral votes.

That's not quite at blowout levels, but look at the polling in places like Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas. We're not really talking about those places right now, even though one or both campaigns have fairly major advertising investments planned down the stretch in all four.
The polling there has been fairly limited, but it's been pretty consistent. Biden is quite competitive. 

If you were to do an aggregation of the polls that are available in those states, Biden's down maybe a point or two at most. 

In other words, Biden's much closer to leading in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas than Trump is in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, let alone Minnesota. 

Indeed, it's quite possible he's actually up in either Georgia, Iowa, Ohio or Texas, and we just don't know it because there isn't enough fresh data. For example, Clinton only lost in Georgia by five points in 2016, and Biden's doing about five points better in the national polls than she did in the final vote. It would make sense, therefore, that Biden's quite close to Trump there at this point. 

Wins in any of those states by Biden could push his Electoral College tally up to about 340 electoral votes or higher, depending on which states Biden wins. Victories in all four would push him well over 400 electoral votes. 

Models such as those produced by FiveThirtyEight show just how possible it is for Biden to blow Trump out of the water. The model actually anticipates a better chance of Trump closing his deficit than Biden expanding it. 

Even so, Biden has a better chance (about 45%) of winning 340 electoral votes than Trump has of winning the election (about 25%). Biden's chance of taking 400 electoral votes is pretty much the same of Trump winning.

 

The assumption is that the polls are unfairly favoring Biden, because that's what happened to Clinton in state polling in 2016. In Ohio especially, the state polls were all inaccurate to the point of uselessness, turning a three point Clinton lead into an 8-point Trump win.  Granted, a lot of that was the Bradley effect of men refusing to actually vote for a woman president, plus the Comey effect in the last two weeks of the campaign.

I don't see that being the case with Biden.  I think he's doing much better, and the polls are more accurate state-wise.