Monday, July 6, 2020

The 2020 Presidential election forecast from State polling: a Biden tsunami threatens to swamp the GOP Senate


 - by New Deal democrat

For the past two weeks I have posted a projection of the Electoral College vote based solely on State rather than national polls (since after all that is how the College operates) that have been reported in the last 30 days.

Here’s how it works:
- States where the race is closer than 3% are shown as toss-ups.
- States where the range is between 3% to 5% are light colors.
- States where the range is between 5% and 10% are medium colors.
- States where the candidate is leading by 10% plus are dark colors.

Here is the updated map as of the 4th of July:


There is one change since last week and it is an important one: by the barest of margins North Carolina has moved from toss-up to lean Biden.

As was the case last week, if Biden were simply win the States in which he leads by 5% or more in the polling, he would win the Electoral College, without even winning a single “toss-up” or “lean Biden” State as shown on the map.

There has been an enormous “reversion to the mean” element about Trump support going all the way back to 2016, so I still expect several of the States of the Confederacy to revert to being pro-Trump.

He always polls his worst when he is not just cruel, but cluelessly incompetent at it. Since he seems to want to run on being anti-Black lives matter, pro-Confederate statues, and pro-coronavirus even as the next tsunami wave is hitting, his present situation certainly qualifies. Here is Nate Silver’s most current measure of Trump approval:


Beyond the Presidency, the turn against Trump appears to be submerging several GOP Senators who had thought their path to election or re-election was easy: 
  • The past 3 polls in Iowa all have Jodi Ernst losing. 
  • Both of the last two polls in Montana show the Democrat Governor Bullock leading in that State’s Senate contest. 
  • Two of the last five polls in Georgia show Democrats leading in the races for one of the two Senate seats up this year. 
  • Most shockingly, two of the last three polls in Kansas (which if memory serves correctly hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in close to 100 years) show Democrat Barbara Bollier leading in that State’s contest as well.

If all these Democrats do win, it will be the first time since 1980 that there has been such a shock to Senate incumbents.