US Election - State of the Race

By Wednesday morning it is possible, and I use that word with caution, that we will know who has won the US Presidential election.

With a plethora of polls having been published, where do we stand in the crucial swing states that will determine the election going into the final couple of days of campaign?

A poll for CNN by SSRS suggests that across four key battlegrounds which Donald Trump won in 2016, “Joe Biden holds an advantage in the upper Midwest states of Wisconsin and Michigan…but the race between Biden and President Donald Trump is tighter in the battlegrounds of Arizona and North Carolina.”  The poll shows as follows:

Arizona – Biden: 50%, Trump 46%

Wisconsin – Biden: 52%, Trump: 44%

North Carolina – Biden: 51%, Trump: 45%

Michigan – Biden: 53%, Trump: 41%

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll meanwhile will cheer the Democrats, showing as it does the following:

Arizona – Biden: 49%, Trump: 43%

Florida – Biden: 47%, Trump 44%

Pennsylvania – Biden: 49%, Trump: 43%

Wisconsin – Biden: 52%, Trump: 41%

The New York Times says of the poll: “Mr. Biden’s performance across the electoral map appears to put him in a stronger position heading into Election Day than any presidential candidate since at least 2008, when in the midst of a global economic crisis Barack Obama captured the White House with 365 Electoral College votes and Mr. Biden at his side.”

It continues: “Mr. Trump’s apparent weakness in many of the country’s largest electoral prizes leaves him with a narrow path to the 270 Electoral College votes required to claim victory, short of a major upset or a systemic error in opinion polling surpassing even the missteps preceding the 2016 election. Should Mr. Biden’s lead hold in three of the four states tested in the survey, it would almost certainly be enough to win, and if he were to carry Florida, he would most likely need to flip just one more large state that Mr. Trump won in 2016 to clinch the presidency.”

The final ABC News/Washington Post polls of the campaign however show that that in the crucial state of Florida, among likely voters, Trump holds a slender lead, polling at 50% with Biden on 48%. In Pennsylvania however, Biden leads Trump by 51% to 44%.

Nationally meanwhile the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll gives Joe Biden a 10 point lead among registered voters, with 52% supporting the former Vice President and 42% opting for Donald Trump.

With such large numbers of people having already voted, the poll found that of the 68% of respondents who said they had voted or plan to vote early, Biden leads Trump by 61% to 35%. However, among the 28% of voters saying they will vote on Election Day itself, Trump leads Biden 61% to 32%.

The NBC News website goes on to say: “In 12 combined battleground states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Biden is ahead of Trump by 6 points, 51 percent to 45 percent.

“A majority of national voters — 51 percent — say there’s no chance they would support Trump, while 40 percent say the same of Biden.”

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