Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden in the past week expanded his edge in Florida, a crucial swing state where a Democratic victory would likely deal a knockout blow to President Donald Trump's re-election prospects
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th October, 2020) Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden in the past week expanded his edge in Florida, a crucial swing state where a Democratic victory would likely deal a knockout blow to President Donald Trump's re-election prospects.
On Monday, Trump held a political rally in central Florida, the first in-person event of its kind since announcing his COVID-19 diagnosis on October 2. Trump is trying to reverse Biden's recent momentum in the state, with only three weeks remaining until election day, which the president has of course tried to downplay. In a tweet before the rally, Trump said "only fake polls" show Biden ahead in the sunshine state.
Biden does not need Florida to win the November 3 presidential election, assuming he maintains his position in current polling in the Midwest. A Biden victory in Florida, however, could put the election so far out of reach that Trump would likely be forced to concede in a timely manner.
The president has predicted on multiple occasions that the race will be decided by the Supreme Court. He also plans to contest a Biden victory because he believes mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud. Yet Trump's strategy becomes harder to justify if Biden has a solid lead in the electoral college.
Unlike Biden, Trump finds himself in the difficult position of needing to win all three of the largest swing states (Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania) based on the current state of the electoral map polls.
According to poll aggregator Realclearpolitics.com (RCP), Biden grew his lead in Florida by 1.7% within the past week and is now ahead by a 3.7-margin (48% to 44.3%). It is important to note, however, that Biden's lead is almost within the 3.5-percent average margin of error of the ten polls in question.
Four years ago, Trump won by less than one percent in Florida (around 113,000 votes). About 900,000 registered voters in Florida are Cuban-American, 54% of which voted for Trump in 2016. Both candidates have recently upped efforts to win over this demographic. The fact most Cuban-Americans are adamantly opposed to the governments in Havana and Caracas partly explains Trump's hardline policies and Biden's recent hawkish rhetoric towards both countries.
Because of the pandemic, many voters are choosing to vote by mail, and early results show that Democrats are more likely to do so, including in the state of Florida. Mailed-in ballots tend to have higher rejection rates primarily due to technical issues such as mismatched signatures and late arrivals. Experts say the rejection rate can reach as high as 2% in some states, USA Today reported on Monday.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien on Monday told FOX News that in Florida 55% of Democrats plan to vote by mail compared to 29% of Republicans. Stepien said reliance on mail-in ballots will have the Biden campaign "falling short of a win number" in Florida.
More than 4.2 million Floridians have requested mail-in ballots so far, the report added, already exceeding the total requested in 2016, which was 3.3 million.
In fact, as of Sunday evening, more than 1.6 million votes have already been cast in Florida (about 17% of all votes cast in 2016), according to the US Elections Project, a site run by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald who compiles early voting data from nearly 40 states. The site also revealed that, overall, 9.8 million Americans have already voted - ten times more than the 2016 pace.
Biden is trying to steal up to four states in southern Republican "red" territory (Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) in a similar manner as Trump stole three "blue" states in the Democrats' backyard in the upper Midwest in 2016. Trump leads in Texas by 4.4% and flipped Georgia to his advantage in the past week, where he is now up by almost a half-percent. Biden meanwhile leads in North Carolina by 1.4 percent, almost a point higher than last week.
BIDEN VICTORY HIGHLY LIKELY, BUT NOT GUARANTEED
Biden's lead nationally jumped by more than 2 points since last week to 10.2 percent (51.8% to 41.6%), a bounce some analysts attribute to Trump's erratic behavior since contracting COVID-19. Biden is ahead by double digits in the RCP average of national surveys for the first time in more than three months. Moreover, his lead is over 3 points higher than where Clinton stood 22 days before the 2016 election.
However, the electoral college format requires candidates to win statewide contests, not national popular vote. A candidate must win at least 270 of 538 electoral votes apportioned across 50 states. Biden is ahead in eight of the top ten largest swing states and, if the election were called today, would win by a landslide 358-180 electoral votes. Yet this is highly misleading given how tight the polls are in the most crucial battleground states.
In 2016, Trump won all of the swing states where pre-election polling was within the margin-of-error (in addition to Wisconsin which was outside this range). Pollsters attributed this to the "hidden" Trump voter phenomenon. The theory is largely based on the simple premise that many Trump supporters - especially non-college degreed workers - are less likely to participate in surveys than Democrats.
Biden is looking to win back three crucial swing states in the Midwest that Clinton lost in 2016. The good news for Biden is that his lead in all three states has grown within the past week and is outside the typical margin of error. Biden leads by 7% in Michigan - a gain of 1.8% since October 4, according to the RCP average. He also grew his lead by a half point in both Pennsylvania (+7.1%) and Wisconsin (+6.1%).
Yet Biden should be cautious considering that Clinton's lead in all three of these states was larger at this point in the election four years ago. However, according to several political scientists, FBI Director James Comey's October 28 letter to Congress regarding the Clinton email probe potentially sunk her chances in Pennsylvania and Michigan, where her poll numbers plummeted to 1.9% and 3.3% respectively on the eve of the election. A similar type of "October surprise" is always possible, but not something the Trump campaign should rely on.
In terms of the other three major swing states, Biden's lead remained flat in Arizona (+2.7%) and Minnesota (+9%) while Trump cut the former vice president's lead by nearly 2 points in Ohio (+0.6%).
A more likely scenario is to assume the incumbent wins states that are within the RCP's margin of error, as he did in 2016, because of the hidden Trump voter phenomenon in addition to rejection of mailed ballots. Based on this logic, Biden would win the race by a 20-electoral vote margin (279-259).
It is uncertain if the winner of the election will be announced by the end of November 3 because six swing states - Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin - will allow ballots to arrive late so long as they are postmarked by election day.
