REVIEW - Biden Expanding Lead Rattles Trump, Yet Doubts Loom Over Accuracy Of Polls

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th July, 2020) Joe Biden has a larger lead in most major polls at this point in the US presidential race than the Democratic Party's nominee had in 2016 - partly boosted by the incumbent's handling of the pandemic - yet fears persist among many that President Donald's Trump supporters are once again being under-counted.

Biden leads by an average of nearly 9 percent in ten recent national polls posted on Realclearpolitics.com (RCP) as of Friday - ranging from three to as much as 15% - with many also indicating that the former vice president is performing well in the largest battleground states.

Trump's slide, according to several polls, is partly attributable to frustration over his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. On Friday, a Washington Post-ABC news survey found that only 38% of those polled approve of the way he has handled the pandemic with 60 percent disapproving, compared to a� 46%/53% approval/disapproval rating in May and 53%/45% in March.

National-level polls are, at most, a general barometer of the race given the US presidential election is not determined by a direct popular vote but via a format called the Electoral College. In fact, five times in US history the winner of the popular vote lost the presidential election - including Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Each ballot cast goes towards selecting delegates called "electors" - 538 of which are apportioned among 50 states according to population. Each state then awards all of its electors to whichever candidate wins the statewide vote (except for 2 states that proportionately allocate).

A candidate must garner at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win the election. In 2016, Trump won 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232. At the end of the day, Trump won 57% of the electoral votes despite losing the popular vote by more than two percent.

Many pollsters and political scientists have pointed out that the polls were flawed because they failed to adequately account for uneducated white working-class voters - a demographic that went Trump's way and allowed him to defy surveys and win three critical states in the Midwest.

Before the election, the major polls had Clinton winning Pennsylvania by roughly 2%, Michigan by 4 percent, and Wisconsin by 6% - three states Trump ended up winning by less than one percent each. In total, they accounted for 46 electoral votes - a margin that proved decisive.

The million Dollar question that haunts the current pollsters is whether or not their surveys are adequately capturing this elusive demographic.

"The public understandably walked away from 2016 feeling like polls were broken. And there's some truth to that," Pew Survey Research Director Courtney Kennedy told USA Today earlier this week. "But it's not the case that 2016 meant that polling writ large doesn't work anymore."

Kennedy and other pollsters said they are trying harder to increase survey samples of non-college graduates who tend to favor Republicans and are less likely to want to participate in polls.

It is also worth noting that the polls were not as statistically off as many believe considering the margin of error in most of the surveys on average was roughly 3 percent.

BIDEN'S LEAD NOT LIKE CLINTON'S

Although Clinton was up by double-digits in states like Wisconsin three months before collapsing on election day, the nature of Biden's position in the polls is much different.

Besides the two candidates being tied in Ohio, the former vice president has strong leads in the other four biggest battleground territories - namely Florida (+6), Pennsylvania (+7), Michigan (+7), and Virginia (+11), according to the RCP average of recent polling.

Another bad sign for Trump is the fact that Biden is giving him a run for his money in typically Republican-leaning states like Texas, where the president's lead is under one percent on average.

The New York Times elections analyst Nate Cohn on Thursday said Trump has plenty of time to come back but the current snapshot is quite gloomy, even if we factor in under-counting of the president's key demographic.

"If the election were held today, Mr. Biden would win the presidency, even if the polls were exactly as wrong as they were four years ago. The reason is simple: His lead is far wider than Hillary Clinton's was in the final polls, and large enough to withstand another 2016 polling meltdown," Cohn said.

Other polls show that Biden is not as unpopular as Clinton, another important variable that gets overlooked.

According to an NBC/WSJ survey taken last month Biden has a 38 percent favorable versus 37% unfavorable rating. Compare this to the same polls taken in June of 2016 when Clinton's favorable/unfavorable rating was 33%/55%.

Recent polling apparently rattled the president because he began overhauling his campaign staff this week, including appointing a new manager, Bill Stepien.

In his first public statement as Trump's campaign manager, Stepien revealed what will likely be a cornerstone of the new strategy: sow doubt about the polls.

"The same media polls that had the world convinced that Hillary Clinton would be elected in 2016 are trying the same trick again in 2020. It won't work," Stepien said on Thursday.

In the president's favor are several polls showing that Trump supporters are more enthusiastic about their candidate than Biden's are of him.

Moreover, former Obama campaign advisers David Plouffe and David Axelrod in a recent op-ed warned that Trump supporters will turn out in record numbers, regardless what the polls say. They also complained that Biden's campaign was behind the ball in terms of organization on the ground and online strategy.

And the fact that we are still almost four months away suggests there is plenty of time for a major momentum shift or the proverbial "October Surprise" that was seen in 2016 when then-FBI Director James Comey issued a letter about the Clinton email server probe that many analysts believe hurt her campaign.

Unpredictable phenomena or Black Swans like the COVID-19 crisis and international race riots could also play a huge role in either sinking or salvaging Trump.