Peachy?
I swear to you, in spite of all the gloomy polls we’ve posted over the past two months, I’m open to the possibility that Trump wins. I think he’ll win Florida. He’s not very far behind in Pennsylvania. One would expect Ohio and Iowa and Texas, all of which he won easily four years ago, to come home to him. And then it’s a simple matter of him overperforming by just two or three points in Arizona and North Carolina. Last week I posted Trafalgar pollster Robert Cahaly’s prediction that Trump would win reelection easily. On Monday I posted USC’s analysis indicating that Trump will again win the electoral college based on the data they’ve gathered from people about how their social circles are leaning. This morning I posted Jon Ralston’s analysis of Nevada suggesting that Democrats might not be hitting their early-voting targets. (Although Ralston sounds a little more bullish this afternoon.) The Trump upset scenario is real. But Georgia is a problem. A much bigger problem than Texas too, even though Texas dwarfs it in terms of electoral votes. Texas has been (somewhat) more reliably red in recent years than Georgia has and its large Latino population is apt to be a few points more favorable to Trump this year than it was in 2016. And even if the unthinkable happens and Texas flips, it won’t be a tipping-point state. If Biden wins Texas, it’ll be his 380th electoral vote, not his 270th. Georgia might be different. I’ve written about this in other posts this week, but a Michigan + Wisconsin + Georgia combo is enough to hand Biden the presidency, presuming that he holds onto all Hillary 2016 states. And given the polling lately, there’s no strong reason to think Biden has less of a chance there than he does in other nearby toss-up states like North Carolina and Florida. All three states are basically even. Monmouth has a new poll out this afternoon confirming that the state really is in play: Biden 50, Trump 46, assuming high turnout. (Lower turnout points to Biden 50, Trump 48.) And note that Monmouth hasn’t been bullish on Biden’s chances in the state this year. They had Trump up two points in the last poll there, published a month ago. Trump maintains an advantage among Georgia voters aged 65 and older – leading Biden by 58% to 42% now, versus 61% to 36% in September. This is noteworthy because Biden has led among senior voters both nationally and in the other swing states Monmouth has polled in the past month.
