Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN
Updated 9:41 AM ET, Wed May 20, 2020
(CNN)Former Vice President Joe Biden is ahead of President Donald Trump in the presidential race. He leads in the swing states and is up somewhere between 5 and 8 points nationally, depending on what methodology you use.
Yet it’s important to point out that even if the polls are an accurate representation of the current state of the race, presidential races can shift a lot during the final six months of the campaign.
Biden may be favored, but this race is far from over.
View 2020 presidential election polling
Take a look at every presidential election involving an incumbent since 1940. It’s 13 races in total and gives us a good baseline from which to work.
There’s been a 11-point difference between an average of May polls and the result in the average election. That would be more than enough to change the course of the 2020 race, if the shift occurred in Trump’s direction.
Now some of these races (most notably 1964) had polling leaders with large margins that have never occurred in any modern presidential election and were bound to shrink during the course of the campaign. If we look at the only races where the polling leader had a 25-point advantage or less, the average difference between the polls at this point and the result has still been a fairly high 8 points.
If the 2020 race moved 8 points in Trump’s direction, he’d win.
Continued
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Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/trump-2020-analysis/index.html