In other words, state-level polls show that Biden has a national advantage of around 8 points.
That is actually slightly larger than the 6.6 points that Biden has in the average high-quality national poll
taken in the same period. I should note that if we weigh the average state poll for each state population, we get a margin of 6.6 points in the north. (Population-based weights make us somewhat more vulnerable to outlier polls, because we have fewer polls from the most populous states.)
In addition, all methods agree that Biden has considerable national advantage.
Researching state polls has the advantage of having more data points to play, so I feel safe enough that they give us a decent snapshot. We are looking at more than 20 polls and more than 15,000 interviews. Small aggregate error margins.
In addition, we can see conditions that we expect to be at least a little competitive (ie, those whose margins are within the last 10 points) and which in our opinion will not close in 2020.
In competitive countries (where most state voting has taken place), there has been an average swing of 6 points against Biden compared to the Clinton 2016 results. The same is true in non-competitive countries.
At least from this state-level data, it seems that no candidate runs a disproportionate score in fields that are already friendly to him.
Biden has posted leads of more than 5 points in places like
Michigan and
Pennsylvania. He excelled in more than enough states to win 270 electoral votes, if elections were held today.
We can also test our data, to see what would happen if the polls underestimated Trump like they did in 2016.
What I found is that Biden will stay ahead, even with a 2016 accident.
Poll downplaying Trump by 1 point (
RealClearPolitics) or 2 points (
FiveThirtyEight) in the aggregate of the states for which we are currently polling. Applying that 2016 bias to our current data, Biden will have 6-7 points leading nationally.
Concentrate only on competitive countries, Trump’s undersold poll with 2 points (RealClearPolitics) or 3 points (FiveThirtyEight). If polls in competing countries die as much as at the end of 2016, Biden will still excel in countries such as Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Of course, it might not be wise to expect a 2016-size voting era in 2020. Polls in these countries which have large contests throughout the state in 2018 are pretty much impartial. It doesn’t matter what set of countries (all or only competitive) and
which aggregate, the poll was no more favorable for the Republicans than the final result.
In states like Wisconsin, America
Marquette 2018 final poll nail down the margins of the last Senate and underestimate Democratic candidates for governor’s margin by 1 point.
The point is that Biden is ahead now nationally and in competitive countries. The good news for Trump is that he has about six months to change the direction of the campaign, which is more than enough time to do it.
