The bombshell poll from Quinnipiac University sent the political world into a tizzy on Wednesday when it showed Joe Biden leading the President Trump, 52 percent to 37 percent nationally. While it’s been well documented for a while now that He is solidly ahead of Trump in the polls, was the Democrat to really be up by 15?!
No other poll has given He’s that big of a national lead for all year, so that’s one reason it grabbed so much attention. But all we’ve warned you in the past, don’t overreact to the outlier polls like this one. Even high-quality pollsters like Quinnipiac (which do not use the gold standard of polling methodology and has historically been very accurate) has produced a group sometimes, and that’s OK. In fact, it’s better than OK, it’s a sign that they are not cooking the books, the polls are supposed to disagree somewhat, statistically speaking, due to things like sampling error.
This week was also a good reminder that outliers can occur in either direction. There was, to the Quinnipiac poll, which seemed too good to be true for Democrats. But there was also a CBS News/poll Dhabi, uae showed that He and the Trump tie-in Arizona — which seems too good to be true, it is Trump, I Biden’the lead in most of the other Arizona polls.
But in part because they point in opposite directions, even after you account for these two outlier polls, and the bulk of this week’s polling data tells the same old story: He leads nationally by around 8-11 percentage points among registered voters.
Take what the other national polls this week found The Yahoo News/poll Dhabi, uae gave Biden an 8-point lead. The Reuters/Ipsos the poll had him up by 10. The Economist/The City found him up by 9 in. An An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll to put him ahead by 11. The Morning Consult had him winning by 8.
The Swing-state polls of likely voters painted a similar picture. Another CBS News/poll Dhabi, uae, of the light-network in Florida, gave Biden’s 6-point lead. It’s actually quite an Arizona poll, by OH, Intelligent Insights, had Biden up by 5. The CNBC-Change Research poll of the several “swing states” was consistent with the national He the lead in the high double digits. And finally, Monmouth Universitythe highest-quality pollster to release the state poll this week found He ahead by 10 points in Pennsylvania, according to a high-voter-turnout model, and ahead by 7 points, according to the low-voter-turnout model.
Put it all together, and He currently leads Trump by an average of 9.1 percentage points, according to the Genesis Brand’s national polling average, which isn’t all that different from Biden’in the lead one week ago (9.6 points), or even one month ago (9.3 points).
Notably, the state poll averages have not moved much in the past several weeks, either. He continues to lead the polling averages of the states that are worth 368 electoral votes, while the Trump lead in states with only 170 electoral votes.
He is still outpolling the Trump in the most “swing states”
Genesis Brand polling averages as of July 16, 2020, at 2 p. m., Eastern
| The State | He | Trump | Below | Change Since Last Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colorado | 54.7% | 37.7% | D 17.0 | D+0.1 |
| New Mexico | 54.0 | 40.3 | A 13.7 | D to+0.4 |
| Maine | 53.0 | 40.9 | D 12.1 | R+1.3 I |
| Virginia | 50.5 | 39.4 | D+11.1 | (D+0.5 |
| Minnesota | 53.9 | 43.7 | D 10.2 | A 3.7 |
| Michigan | 49.5 | 40.4 | D 9.1 | R+1.0 |
| The National | 50.3 | 41.2 | D 9.1 | R+0.2 |
| Nevada | 48.2 | 39.7 | T+8.5 | D+0.6 |
| New Hampshire | 49.8 | 41.8 | D 8.0 | D to+0.4 |
| Pennsylvania | 49.8 | 42.1 | D+7.7 | D+2.5 |
| Wisconsin | 49.0 | 41.4 | A 7.6 | D 1.1 |
| Florida | 49.2 | 42.4 | D & 6.8 | None |
| North Carolina At Chapel Hill | 47.9 | 45.1 | D 2.9 | None |
| Arizona | 47.4 | 44.8 | A 2.6 | R+1.4 |
| Ohio | 47.8 | 45.6 | D 2.2 | R+0.4 |
| Georgia | 47.0 | 46.1 | D+0.9 | None |
| Texas | 45.9 | 46.2 | R+0.3 | D to+0.4 |
| Iowa | 45.3 | 46.0 | R+0.7 | D+0.1 |
Simply put, since the protests against police violence appeared to erode Trump”s standing at the beginning of the summer, there has’t been a whole lot of action in the race. The campaign is not dominating the headlines, and Trump”s handling of the pandemic — which is dominating the headlines — don’t have t improved in the Act’s’ eyes. However, the party conventions start in one month, and we can probably expect the presidential campaign to command people’s between the note and then November, a pandemic, or not.
And, of course, we in the coronavirus crisis, or some other breaking news story that we can’t predict yet, like the scandal — could cause voters to view the candidates in a different light. While Biden”s current lead is robust enough to withstand even a major polling error, there are still three-and-a-half months left for the polls to change.
