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Trump Is Outperforming His 2016 Polling in Swing States

Over at PJM [1] Matt Margolis points out an interesting trend in the polling data:

“According to an analysis from Real Clear Politics, Biden holds a 4.4 percentage point lead over the president in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona,” she explains. “However, Democrat Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump by 4.8 points in these swing states this time in 2016—a slightly greater advantage than the one Biden currently has.”

Biden’s leads in Pennsylvania and Michigan, two states Trump won, are also smaller than Clinton’s leads at this time four years ago. “The Real Clear Politics average shows that Biden is ahead with a 6.3 lead in Pennsylvania and a 6.2 advantage in Michigan. Comparably, Clinton was leading in these two states by 9.2 points and 9.6 points, respectively, this time in 2016.”

Similarly, polls for Wisconsin and North Carolina show Biden with a smaller lead than they did for Hillary Clinton back in 2016.

Now, let’s do a flashback to a couple of days ago, where I said:

Three times in the last week I’ve had people suggest that Trump won the 2016 election because the Democrats got complacent.

Ummmm… No.

The truth is Trump won the 2016 election because the Democrats had an absolutely horrible candidate at the top of the ticket that even a large number of Democrats wouldn’t vote for.
That situation hasn’t changed.

What has in fact changed, is that while in 2016 a large number of Democrats sat on their hands and did nothing, in 2020, a large number of Democrats are crossing the aisle having had enough of what the Democrat leadership has been offering up. That’s completely new and the numbers are impressive.

Now to that I will add this observation…

Trump didn’t have nearly the swing voters in his camp in 2016, largely because he was an unknown. That’s no longer the case. Add to that the number of people that are walking away from the Democrat party, particularly among minority voters, and you have enough to cause a trend in the data.

Where there is real movement though, is in the swing voters who have had four years to watch Donald Trump work through everything that the Democrats could throw at him. Put another way, after 47 years in elective office Joe Biden is still telling us what he wants to do. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is running on a record of accomplishment. That Delta between the two candidates is what’s making the difference among the swing voters, and that is what’s going to determine this election. If the trends hold, my original prediction holds… Trump supporters will be breaking out the champagne on election night.

Oh… Lest I forget, none of this takes into account The fallout from the Russia hoax notes being declassified. But I’ll get into that tomorrow.