Trump, Biden, and the State of the US Presidential Election Today: It ain’t over till…

 

With a little more than a week before the official US presidential election on November 3, the race

between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is both over and too close to call at the same time.   The reason for this is that while national polls show a huge lead for Biden, the race for the electoral college vote in the critical swings states remains close.  It is within this context that the second presidential debate on October 22, took place.

The US presidential race is over in the sense that  as has been true for several months, the national polls put Biden in an approximately eight-point lead over Trump, with specific surveys placing the number of undecided voter  between four and five points.  There is no question that Biden will repeat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance and beat Trump in the national popular vote by at least 3,000,000 votes.  Moreover, more than 48 million individuals have already cast their ballots prior to November 3.   Given all this, there appeared to be fewer voters to persuade or move when the second debate occurred than at a similar time four years ago when there  were both far less early voters and more undecided voters.  All this suggests a race that looks like it is over.

            But the race is still close.  Remember that the US presidential election is not decided by the popular vote but instead it is a race to win the electoral college.  It is a 50-state race to get to 270 electoral votes.  With 48 of the 50 states awarding its electoral votes on a winner-take-all system based on the popular vote within  them, the race is effectively over in 43 states.  There are only seven states that really still matter and which will decide the next president.  They are Arizona, Florida, Michigan,  Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  Here the race is closer, with Biden enjoying a slight lead in most of the swing states, but already 23,000,000 ballots have been cast early.  In these states, the percentage of undecided voters are around five percent. Again, far less than four years ago.  Typically, in the US undecided voters  when they decide vote against the incumbent, as was true four years ago when Clinton effectively ran as the incumbent seeking to succeed Barack Obama as a third-term Democrat.  None of this should be good news for Trump.

            Yet there is a political divide over voting in the US.  Democrats are voting early and  in strong numbers, at least based on the location where the votes are coming from.  Trump has criticized early voting and we may yet see a heavy Republican turnout on election day that could give him a victory on November 3.  There are also the probable legal and court challenges regarding early voting that might disqualify many early votes. Also Republicans are doing a better job registering new voters compared to Democrats and this may not show up in the polling. The point being that while the numbers and odds favor Biden, it is still not over yet.

            Trump needed the final debate to change the direction of the election.  It did not do that.  Trump continued to speak to his political base hoping to motivate them to vote in record numbers.  He also needs Democrats to stay home and not vote like they did back in 2016.  While this debate may have helped motivate his already activated supporters even more, there is little indication that  he was able to convince Democrats—including the critical college educated suburban women and African-American voters—to stay home.  Biden kept the focus on Trump’s vulnerabilities such as the pandemic, Trump landed good punches on Biden, race, and crime, but ultimately it is doubtful that this final debate did much to change the course of the election.  It is over in so many ways but also very close among the few voters in the few states that matter.