Contrary to cherry-picked results presented on some right-wing sites (and I don’t use “right-wing” as a smear phrase), Trump is sliding relative to Biden.
Let’s start with the small picture, Trump’s standing in the so-called battleground States: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Here’s are the trends in each of those States, going back to October 2023:
I used 3-poll averages because of the paucity of polls in some States. Only in Pennsylvania is Trump clearly improving his edge over Biden.
The results in most of the battleground States mirror the national results, which I have parsed in three ways:
- all polls, unadjusted for bias (with polynomial fits for smoothing)
- the latest version of each pollster’s result, unadjusted for bias
- the latest version of each pollster’s result, adjusted for bias (using the pollsters’ bias in 2020)
The results, in that order, are below. Because of the greater number of nationwide polls, I have used 5-poll averages.
These aren’t pretty pictures if you don’t want Biden to win.
Finally, there are the betting odds. Trump had a 16 percentage-point lead over Biden in the immediate aftermath of the Hur report, which depicted Biden (accurately) as a befuddled old man with a poor memory. That edge has shrunk to 5 percentage points — the smallest it has been since mid-November.
All of this is bad news if you are (as I am) fearful of the outright repression that would follow Biden’s re-election. What do I mean by that? Stay tuned.
Politics and Prosperity 