Trump’s campaign is in freefall, with COVID-19 on voters’ minds
Donald Trump,Public Opinion,Coronavirus,2020 Election,Elections
It is never a good sign when a candidate is forced to replace his campaign manager less than four months before the election. In Donald Trump’s case, it is an indication that his reelection campaign is in a crisis so pervasive that it threatens to take down not only his presidency but his entire party.
At the national level, former Vice President Joe Biden now leads President Trump by an average of about 9 percentage points according to FiveThirtyEight, which adjusts for the timing and quality of individual surveys. Focusing on the highest-quality surveys released during the past three weeks, the picture gets even darker for the president.
A 9-point win for Biden would give him the largest margin of victory since Ronald Reagan, while an 11.5-point win would exceed even Reagan’s victory margin over one-term president Jimmy Carter in 1980.
The outlook for the president is no brighter in the most closely contested states, whose results will determine the outcome in the Electoral College. Table 2 compares the polling averages according to FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics with the results in 2016. A positive number indicates a Trump lead in 2020 or victory in 2016; a negative number indicates a lead for Biden in 2020.
