The more things change in this election, the more they don’t
Every week or two, we hear about some new narrative or development that’s going to fundamentally change the nature of the 2020 election. Then, after it doesn’t go anywhere, we hear about the next new narrative that’s going to upend things. But for all the twists and turns, lack of precedent, and outright chaos that we’ve seen in the 2020 election, what stands out the most is just how little change there has been in the nature of this election.
Go as far back as you like in the polling averages, and you’ll find that this has always been a roughly eight point race. Yes, there have always been oddball polls claiming that Biden was up a whopping fifteen points or a mere four points, but individual polls never count; you only ever look at the averages if you want to understand what’s actually going on with the polls.
We’ve seen slight polling variations in 2020, such as when a lot of people briefly and mistakenly thought Biden was going to lose the nomination, and when the nation realized at large that Donald Trump was purposely making racial relations worse. But after these moments pass, the polling averages always seem to snap back to having Biden up eight points. Why does this matter?
Yes, the polls can be wrong. But in 2016 the polls weren’t actually wrong. The polling averages between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spent that election cycle bouncing all over the place, suggesting that people kept changing their minds based on how hard the “Hillary is going to prison” narrative was being pushed by the media at any given time. After Comey’s last minute letter cemented the lie that Hillary was going to prison, her lead in the polling averages dropped to four points. She won by two points, within the margin of error. So the polls weren’t really wrong. The election just shifted around a lot, and at the end it shifted in the worst way possible.
What’s so different about the 2020 election cycle is that the polling averages have remained so consistent. Major news happens, major media narratives get pushed to the forefront, and people still mostly don’t change their minds. Perhaps this is because both candidates are known quantities this time around. None of the phony scandals have stuck to Biden like they stuck to Hillary. And Trump is stuck running on his own incumbent record this time, meaning his empty magical promises are only fooling the people who want to be fooled.
That said, over the next few days we’ll see a handful of new polls released. At least one of them will show Biden with a larger lead than the averages, and at least one will show Biden with a smaller lead than the averages, because that’s how averages work. Various news outlets and pundits will seize on one or the other of these outlier polls, and use it as supposed evidence that the conventions have caused Biden’s lead to gain or shrink. But the adults will be looking at the polling averages, and we’ll likely see little more than a one or two point shift over the next week.
Of course a steady lead does not mean that Joe Biden has this in the bag. It merely means that he has a larger number of would-be voters to begin with. Those votes only count if these would-be voters actually show up and vote. So this is going to be a turnout election. That’s why it’s more important than ever for us to focus on voter registration, turnout, phone banking, and (if you’re young and healthy enough) polling place volunteering. We’re in exactly the position we want to be in. We just have to work hard and see it through.
