By The Chief
About 100 days out from election day, the polls are showing a Biden landslide. I will not doubt it, Biden is very likely to win, but not the electoral college vote. I will explain why.
You see nationwide polls are extremely ineffective, as they have to sample a number of folks from each state proportional to their population. For example, Illinois, New York, and California are some of the most populous states in the union, all will go heavily for Biden. Very heavy, so much so, I don’t expect Trump to achieve more than about 35% of the vote in any of those states! So due to oversampling in those states, polling is made to appear that Biden has a very large nationwide lead. Truth is he does. If you called 75 folks in California for example, the lion’s share would have to be from LA, the Bay Area, and parts of the coast. Such a sample skews a nationwide and statewide poll significantly as most people that you speak to are voting for Biden and/or despise Trump. These three states account for most of Biden’s popular vote margin. Blogger’s Note: I don’t count WA, OR, or most New England states since they don’t have as many popular votes, however Biden will also do very well there.
Now let’s look at the other candidate in the race and how he will do popular vote wise. Donald Trump will perform very well in sparsely populated states, think ND, SD, Arkansas, Idaho, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, problem is these margins don’t come close to offsetting the 3 large states Biden will win easily. Digging deeper, the normal “safe GOP states” of Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Arizona are no longer safe. While I do not see Biden winning them, the margin of victory will be small. Thus, Trump will not pick-up enough votes to make up the difference.
However Trump will and still can win the presidency, even while getting blown out at the popular vote level! The election does not focus on so called “safe states” it focuses on the swing states. Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Minnesota, and Iowa. Simply put, the candidates will spend all their time in those states. Actually in comes down to just a handful of counties at the state level to win. This is a built-in advantage for Trump, he doesn’t need to spend his time appealing to the masses, he just needs to move a few thousand votes. He did exactly that in 2016, winning MI, PA, and WI. (Below is 2016 election map by county Trump-red, Clinton-blue.)
This is my theory on election night, it will be 2016 all over again. The polling will show a Trump loss, the media will have begun measuring the curtains in the White House for a triumphant Joe Biden, then Trump will win PA again. Rioting will ensue…actually will it have stopped by then? There will be calls to change the electoral college, all because the Democrats took their eyes off the ball during the Obama years.
More to come soon, but just remember, nationwide polling is often skewed or very incorrect.