With less than two weeks until the election, several news sources report that former Vice President Joe Biden has a substantial lead over incumbent President Donald Trump. These polls are leading some pundits to predict a Biden/Harris win on November 3rd. While I’m sure we don’t need a Poli Sci 100 civics lesson amidst the chaos of the American political sphere in 2020, even news outlets like CNN and the New York Times are failing to acknowledge the incredibly misleading nature of national polls during a presidential election.
The elephant in the room is that Biden is not unlike the last Democratic candidate: Hillary Rodham Clinton––both party elders and members of the party establishment. Clinton held similar poll numbers this close to the 2016 election, and we know how that story ended. Clinton won the popular vote by over three million votes, but lost the electoral college, ceding the election to Trump. The weekly Trump scandals unfolding in the past few weeks––Trump’s superspreader event and subsequent COVID-19 diagnosis, the New York Times’ report on his tax returns, and his refusal to condemn white supremacy just to name a few––mirror the same scandal that came out weeks before the 2016 election: the audio recording of Trump boasting about his sexual violence toward women. And yet, we elected him anyway. Nothing is guaranteed.
It’s important to understand why national polls are tricky. These polls vary in approaches and algorithms, but generally try to capture who the favored candidate is by sampling the national population while ignoring the electoral college. This approach means that national polls sometimes ignore the difference in population concentrations across the United States and don’t accurately evaluate the weight of a Biden voter in a swing state, such as Pennsylvania, versus the weight of a Biden voter in a guaranteed Blue state, such as California. These votes are treated the same, when they’re not. Say every eligible voter voted for Biden in California: it wouldn’t make much difference in securing a Biden victory because California is a state that always votes Democrat. Say only a slim majority of voters voted for Biden in Pennsylvania: it would make a huge difference in securing a Biden victory, because it takes Pennsylvania’s (a state whose allegiance is never guaranteed) electoral votes away from Trump and gives them to Biden. Where votes come from is more important than how many each candidate gets. Do I care how Biden is doing nationally? Not a bit. I care about the small, but extremely influential pool of voters whose geography matters greatly to a Biden victory. Biden needs to win the electoral college, not the popular vote to win the presidency. Why? Each state has a certain number of electoral votes based on population density so that highly populated states like New York don’t have more power than states like Wisconsin. If you want to know more, take it up with the attendees of the Constitutional Convention.
This is all to say: vote. No matter what your favorite political podcast tells you, your vote matters and this election is not decided.
Vote.
Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/21524703/biden-trump-poll-lead-2016
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