Biden vs Trump: US election 2020 where the race stand? - Numbers.lk
Although polls suggest that Biden is well ahead of Trump in the election, the general consensus is the election is going to be much tighter than polls suggests
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03 November, 2020 | 07:30 a.m.
Editorial Board Numbers.lk
With one day to go before election day on November 3, former vice-president Joe Biden, the Democratic party’s nominee, is polling narrowly ahead of incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in key battleground states, though he has seen his lead narrow in some states since the summer.
The president of the United States isn’t directly elected by American voters, but by members of what’s called the electoral college. The electoral college is a group of people that cast their votes and have the final say on who becomes president and vice president.
Each state gets a certain number of electoral votes based on the number of representatives they have in Congress (House and Senate). This is based on population numbers that are tracked every ten years.
There are currently 538 electors, and an absolute majority of electoral votes, 270 or more, is required to win the election.
A presidential candidate needs more than half of the electoral vote to win. Because of the electoral college, it is possible for a candidate to win the presidency even if they didn’t win the most votes, called the popular vote, during the national election, like Trump back in 2016.
Since the election of 1824, 48 states have appointed their electors winner-take-all, based on the statewide popular vote on Election Day. Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions.
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Battleground States
This winner takes all modal limit presidential election fight to a few states. Swing states, also known as battleground states or purple states, are highly competitive states that have historically swung between voting for different parties in presidential elections. While most states consistently vote along party lines.
Swing States
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Election analytics website FiveThirtyEight in 2020 identified the states of Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin as “perennial” swing states that have regularly seen close contests over the last few presidential campaigns.
Even though Texas is historically considered as a right-leaning state which always votes for a Republican, in this election cycle it is considered as a swing state since the recent polling suggests the state is gradually becoming a blue (democratic) state.
What does the polls say?
Pre-election polling is a big industry in the US, Election polling is the most common and visible applications of survey research. These polls typically include one or more trial heat questions, which ask respondents how they will vote in the upcoming election, along with other measures of voter knowledge, attitudes, and likely voting behaviour. Unlike most polls, the validity of pre-election polls can be assessed by comparing them with actual election outcomes.
RealClearPolitics polling averages is one of the most famous election poll aggregators in the United States. RCP gives the average of polls released in a certain period. It’s a very good indicator about which candidate is in front of the election. Right now (02, Nov 2020), RCP National Average put Biden in front by +6.7 points. However, in the Top Battleground, his lead is +2.9. Usually, these stats suggest a blow out Biden win yet Trump's unexpected victory in 2016 which came as a surprise the political pollsters are still spectacle about the Biden’s polling lead. However, this time President Donald Trump need bigger polling miss to hold on to the office for another four years.
Here is the Electoral Map according to Latest polls,
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Early Voting in the Election
Millions of Americans have already cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, smashing mail-in and early voting records and raising election officials’ hopes that the eye-popping early vote totals will ease the potential for problems, chaos and conflict at the polls on November 3.
States have set records for early voting totals, many approaching and in some cases even surpassing the total number of votes cast in the 2016 election. Usually Democrats have the advantage in early voting in the United States. But considering the already casted ballet numbers based on party registration in Florida and Nevada, there is no massive advantage for Biden. The democratic and republican vote tallies in those states suggest election will be much more like in 2016, not necessarily a Trump win but a close election.
What to look for in the Election Day
In the election day, one of the first state to close the polling earliest is Florida. The state of Florida has played an outsized role in U.S. presidential elections for decades. This year, the race in the Sunshine State could be more of a nail-biter than usual. The state has a longer history than most with mail-in balloting and counts the ballots as they arrive rather than waiting until all the votes are in on election day. That means it could be one of the few states able to report a final outcome on the election day.
If Biden wins Florida, It's all over for Donald Trump. There is no feasible path to victory for Trump without winning the Sunshine State. If Trump wins Florida, we are up for a long night. Florida does not guarantee Trump the victory, He has to will all other Toss-up states to become the president, If Florida is close those other Toss-up states will also very likely to be close like in 2016. Biden is the safer candidate in the electoral college game, only he needs to do is flip 1 toss-up states in about map to win the presidency while holding left-leaning Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.
In the unlikely scenario, where Trump wins Florida with more than 3% of a margin. He will very likely to be the president of the United States again.
Whoever appears to win the election on the election day, might not be ultimately the president of United State. Mail-in voting amplified by the Covid19 pandemic will subject to many post-election lawsuits. Democrats, Republicans and voting-rights groups are readying for post-election legal battles in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—closely contested states where the late tallying of absentee ballots could result in litigation.
Voting in US election might be over in 03 of November but in case of a close election, the world will not know the holder of the most powerful office in the land until a few weeks. The possibility of US Supreme court selecting the eventual winner of the election is highly likely.
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