What do the polls say in the US? Trump is the favorite now

Donald Trump has become the favourite to win the presidential election next November. The Republican was already ahead in the polls, but the turning point was the debate: Joe Biden appeared hesitant and scattered, at times confused, reopening the discussion about his 81 years of age. Since then, doubts about the Democrat’s candidacy have not ceased.

Right now, Trump is the favorite in all the sources I regularly follow. The Republican has a 75% chance of winning the presidency, according to the weekly’s poll-based model. The EconomistThe betting market gives it a 57% chance, and in the prediction community Metaculus —which has a good history of success— it is around 65%.

The shift after the debate was clear. Within hours, Metaculus forecasters had lowered the probability of a Biden victory from 47% (one in two) to 20% (one in five), raising the probability of other Democratic candidates and boosting Trump’s. The Republican had never been such a favorite, not even before winning in 2016.

This step forward by Trump can already be seen in the polls. According to polls by The New York TimesTrump’s lead over Biden went from three to six points immediately after the debate. According to the average of polls on the specialist website Real Clear Politics, Trump’s lead over Biden has gone from one to three points.

In order to win the November elections, there are six states that are generally considered key: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. These six territories share 77 electoral votes (out of a total of 538), and their electorates are divided, so that they can fall on the Republican or Democratic side depending on the occasion, giving all their votes to one or the other candidate.

In 2016, Trump came to the White House by winning five of those six territories. Four years later, Biden won all six and with them the presidency. What is the situation now? According to the analysis of the polls of The EconomistTrump is ahead in all six key states.

Harris’s options against Trump

The doubts about Biden have made it a real possibility that Vice President Kamala Harris could end up being the Democratic nominee in his place. But how competitive would she be against Trump?

It is a very difficult question to answer, because she is a hypothetical candidate, not an official one like Biden and Trump. Two specialists, Nate Cohn and Nate Silver, have recently asked for caution when analyzing the numbers of the potential candidate. However, as the second one said, the surveys in this regard are not irrelevant and at the moment they are not good for Harris.

In the past few days, four polls have been released asking about Trump’s matchups against different Democratic candidates; and in three of those four studies, Harris does worse than Biden. In the Emerson College poll, respondents are split 50-50 if they have to choose between Trump or Biden, but when asked about Trump or Harris, the former wins 43% to 46%.

Finally, it is important to note that Trump’s lead is significant, but by no means definitive. The Republican has a three-point lead in the polls, which may be five, assuming that to win the presidential election he probably only needs to not lose the popular vote by more than one or two points. (Remember that in 2016 Hillary Clinton won the vote.)

But there are four months until the vote. Biden, Harris, or whoever the Democratic nominee is, can still improve their numbers. What’s more, the polls could be off by those four points, which would be a significant error, but not uncommon. That’s why the predictions of The Economist Metaculus says Democrats have a 25% to 35% chance of winning this fall. Does that seem like a small amount? That’s about the same chance Trump had in 2016, when he won by surprise.