A recent spate of mostly bad polls for President Donald Trump has driven a narrative that he’s on his way out. Pundits have declared his reelection in “deep trouble,” and they have highlighted polls showing him “hemorrhaging older voters.”
Even Republicans in swing states have raised alarms about how vulnerable Trump is to defeat. But in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic rips through the world, the uncertainty is so great that it’s sillier than ever to read so much into polls this far out from the election.
To be clear, we aren’t attempting to ignore the polls that clearly show Trump’s risk of defeat. He hasn’t led Joe Biden in a national poll since February, and he trails his Democratic challenger by 5 points in the RealClearPolitics average.
More significantly, recent polls have given Biden an edge in swing states that were key to Trump’s 2016 upset: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Biden is even winning in Florida and Arizona, which were supposed to be safer Trump states. Even North Carolina and Georgia are polling as toss-ups.
With all of that being said, it’s important to keep in mind a few things.
First, polls were extremely ineffective in predicting Trump’s victory in 2016. In the last 25 polls of Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton was ahead in all but one of them. Trump led in only one Michigan poll in all of 2016. He never led in one poll in Wisconsin, a state in which Clinton was up by 6.5 points in the RealClearPolitics average ahead of Election Day.
And yet, Trump ended up winning all three states. While there are many theories as to why the state polls in particular significantly understated Trump’s support, the bottom line is that the 2016 results should give pause to anybody drafting Trump’s political obituary.
Second, and most important, there is an unusually wide range of potential outcomes for the fall in terms of the coronavirus and the economy.
Under the pessimistic case, there is a huge second wave of infections of the coronavirus, putting a strain on medical systems simultaneously grappling with the onset of a new flu season. The economy could be mired in a deep depression, with devastation expanding beyond the travel and leisure businesses that were initially hit hardest.
On the other hand, by then, the worst could be over. Heat and humidity could dramatically increase the caseload over the summer, and states could be much more prepared to ward off a second wave. And the first set of vaccine results could reveal a breakthrough, suggesting a light at the end of the tunnel and validating Trump’s “warp speed” declaration regarding vaccine development.
States could be months into reopening by then, and pent-up demand could start to lift businesses.
There are, of course, many scenarios in between, and we don’t know how any of them would affect the public’s thinking as to whether it’s time to change horses or stay with Trump.
Finally, Biden cannot stay in his basement for the next five months fielding softball interviews that he still manages to stumble through.
At some point, there will be a real campaign, which will require Biden to be challenged, scrutinized and put under fire. He’ll have to face Trump in debates in the fall — whatever form they might take.
Trump could clearly lose. But even in a good year, polls are fallible. During a time when many people don’t know if they’ll be able to watch football or send their children to school, it’s especially silly to lean on polling to predict outcomes in November.
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