Although the coronavirus pandemic will rightly consume much of our attention for a long time to come (not least because we are barely past the opening phase of it) there is still a presidential election on in November (no, Trump does not have the authority to postpone or cancel it). And it’s not too early to start looking at where Biden and Trump stand in the electoral vote (yes, Biden will be the Democratic nominee). And the good news is...if you were a Presidential candidate, you’d much rather be Biden than Trump at this point. This will be the first in an ongoing series, updated periodically, about where the real election — the one decided state by state, rather than national polling — stands. We’ll be pulling together the projections from the most well-known political sites that project the election outcome. In a later diary, we’ll look a little more closely at how each source arrives at their projection.Unsurprisingly, there are large differences — but none of them give Trump an advantage. In fact, at least one seems desperate to make it look competitive. And so, without further ado:
Electoral-vote.com: Biden 390, Trump 148, 0 tossups (most competitive states are CO, FL, MN, NC, NV, OH, MN, TX).
Plural Vote: Biden 316, Trump 222, 0 tossups (most competitive states are AZ, FL, GA, NC, OH, PA, TX, WI).
Rachel Bitecofer: Biden 289, Trump 181, 68 tossups (GA, IA, NC, and 1 EV each in ME and NE congressional districts). One of the few models not driven at all by polling.
Inside Elections: Biden 269, Trump 204, 65 tossups (AZ, FL, NC, WI).
Sabato's Crystal Ball: Biden 248, Trump 233, 57 tossups (AZ, NC, PA, WI).
Cook Political Report: Biden 232, Trump 204, 102 tossups (AZ, FL, MI, NC, PA, WI, 1 EV in NE).
Real Clear Politics: Biden 183, Trump 125, 230 tossups (too many to bother listing).
I think we can consider these as cause not for complacency (will we ever do that again, after 2016?), but for optimism. The full impact of the current pandemic disaster and its economic fallout has also not yet fully set in, and there is no way this makes Trump any more popular. To the extent that he did experience any “rally round the flag” effect, it was tiny, and has already disappeared.
The biggest anomaly is the RealClearPolitics (RCP) map, with its huge number of “tossups.” It’s notable that RCP is an openly right-wing site. Their “toss-ups” include many states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, like CO and NM. Does anyone seriously believe the voters in these states are going to be more favorably disposed towards Trump in 2020? This smacks more of a desperate attempt to define “tossup” as broadly as possible, to make things look not quite so bad for the MAGA cult.
In the next version of this rundown, in a couple of weeks, I’ll start taking a closer look at each site’s modeling strategy. Eventually, we’ll add the Senate races as well, once the primaries are done and all the candidates established.