https://thehill.com/homenews/the-memo/5 ... P4.twitterThe Memo: Biden landslide creeps into view
A landslide victory for Joe Biden is now a realistic possibility.
The Democratic presidential nominee has a lead of around 10 percentage points over President Trump in national polling averages, and he is up across almost all the battleground states.
Trump faces low job approval ratings, bad marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and an ever-decreasing number of opportunities to change the direction of the race.
The first debate has come and gone, and the second scheduled clash has been canceled. Only one more debate, set for Oct. 22, remains.
No challenger to an incumbent president since Bill Clinton almost 30 years ago has been in such a strong position as Biden with such a short period of time until Election Day.
Still, even Democrats are reluctant to talk out loud about a Biden landslide for fear of jinxing a monumental election or encouraging complacency. Many pundits are also hedging their bets, mindful of the 2016 experience.
The national polls four years ago were — contrary to public perception — not far off the eventual result. But state-level polls, especially in the Rust Belt and the Midwest, went seriously awry.
Democrat Hillary Clinton went into Election Day ahead in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by 3.4 points, 1.9 points and 6.5 points respectively in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) polling averages. Trump carried all three states.
Trump aide Corey Lewandowski — the president’s first campaign manager in the 2016 cycle, now back on board for the 2020 effort — contended that the polls that year and the media’s coverage of them had amounted to “enormous misinformation.”
In a conference call with reporters Monday morning, Lewandowski said, “Our internal numbers — and we are very confident of where our numbers are — continue to show a very different story” from the public polls.
Still, Biden’s lead in some key battlegrounds is greater than Clinton’s was four years ago. He is about 7 points ahead in the RCP averages in both Michigan and Pennsylvania. He is almost 4 points up in Florida. New polls on Monday from the New York Times-Siena College put Biden ahead by 10 points in Wisconsin and 8 points in Michigan.
Caution is still the watchword for many experts who acknowledge that the president cannot be counted out. But the flip side — a Biden victory by a thumping margin — is also well within the realms of possibility.