Wow. Biden's going to lead in the IA polling average with just a month until election day. IA is a tossup. Trump's toast in WI+MI+MN.
And with OH also a toss-up, he’s toast in PA as well.
Midwest/rust belt seems to be returning to 2012 levels.
If Biden does win Iowa and Ohio, it won’t be because of a return to 2012. Biden will probably gain some WWC voters back to be sure, but the gains will almost definitely be driven more by suburban swings like we’ve seen everywhere else. Kentucky Governor’s race last year was a real good example of this when you compare Beshear’s 2015 win to his 2019 win. The margin was essentially the same statewide, but he traded large swaths of rural counties for urban and suburban gains. I guess you’d see places like Warren and Dallas counties in Iowa flip in this analogy.
Well, I didn't say why, did I? Just that they do indeed seem to be snapping back to roughly where they were in 2012, if a bit closer.
Beshear still won a lot of rural counties by the way; yeah he lost some from 2015 and ran up the score more in places like Fayette and Jefferson counties, but he still couldn't have won without rural support. And the same will be true for Biden in a state like Iowa. There will have to be
significant reversion from 2016 levels among rural/WWC voters. They don't have to go all the way back to 2012 or beyond thanks to urban/suburban gains, but those are limited in Iowa so he'll still have to win a significant amount of rural support just like Beshear. It's not even a "probably" thing at this point; polls have been very consistent that Biden has gained a ton of WWC Obama-Trump voters back. Is he still losing the demographic as a whole? Of course. Nearly as badly as Hillary did in 2016? No! And that matters a ton.
I get that your whole thing is "trends are real," but so are outliers. Maybe an election like 2016 accelerated/amplified some trends beyond the point they naturally would have voted under more normal circumstances with different candidates, but now we're seeing some reversion to the mean. But the thing is, that seems to be limited to the rural/WWC trends; the suburban trends in favor of Democrats are moving full speed ahead even as those rural/WWC trends slow down and reverse. This is one of many reasons why Biden is going to win, and it won't be close.
