Why is the race so close?

[solidcoalition]

The race really isn't that close. The only thing that gives it the illusion it's closer than it is is the EC.

That’s what matters though. New York and California are irrelevant.

[Del Tachi]

Trump is doing the worst ever seen from an incumbent going for reelection.   I don't see how it could get much worse realistically.

Trump will either be the least popular president re-elected or the most popular president to lose reelection. 

If you look at Trump's approvals, he's about 6 pts ahead of where H.W./Carter were during their fall campaigns, and 6 pts behind W. and Obama.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Because America is a failed state.

[Ferguson97]

Base of 42ish% that is essentially a lock to vote any candidate in the R column.  You don't need to spend any money convincing them.  They would vote for me if I was on the ballot.

They just need to peck away at the loosely coupled voters - those not locked into a party - and the infrequent voters.  And they don't even need to get to 50% of the popular vote nationally to win.

• Non-college educated, white men... "they" will be taking your jobs and your daughters... bing!
• Florida Cuban Americans...  vote for the other side and you will get the Socialist leader you escaped from...  bing!
• Older Latina/Latino...  abortion, removing God, etc...  bing!

Top that off with an uninspiring Democrat candidate (Dems fall in love, Reps fall in line) and you get a close race.

Bingo. Had we nominated someone like Warren we wouldn’t have these problems.

Warren would be losing Florida by like 5-6 points

[ProgressiveModerate]

Trump is doing the worst ever seen from an incumbent going for reelection.   I don't see how it could get much worse realistically.

Trump will either be the least popular president re-elected or the most popular president to lose reelection. 

If you look at Trump's approvals, he's about 6 pts off where H.W./Carter were during their fall campaigns, and another 6 pts behind W. and Obama.

One thing you have to consider is that there are far fewer people who have a positive view of both canidates. This means that whatever Trump's approval is is prolly his hard floor barring some big screw up (43%), but he's definately not winning many of the voters who consistently disapprove of him either (52%). Most people have made up their mind by now about weather they like the dude or not, and as we get closer to election, there will be fewer and fewer people who say they disapprove of him and yet vote for him. Either way, he's losing to Biden by 7.6% nationally in my polling average, and the race really hasn't tightened (in terms of raw electoral votes yes, a little bit, but probability no, because with each passing day uncertainty goes down).

[Arkansas Yankee]

Despite everything that’s happened(Covid-19, Recession, George Floyd, “Dead Soldiers are suckers” “I didn’t wanna cause a panic”, nearly 200,000 Americans dead) the race is 5+ Biden or 2+ Biden.

We do not hold him responsible for any COVID-19 problems. He provided all the necessary equipment.  He did Not order + testing folks dumped on nursing homes.  In fact I consider a direct attack by China in order to get rid of Trump.

Trump is straightening out NATO. He is causing Putin all sorts of problems. The Sunni Arab worlds wants him.  Iran hates him. He has made us energy self sufficient.  He met last year’s
CO-2 reduction goal.   That is just for starters.

You actually believe he is responsible for every single COVID-19 death?

[Turbo Flame]

Bump

Joe Biden is attacking Donald Trump too much while giving nothing bold to vote for. The Economy is also recovering. Maybe at a slow rate, but it's charging back to the point where any incumbent can win.

[Buzz]

The race is no longer close after last night.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Due to fact VA and NV and CO have replaced since 2006, OH as the bellwether state.  D's already won 279EC votes in 2018 Gov elections not and the Rs think only 2016, and that's not the case. If the election is close, there will be outstanding provisional ballots in Beaver County, PA that can tip the scale to Biden. Keystone state PA is the bellwether

[GeneralMacArthur]

Despite everything that’s happened(Covid-19, Recession, George Floyd, “Dead Soldiers are suckers” “I didn’t wanna cause a panic”, nearly 200,000 Americans dead) the race is 5+ Biden or 2+ Biden.

We do not hold him responsible for any COVID-19 problems. He provided all the necessary equipment.  He did Not order + testing folks dumped on nursing homes.  In fact I consider a direct attack by China in order to get rid of Trump.

Trump is straightening out NATO. He is causing Putin all sorts of problems. The Sunni Arab worlds wants him.  Iran hates him. He has made us energy self sufficient.  He met last year’s
CO-2 reduction goal.   That is just for starters.

You actually believe he is responsible for every single COVID-19 death?

People missed out on this absolutely insane post.

1: Trump did not provide all the necessary equipment.  Democrats begged him to use the Defense Production Act to produce PPE and he refused.  He refused to coordinate supplies and told states to fight each other for what PPE remained.  The USPS wanted to send free masks to everyone to ensure we all had basic PPE and Trump killed the idea, forcing people to squabble and fight for masks.  State governors had to operate independently of the federal government to borrow ventilators and PPE from foreign countries.

2: No, COVID is not a direct attack from China.

3: No, Trump is not "straightening out" NATO.  He relentlessly attacks and humiliates NATO on the international stage and has changed U.S. policy to fundamentally undermine the core tenets of the alliance, such as going to other countries' aid, as they came to ours after 9/11.

4: No, Trump has not made us energy self-sufficient.  We still import plenty of oil.  Net oil exports have declined under Trump, but they have been declining at the exact same rate since 2006, it is not due to  anything Trump did.

5: No, Trump is not "causing Putin all sorts of problems."  Putin has gotten to do literally whatever he wants for the last four years.  He's completely taken over half of Ukraine and turned Syria into a genocidal puppet state.  He sponsored hits on American soldiers and Trump pretended he didn't know about it.  He continues to run a Russian state military operation dedicated to undermining American democracy, with absolute impunity.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Herman Cain died from one of Trump's rallies, Trump doesn't wear a mask at all times and knew how serious Covid was in Feb, and  he waited til March 17th to shutdown

[Rep Jessica]

Larry Schweikart
@LarrySchweikart
 · 15m
From "Freeper" Ravi: FL registration---D advantage now falls to 158,000 (300,000 in 2016).

Thinks it could drop to only 140,000.

[Splash]

Bump

Joe Biden is attacking Donald Trump too much while giving nothing bold to vote for. The Economy is also recovering. Maybe at a slow rate, but it's charging back to the point where any incumbent can win.

If Joe Biden is attacking Trump too much, it doesn't seem to be hurting his favorability ratings at all. In fact, I think Biden's ratings may have improved over the past month.

And if you examine the polls, you will see that voters are largely self-selecting themselves into 'most important issue' camps that overwhelmingly align with which candidate they support. Trump is already winning the voters who say that the economy is the most important issue of the day to them by an insane margin in some polls (something like 90-10); same thing with 'crime and safety'. Meanwhile, Biden's supporters are mainly selecting 'COVID' and 'racial justice' as their top issues; again, the split is something like 90-10, this time in Biden's favor.

And, by the way, didn't Disney just announce yesterday that they are going to be laying off 28,000 workers? The thing with the economy is that it is just people's perception of it matters just as much as the actual indicators, such as unemployment, GDP, real wage growth, etc. You can point to a line graph that shows the average for the Dow or NASDAQ all you'd like, but that won't break the feeling of economic malaise that many are feeling in Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa.

[Hammy]

Larry Schweikart
@LarrySchweikart
 · 15m
From "Freeper" Ravi: FL registration---D advantage now falls to 158,000 (300,000 in 2016).

Thinks it could drop to only 140,000.

More evidence of what I've been thinking of Florida's margin being less than a half percent regardless of the winner or national outcome.

[Pericles]

Trump is doing the worst ever seen from an incumbent going for reelection.   I don't see how it could get much worse realistically.

Trump will either be the least popular president re-elected or the most popular president to lose reelection. 

If you look at Trump's approvals, he's about 6 pts ahead of where H.W./Carter were during their fall campaigns, and 6 pts behind W. and Obama.

Gerald Ford wasn't an elected incumbent, but he lost by 2 points with a similar positive approval rating to Trump. HW Bush and Carter also had similar net approval ratings to Trump, Trump just has fewer undecideds

[Bootes Void]

Larry Schweikart
@LarrySchweikart
 · 15m
From "Freeper" Ravi: FL registration---D advantage now falls to 158,000 (300,000 in 2016).

Thinks it could drop to only 140,000.

More evidence of what I've been thinking of Florida's margin being less than a half percent regardless of the winner or national outcome.

DINOS and RINOS could be shredding their registration affiliation. It's better to look at counties than affiliation in florida

[Yoda]

Bump

Joe Biden is attacking Donald Trump too much while giving nothing bold to vote for. The Economy is also recovering. Maybe at a slow rate, but it's charging back to the point where any incumbent can win.

You chose the day after that trainwreck of a debate, of ALL days, to bump this thread to argue that trump is doing better than people think?

I'm gonna be charitable and say that's bold.

[Benjamin Frank]

It's actually quite amazing when you think about; Trump has negative news directed against him 24/7 on cable-television, he is being outspent by Biden, he has the IC, establishment, judges, 100s of millions of Bloomberg money, Hollywood, Wall Street, majority of the country's billionaires all on the offensive on him, and yet he still managed to make this race competitive.

Hitler got 40% of the vote in 1933. Reminds me of the quote attributed to P.T Barnum.

[mileslunn]

Its not that close, Biden has a 7 to 8 point lead which is similar to Obama's in 2008.  US is very polarized so getting double digit leads is extremely difficult, maybe impossible regardless of who candidates are.

[GP270watch]

White people and white men specifically. But we don't know how close or not the election is until it's done really.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It's not, polls today show wide Biden leads, the only thing that saves Trump is a vaccine

[Turbo Flame]

Bump

Joe Biden is attacking Donald Trump too much while giving nothing bold to vote for. The Economy is also recovering. Maybe at a slow rate, but it's charging back to the point where any incumbent can win.

You chose the day after that trainwreck of a debate, of ALL days, to bump this thread to argue that trump is doing better than people think?

I'm gonna be charitable and say that's bold.

Thanks. I'm a gutsiest one when it comes down to predictions of anything.

[TheLaRocca]

Larry Schweikart
@LarrySchweikart
 · 15m
From "Freeper" Ravi: FL registration---D advantage now falls to 158,000 (300,000 in 2016).

Thinks it could drop to only 140,000.

Ds in panhandle switching registration (who have voted GOP since Bush). Dems still have majority registration in most of the panhandle.
As of 2018 this was reg

https://www.sayfiereview.com/featured_column?column_id=76

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sayfiereview_production/DailyLinkPhotos/photos/150/original/frequent-pa-macmanus.png?1539612680

[Non Swing Voter]

is it close?  I can't remember a campaign in my lifetime where one of the candidates only led in one national poll over the course of 8 or 9 months... and that poll was Rasmussen and Trump led by less than a point.  And Trump's the incumbent... 

While we are all bracing for some huge hidden Trump turnout operation on Election Day, all the current indicators: polling, fundraising, early voting numbers indicates that it's NOT close.

[S019ian Liberal]

it really ain't? 😬