10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden?

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US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead -

Trump or Biden?
By The Visual and Data Journalism Team
BBC News

4 hours ago

US election 2020

Voters in America will decide on 3 November whether Donald Trump

remains in the White House for another four years.

The Republican president is being challenged by Democratic Party nominee

Joe Biden, who is best known as Barack Obama's vice-president but has been
in US politics since the 1970s.

As election day approaches, polling companies will be trying to gauge the

mood of the nation by asking voters which candidate they prefer.

We'll be keeping track of those polls here and trying to work out what they can
and can't tell us about who will win the election
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10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden? - BBC News
and can t tell us about who will win the election.

Biden leading national presidential polls

National polls are a good guide as to how popular a candidate is across the
country as a whole, but they're not necessarily a good way to predict the result
of the election.

In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton led in the polls and won nearly three
million more votes than Donald Trump, but she still lost - that's because the
US uses an electoral college system, so winning the most votes doesn't
always win you the election.

With that caveat aside, Joe Biden has been ahead of Donald Trump in most
national polls since the start of the year. He has hovered around 50% in recent
months and has had a 10-point lead on occasions.

Who's ahead in national polls?

DEMOCRAT REPUBLICAN

BIDEN TRUMP
51% 42%
Trend line showing average voting intention based Show individual polls
on individual polls
1
E

60

50

40
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10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden? - BBC News
40

30
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep O

The BBC poll of polls looks at the individual national polls from the last 14 days and
creates trend lines using the median value, i.e. the value in the middle of the set of
numbers.

See individual polls

By contrast, in 2016 the polls were far less clear and just a couple of
percentage points separated Mr Trump and his then-rival Hillary Clinton at
several points as election day neared.

A really simple guide to the US election

Which states will decide this election?

As Mrs Clinton discovered in 2016, the number of votes you win is less
important than where you win them.

Most states nearly always vote the same way, meaning that in reality there are
just a handful of states where both candidates stand a chance of winning.
These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as
battleground states.

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10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden? - BBC News

In the electoral college system the US uses to elect its president, each state is
given a number of votes based on how many members it sends to Congress -
House and Senate. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a
candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

As the map above shows, some battleground states have a lot more electoral
college votes on offer than others so candidates oen spend a lot more time
campaigning in them.

What is the electoral college?

Predict the president: Play our game

Who's leading in the battleground states?

At the moment, polls in the battleground states look good for Joe Biden but
things can change very quickly, especially when Donald Trump's involved.

The polls suggest Mr Biden has big leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin - three industrial states his Republican rival won by margins of less
than 1% to clinch victory in 2016.

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10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden? - BBC News

Latest polling averages in battleground states

State BIDEN TRUMP Who won in 2016?

Arizona 49.3% 46.2% Trump by 3.6%

Florida 48.6% 47.0% Trump by 1.2%

Georgia 47.5% 46.3% Trump by 5.2%

Iowa 48.0% 46.3% Trump by 9.5%

Michigan 50.2% 43.0% Trump by 0.2%

Minnesota 47.8% 41.5% Clinton by 1.5%

Nevada 49.0% 43.8% Clinton by 2.4%

New Hampshire 53.4% 42.4% Clinton by 0.4%

North Carolina 48.8% 46.5% Trump by 3.7%

Ohio 46.4% 46.6% Trump by 8.2%

Pennsylvania 48.9% 45.4% Trump by 0.7%

Texas 44.8% 49.2% Trump by 9.1%

Virginia 51.7% 40.3% Clinton by 5.4%

Wisconsin 49.8% 43.5% Trump by 0.8%

Source: Real Clear Politics, Associated Press. Last updated: 21 October

But it's the battleground states where Mr Trump won big in 2016 that his
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10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden? - BBC News
But it s the battleground states where Mr Trump won big in 2016 that his
campaign team will be most worried about. His winning margin in Iowa, Ohio
and Texas was between 8-10% back then but it's looking much closer in all
three at the moment.

That's one of the reasons why some political analysts rate his chances of re-
election as low as things stand. FiveThirtyEight, a political analysis website,
says Mr Biden is "favoured" to win the election, while The Economist says he is
"very likely" to beat Mr Trump.

How Trump can still win the US election

Who won the first presidential debate?

GETTY IMAGES

Donald Trump and Joe Biden went head-to-head in the first live TV debate on
29 September.

Many pundits called the debate for Mr Biden and the BBC's Anthony Zurcher
agreed, describing it as "the political equivalent of a food fight" with the
former vice-president emerging as the man "least covered in slop".

But what do the polls tell us? Well the ones we have all put the Democrat
ahead, but by varying margins.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll conducted aer the debate
found Mr Biden on 53% and his rival on 39% - a gap six points wider than in
their previous poll two weeks earlier.

But more worrying for the president are two battleground state polls
conducted by the New York Times and Siena College that found Mr Biden
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10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden? - BBC News
conducted by the New York Times and Siena College that found Mr Biden
ahead by seven points in Pennsylvania and five points in Florida.

Overall, it doesn't appear that the president's debate performance helped him
close the gap on his rival.

'Chaotic, childish, gruelling' - Global media reaction

Trump and Biden's debate claims fact-checked

Has Covid-19 affected Trump's numbers?

We only had a couple of days to mull over the first debate before President
Trump's bombshell tweet in the early hours of 2 October revealed he and the
first lady had tested positive for coronavirus.

While the pandemic has dominated headlines in the US since the start of the
year, the focus had shied to the Supreme Court aer the death of long-
serving Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September.

So Mr Trump's positive coronavirus test put his response to the pandemic,

which has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people in the US, back
under the spotlight.

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According to data from an ABC News/Ipsos poll, just 35% of Americans

approve of how the president has handled the crisis. That figure climbs among
Republicans, but only to 76%.

On his own health, 72% of respondents said that Mr Trump did not take the
"risk of contracting the virus seriously enough," while the same number said he
failed to take "the appropriate precautions when it came to his personal
health".

A similar Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that about half of respondents

believed he could have avoided contracting the disease altogether if he had
practised greater social distancing and worn a face mask.

Why are Covid-19 infections rising again in US?

Can we trust the polls?

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10/21/2020 US election 2020 polls: Who is ahead - Trump or Biden? - BBC News

Can election polling predict who will become the next US president?

It's easy to dismiss the polls by saying they got it wrong in 2016 and President
Trump frequently does exactly that. But it's not entirely true.

Most national polls did have Hillary Clinton ahead by a few percentage points,
but that doesn't mean they were wrong, since she won three million more
votes than her rival.

Pollsters did have some problems in 2016 - notably a failure to properly

represent voters without a college degree - meaning Mr Trump's advantage in
some key battleground states wasn't spotted until late in the race, if at all.
Most polling companies have corrected this now.

But this year there's even more uncertainty than normal due to the
coronavirus pandemic and the effect it's having on both the economy and how
people will vote in November, so all polls should be read with some scepticism,
especially this far out from election day.

Americast: The latest news and gossip from the campaign trail

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Written and produced by Mike Hills and Will Dahlgreen. Design by Irene de la
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