President Donald Trump is doing terribly in many polls as the general election approaches. As a new analysis from CNN’s elections analyst Harry Enten explains, Biden is leading among suburban voters by “historic” margins, and the lead is so dramatic that currently, he’s doing about 20 percent better among suburban voters than Hillary Clinton was at about this same point in the 2016 race. In other words, although polls with Clinton in the lead certainly didn’t exactly pan out in 2016, the circumstances of the current political situation are not the same. Biden is majorly leading.
In a brand new set of polling data from ABC News and The Washington Post, Biden is leading among suburban voters by a full 9 percent. Specifically, he nabbed 52 percent of the support compared to just 43 percent of respondents who went for Trump.
Biden’s numbers among suburban voters in other recent polls are even more striking — in the most recent polling from Quinnipiac University, Biden leads among suburban voters by a whopping 22 percent. Biden nabbed 56 percent of the support, and Trump got just 34 percent. In a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, Biden had a 25 percent lead among suburban voters, with the support of 60 percent of the relevant respondents compared to just 35 percent who went for Trump. Finally, in a recent Fox News poll, Biden had 55 percent of the suburban support, while Trump had just 33 percent of the suburban support.
‘In the average of all the polls, Biden’s ahead by nearly 20 points with suburban voters. This is a historic margin, if it holds. The fact that Biden is doing so well in the suburbs shouldn’t be a surprise. The suburbs are a bellwether vote of sorts in our current political environment. That is, the suburban vote mirrors the national vote closer than the urban or rural vote.’
There has been an increasingly sharp national outcry against Trump in the wake of crises like his failed response to the Coronavirus pandemic. The results are striking — as Enten notes, “[four] years ago at this time, Trump was beating Clinton by a 45% to 35% margin in the ABC/Washington Post poll among suburban voters.” Thus, he adds, “we’re looking at nearly a 20-point improvement for Biden versus where Clinton was at this point in the 2016 campaign.” Clinton isn’t the only Democratic presidential candidate who Biden is doing better than — according to exit poll data, not a single Democratic contender has won the suburban vote by more than 5 percent since at least 1972, when exit polls were instituted. Biden, again, is up in some polls by over 20 percent among suburban voters, suggesting a historically huge well of opposition to Trump.
The Cook Political Report maintains electoral college projections, and currently, they report that Democrats can count on at least 279 electoral votes that are at least “leaning” Democratic. That number is, of course, above the 270 electoral votes that are needed to win the presidency. The same forecasts suggest that the GOP can only count on 187 electoral votes that are at least leaning Republican. They suggest that 72 electoral votes are currently in toss-up territory.
