Dynamite News Review: Biden maintains steady lead in polls as Trump prepares to contest election
Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden slightly boosted his edge in both national and battleground polls within the past week, while President Donald Trump is already preparing to legally contest the outcome based on concerns over mail-in ballot fraud.
Washington: Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden slightly boosted his edge in both national and battleground polls within the past week, while President Donald Trump is already preparing to legally contest the outcome based on concerns over mail-in ballot fraud.
Because of the COVID-19 crisis, a record number of voters will be submitting ballots by mail in this year's presidential election. Experts predict that some 80 million people are expected to vote by mail, The New York Times reported.
Compare this to 2016 when roughly 33 million Americans voted by mail (including 24.8 million absentee ballots), according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Last month, a Democracy Fund/UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) poll found that Biden voters are twice as likely to vote by mail compared to Trump supporters. Hence why the president has repeatedly claimed that casting ballots by mail will lead to widespread voter fraud.
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In fact, Trump last week predicted that the election will be decided before the Supreme Court, which is why he is fast-tracking the confirmation of his high-court nominee to replace the recently-deceased liberal-leaning justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
On Sunday, Politico reported, citing Republican Party officials, that the Trump campaign has hired dozens of lawyers and recruited thousands of volunteer attorneys and poll watchers ahead of the November election. The Republicans are likely to dispute election results by questioning the authenticity of mail-in ballots and closely monitoring if the ballots arrive on time and are properly counted.
As of Sunday evening, according to the average of the most recent 10 surveys published in the past week on poll aggregator Realclearpolitics.com (http://realclearpolitics.com/) (RCP), the former vice president leads by 7 percent nationally, a half-point higher than last week. Biden's lead nationally in the RCP average has hovered around seven points over the past 30 days - reaching no higher than 8 percent, yet falling no lower than 6 percent.
Moreover, Biden is in a much better position than Hillary Clinton was four years ago. Consider that 37 days before election day in 2016, the RCP had Clinton ahead nationally by only 2.3 percent.
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Given the structure of the Electoral College, however, national surveys are less significant than polling in key battleground states. That said, the state-level polling reveals that if the election were held today, Biden would win by a landslide. Biden still leads in eight of the top 10 largest battleground states, the sum of which accounts for nearly 35% of the total electoral votes (538) apportioned across 50 states. A candidate needs to secure at least 270 electoral votes to win the presidential race.
The RCP shows Biden's lead within the past seven days edged up by less than one percent in 5 states: Pennsylvania (+4.6 per cent), Ohio (+3.3), Michigan (+5.2), North Carolina (+1.0), and Wisconsin (+7.0). His largest lead is in the state of Minnesota which saw a slight dip from 10% to 9.4 per cent, according to the RCP average.(ANI)