The Election Might Hinge on Pennsylvania. Can the Polls Get the State Proper?

The poll is an outlier in this regard, as a number of other high quality Pennsylvania polls in the past few weeks, including one from the New York Times and Siena College, have shown that Mr. Biden’s favor reached or exceeded 50 percent. But it wasn’t until mid-September that most of these polling stations had shown less than half of the voters who expressed a positive opinion of Mr Biden.

Christopher P. Borick, professor of political science in Mühlenberg who runs the electoral institute, said those results brought back 2016 when both candidates were largely unpopular, but Trump managed to convince swing voters that Ms. Clinton was the is a worse option. “It’s no surprise, given the president’s campaign and efforts to drag Biden down, that he thinks this is the way to go again,” said Dr. Borick.

The main difference is that Mr Biden did not experience the same dislike as Ms. Clinton, who was not liked by an equal percentage of Pennsylvania voters as Mr Trump. The president’s attempts to spread negative opinions about Mr. Biden – including his misleading allegation that the former vice president will be elected to ban fracking in Pennsylvania – have so far been unsuccessful.

In 2018, the Pennsylvania Democrats took four house seats, mostly in suburbs, and Mr Trump is fighting in those regions. Mr Biden has made them a main focus, as he did on Saturday when he spoke in Dallas Township, a suburb of Wilkes-Barre, pounding Mr Trump for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

However, polls show that Mr Biden has not yet fully taken advantage of Mr Trump’s weakening of support. Averaging the results of the latest Times / Siena and Morning Call / Muhlenberg polls in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Mr Trump is nine points behind the share he received in the 2016 polls to exit, but Mr Biden is only three points ahead of Ms. Clinton’s total number in that group.

Updated

Oct. 26, 2020 at 12:31 am ET

In another way, Mr. Biden worries the fact that he has not yet reached Mrs. Clinton’s share of the Philadelphia aid. Averaging the results of the two most recent polls, he has the support of 73 percent of the electorate in Philadelphia, up from 83 percent of Ms. Clinton in 2016. According to the Times / Siena poll, Mr. Trump was supported by 24 percent of Philadelphians. nine points ahead of his 2016 base election.

At the center of the president’s coalition are conservative and rural voters and men between the ages of 40 and 65. Additionally, he has used an argument based on pre-pandemic economic prosperity to curb Mr Biden’s support among key Democratic groups, including blacks, Latinos and other non-white voters.

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