NYT Election Guru Nate Cohn Says Biden’s Prospects Against Trump Not as ‘Rosy’ as Thought: His Lead is ‘Narrow and Tenuous’
Despite a number of recent surveys showing former Vice President Joe Biden up by a solid margin against President Donald Trump, one prominent election forecaster believes that the presumptive Democratic nominee’s lead is “narrow and tenuous.”
In an analysis piece published Monday morning, New York Times election guru Nate Cohn splashed some cold water on the Joe-mentum Biden is widely-thought to be riding. Cohn argues that Biden’s lead in national polls — which the Times forecaster says currently averages at six points — does not tell the story of what’s happening in key states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida, among others.
“[T]he election will be decided by voters in the battleground states, not registered voters nationwide, and there the story is not nearly so clear or rosy for Mr. Biden,” Cohn wrote, “he holds only a narrow and tenuous edge in the race for the Electoral College, if he holds one at all.”
Biden’s pitch to primary voters focused largely on electability, as the former vice president claimed to be able to make inroads with working class voters in the battleground states. But Cohn pointed to Trump’s current average lead among white voters without a college degree — a category in which the president is ahead by a 61-32 margin — as something of a red flag for Biden.
“The results suggest that Mr. Biden, despite his reputed appeal to blue-collar workers, has made little to no progress in winning back the white voters without a college degree who supported Barack Obama in 2012 but swung to Mr. Trump in 2016,” Cohn wrote.
