RealClearPolitics Polling Average Flips 4 States from Biden to Trump in Last 5 Days of Campaign
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President Donald Trump overcame Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s polling lead in four states during the last five days leading up to the 2020 election, according to averages maintained by RealClearPolitics.
The website’s polling averages now suggest Trump leads in Iowa by 2 percent of the vote; Georgia (1 percent); North Carolina (0.2 percent); and Ohio (1.4 percent). Biden previously led polling in all four states, but saw his advantage dwindle in recent days.
Biden’s lead took the biggest hit in Iowa, where he was leading the RealClearPolitics average by 1.2 percent as recently as October 30, after polls from Emerson, Quinnipiac and Emerson Advantage suggested Trump held the edge. A Des Moines Register poll conducted between October 26-29 was the most favorable to Trump, suggesting he led Biden 48-41 percent.
The Democratic nominee’s lead in North Carolina — the most competitive state on the list — took a hit as a result of an InsiderAdvantage poll, conducted between October 26-November 1, that showed Trump leading 48-44 percent. Biden enjoyed his greatest lead in the state at the end of July, when RealClearPolitics’ average showed him holding support from 50 percent of the state’s voters to 45.3 percent for Trump.
Recent polling by Trafalgar Group factored heavily into RealClearPolitics’ calculation for Georgia and Ohio. The Georgia-based polling firm weights its surveys for “social desirability bias,” taking into account the idea that some Trump voters are afraid to be honest with pollsters. That methodology has included asking respondents who they believed their neighbors planned to vote for, as well as differences in how Trafalgar judges who is most likely to vote. It was also one of the only polling firms to correctly predict Trump would win Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016.
Trafalgar’s last surveys leading up to this week’s election suggested Trump is leading Biden by 5 percent of the vote in both Ohio and Georgia, provoking polling analysts on Tuesday to extend their criticism of Trafalgar to RealClearPolitics. Writing on Twitter, The New York Times’ Nate Cohn suggested the RealClearPolitics averages shouldn’t be treated as credible — even if they turn out to be correct.
“Trump may win in the end, but that won’t vindicate RCP,” Cohn wrote. “If Trump wins the polls were really, really wrong. I’ll certainly be nothing but honest about that fact. But you don’t get that impression from RCP, since they’re not fairly reflecting the polls.”
The website’s polling averages show Biden with a lead of 7.2 percent nationally as of Election Day. He also enjoys a narrow polling lead in key swing states, including .09 percent in Arizona and Florida and 1.2 percent in Pennsylvania.
