The field narrows: The Post Super Tuesday presidential poll and discussion

From today's Quinnipiac poll, which had Biden up on Trump 52-41. Among white men polled it's Trump 58-Biden 34. Everyone else, it's Biden 60-Trump 32.

 

Biden could use help with younger, progressive and Latino voters, and Castro can help with that.

But with all the quality politicians who’ve endorsed him, I don’t see Biden picking someone who hasn’t.

 

The wingnut base is all Lumpy's got.

 

I don't believe polls at this point.

Clinton had commanding leads in the polls over Trump even when she was battling with Bernie. She had commanding leads two weeks before the election. And all that matters are the same handful of states that mattered last time.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2016 - General Election: Trump vs. Clinton

 

This. Things are bad now for Trump (good for Biden) in a snapshot, but Trump isn't really campaigning yet. We don't know where the economy will be in November and the Coronavirus could be a distant memory in a few months. Conversely, things could go to complete shite, we relive the Great Recession and Capt. Trips explodes to Spanish Flu levels and Biden wins in a Clinton-esk landslide with only the reddist of red states sticking with Trump.

 

National polls in an election based on an electoral college are useless.

If Biden can hold every state that Hillary won, and he should, the map will come down to if he can flip back Pennsylvania and Michigan. If he can't flip both of those it's game over. If he does then there are plenty of options.

Can he flip back Wisconsin or Ohio...those are a little trickier. Can he flip Arizona? This would probably be the year for that to happen with a heavily contested Senate race happening in the state with a vulnerable Republican.

Florida? This might be the year because neither of the Senate seats nor the governorship are up for election so he's not potentially fighting some of that moderate Latino vote that leans a little Rubio. Obama barely won Florida in 2012 because Rubio's seat wasn't up for election and Bill Nelson's was (Nelson actually got about 300,000 more votes than Obama). Trump probably got a bounce from Little Marco's seat being up in 2016.

North Carolina? Tough play, again a lot depends on the other races in the state. The Senate race with Cal Cunningham and Thom Tillis is going to be a dogfight. If Cunningham looks good in the polls in October, it will help Biden.

Can he get Georgia into play? Texas? Probably still four years away.

My point. National polls don't mean shit.

 

Last Florida poll was Uncle Joe 61, Bernie 12

 

I'm sorry, but let's review the bidding. We all know polls only show the period of time in which they're taken. Had the 2016 election taken place right after the Democratic convention or the first debate, Clinton crushes Trump. But it didn't. The national polls taken as close to possible before Election Day averaged a Clinton lead of four points. She had a two-point advantage. That's as close as it can reliably get. The state polls in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were WAY off and those were by very reputable pollsters. We presume they adjusted their current polls to account for the error.
If the election were today, Trump is routed. The Republicans are routed. The election is not today. The poll I posted was to indicate the bifurcated nature of the electorate, no more and no less.
I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't know that if a national poll today showed Trump 10 points ahead, or even one point ahead, the assumption among many here would be that's he's a lock to win.

 

Thought I read somewhere reasonably credible that coronavirus may behave somewhat like other flu viruses in that transmission is more difficult once the weather warms up, so it may peak in another month or so, then fade for a while before returning even stronger (because it's starting from a higher base of infections than the zero base of this winter) once it gets cold. Getting back to the topic of this thread, I don't know whether that return would be before or after the election.

 

Obviously, she knows everything.

 

That timing could end up being a huge part of the election. If the spread of the virus really does fade soon, President Trump will take credit for beating back the deadly disease personally and his flock will believe it. Then if it does return in the fall, they will engage in the same disinformation they tried this time around, hoping to at least keep the denials up until after election day.

 

Or he’ll just keep repeating the same phrase for months. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Or maybe more appropriately, if it’s broke in your favor, don’t fix it. Make coronavirus the next climate change or fake news (remember when that was the left’s issue?). Create a coalition of dissent and scream bias when your view isn’t included in coverage. Get the idea normalized and you’re golden.