As Joe Biden and Donald Trump go head to head for the White House on November 3, latest polls show that the Democrat has a solid lead.
But that doesn’t guarantee Biden victory. Hillary Clinton also had a clear lead over Trump in the polls for almost the entire 2016 campaign. She ended up losing in the electoral college.
The latest polling average puts Biden ahead of Trump nationally. National polls are a good indicator as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, but they are a poor indicator of how the crucial swing states will sway the election.
In the national polls, Trump continues to trail with a 43% chance as compared to a 52% of Biden, according to the latest Reuters poll. A New York Times poll showed Joe Biden holding a clear advantage over 4 important swing states- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona. Biden’s electoral position appears to put him in a stronger position than any presidential candidate since 2008.
But battleground states or the swing states hold the key. At the moment, polls in the swing states look good for Joe Biden, although the margins are tight in many of them. Biden appears to have strong leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - three states his Republican rival won by margins of less than 1% to clinch victory in 2016.
A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win. Trump won big in the battleground states in 2016 and clearly that is what his campaign team will be most worried about.