Poll That Predicted Trump Win in 2016 Finds Him Closing Gap with Biden
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A poll credited with being one of the only accurate national surveys in 2016 has found a sudden tightening in the race between US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
The Investor’s Business Daily tracking poll results released Tuesday have Biden ahead nationally by just 2.3 percentage points, at 48.1 percent to Trump’s 45.8 percent among likely voters.
The daily poll, which includes Green and Libertarian candidates, launched on Oct. 12 and has found increasing support for Trump and decreasing support for Biden going into Nov. 3’s Election Day.
Just a week ago, on Oct. 13, the poll found Biden sailing with an 8.6 percentage-point lead.
IBD said Trump is closing a gap among independents and has benefited from stronger support among Republicans than Biden has among Democrats. Biden held 90 percent support among Democrats in the latest poll, compared to 94 percent of Republicans backing Trump, the New York Post reported.
But IBD said Trump is lagging among elderly voters and those in the suburbs, groups that helped him win in 2016.
Investor’s Business Daily is widely regarded as a credible pollster, given an “A/B” grade by polling-focused news site fivethirtyeight.com.
In 2016, IBD’s poll was one of the few to predict Trump’s win — a shocking upset that caught most media and politics professionals off-guard. Its final 2016 poll found Trump ahead by 1.6 points. Ultimately, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 points, but won the Electoral College 304-227 thanks to narrow wins in many states.
The RealClearPolitics average of recent national polls has Biden ahead by 7.6 percent, though in many swing states, the margin is tighter. Trump allies believe he has many “silent voters” who won’t publicly admit their support but will show up to vote.
The Biden campaign released a memo Saturday warning that Trump can “still win the race” and is “neck and neck” in several battleground states, where the incumbent is hosting daily mega-rallies and where Biden’s campaign got off to a late ground game amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Even the best polling can be wrong and that variables like turnout mean that in a number of critical swing states we are fundamentally tied,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a three-page message.
“If we learned anything from 2016, it’s that we cannot underestimate Donald Trump or his ability to claw his way back into contention in the final days of a campaign, through whatever smears or underhanded tactics he has at his disposal.”