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Barack Obama entered Election Day 2008 +7.6 points over John McCain. The Illinois junior senator would beat the Arizona senior senator in a landslide 365-173 in the election.
In 2020 we could be on the verge of an equally big – or even bigger – democratic victory.
According to the survey average by RealClearPolitics, Democratic candidate Joe Biden has a +9.7 point lead over President Donald Trump on Friday. That's more than his 6.6 point lead over the September 29 presidential debate in Cleveland and Trump's hospital stay last week.
If Trump doesn't start filling the electoral gap with Biden, the president would need even more electoral enthusiasm to score a victory in 2020. Four years ago, the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton went on election night ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania (+1.9 percentage points), Michigan (+3.4 points) and Wisconsin (+6.5 points). Trump won all three and took the White House. Clinton won the referendum with +2.1 points after leading the RealClearPolitics poll average with +3.2 points.
In this case, Trump will likely have to win at least six battlefield states where Biden is currently the leader: Arizona (+2.7 points), Florida (+3.7 points), Iowa (+1.4 points), North Carolina (+1 , 4 points), Ohio (+0.6 points) and Wisconsin (+5.5 points). If he wins this, Trump can probably afford to lose swing states like Michigan (+6.7 points) and Pennsylvania (+7.1 points), where Biden is currently the leader. If Trump wins one of the latter states, he can afford to lose Wisconsin.
While Biden leads the RealClearPolitics survey average in Iowa, the FiveThirtyElection forecast gives Trump a slight edge in the state. FiveThirtyElection gives Biden a head start in the seven other Trump states in 2016, where the Democratic candidate has the lead in the RealClearPolitics poll averages.
As of Friday, FiveThirtyEight predicted an 85% chance of winning for Biden, while The Economist predicted the Democratic candidate has a 92% chance of winning the electoral college.
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