Polling guru Nate Silver predicted that President Trump has a good shot at winning the Electoral College so long as he doesn’t lose the popular vote by a large margin.
If Biden does not win the popular vote by more than 5%, Trump may still be able to secure a reelection victory, the FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief said in tweets on Wednesday, two months out from Election Day.
“You’ll sometimes see people say stuff like ‘Biden MUST with the popular vote by 3 points or he’s toast.'” Silver tweeted. “Not true; at 2-3 points, the Electoral College is a tossup, not necessarily a Trump win. (On the other hand,) the Electoral College is not really *safe* for Biden unless he wins by 5+.”
Chance of a Biden Electoral college win if he wins the popular vote by X points:
0-1 points: just 6%!
1-2 points: 22%
2-3 points: 46%
3-4 points: 74%
4-5 points: 89%
5-6 points: 98%
6-7 points: 99%— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 2, 2020
Silver predicted Democratic nominee Joe Biden has a 6% chance of winning the Electoral College if he wins the popular vote by 1 point. If he wins somewhere between 1-2 points, his chance goes up to 22%, and that increases to 46% if he wins by 2-3 points.
Trump won the presidential election in 2016, even though he lost the popular vote to his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, who won 48.2% of the popular vote, 2 points more than Trump, who got 46.1%. Overall, Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes than Trump on a national scale.
In the Electoral College, Trump received 304 votes, compared to 227 received by Clinton. A candidate must receive at least 270 votes in the Electoral College to be elected.
An analysis by FiveThirtyEight shows Biden is polling better nationally than Clinton was at the same stage of the election cycle in 2016.
Clinton hit her peak on Aug. 7, 2016, after the Democratic National Convention, when she hit a 7.5-point lead over Trump. At the same point in time this year, Biden was ahead of that number.
Nationally, Biden also has a better average support level than that earned by Clinton. Biden has been hovering around 50%, which is a bump up from Clinton’s low-to-mid-40s polling.
Last year, speaking of her election loss, Clinton criticized the Electoral College and its ability to toss a candidate out of the race, even if they win the popular vote.
“You can run the best campaign. You can have the best plans. You can get the nomination. You can win the popular vote. And you can lose the Electoral College and therefore the election,” Clinton said.
