To understand how poorly President Trump is currently faring against Joe Biden, look at past polls taken in late July by the past two Democratic nominees, Hillary Clinton in 2016, who lost to Trump, and President Barack Obama in 2012, who won reelection over Republican rival Mitt Romney.
A recent survey from Fox News confirms what much of the Trump campaign already knows: they’re falling behind — and fast. In Michigan, which Trump narrowly won in 2016, Biden leads him by 9 points. In Pennsylvania, the gap is even larger, at 11 points.
Just a few months ago, the Trump campaign was planning an aggressive push to flip Minnesota to the GOP column, something the president came close to doing in 2016. But with Biden holding a 13-point lead, according to Fox News, Minnesota seems pretty much off-limits to a Trump victory.
And Biden’s current strength means the electoral map looks more and more like something from Bill Clinton’s victories in 1992 and 1996, with the former vice president outperforming Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Looking at the state of those races in July during the last three presidential cycles shows Biden doing better than either candidate in Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Michigan.
Obama comfortably won reelection in 2012, even as his race against Mitt Romney started tightening up in the summer. In 2016, Trump actually pulled ahead slightly against Clinton by late July.
Biden also appears to be the only Democrat in 12 years who has led a Republican in the states of Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina roughly 150 days out to the election. Even in North Carolina, which Obama won against John McCain in 2008 by just over 14,000 votes out of more than 4.3 million cast, had the late Arizona senator leading in polls at this point in the race.
Should these polls hold, Biden would go on to win 388 electoral votes out of 538, assuming he won all of Clinton’s states in 2016 and Trump managed to hold onto Ohio. If Biden lost the states where polling averages have him virtually tied with Trump, such as Texas, or slightly behind, such as Georgia, he’d still win 334 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump defeated Clinton with 304 electoral votes.
At 388 electoral votes, Biden would outperform his old boss’s margin in 2008, when Obama won 365 electoral votes over McCain. Not since Bill Clinton’s wins in the 1990s has a presidential candidate approached 400 Electoral College votes, with Clinton earning 370 in 1992 and 379 in 1996.
Despite this troubling picture for the president, the Trump campaign maintains its insistence that polls paint an inaccurate picture, citing the 2016 election result as evidence that firms are biased against Republicans, or many voters are simply reluctant to tell surveyors they plan on voting for the president.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, is telling supporters not to be complacent, and many Democrats expect the race to tighten by September. On Friday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez went as far as saying he doesn’t trust current polls showing Biden leading.
“Don’t look at these polls. I see a poll that shows Biden up 10 points,” he said during a SiriusXM interview with liberal talk show host Joe Madison. “Don’t believe it.”
