Virtually every poll showing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden up over President Trump in a swing state brings a version of a familiar retort: “Remember Michael Dukakis.”

Biden, the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, is comfortably ahead of Trump in a slew of national and state-based polls less than 100 days before Election Day. Yet as Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee and then-Massachusetts governor found out, such leads hardly guarantee a White House win.

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