Getting a majority of the votes cast nationwide is not how one is elected president, as Ms. Clinton discovered in 2016. Getting a majority in enough states to add up to a majority in the so-called “electoral college” is how one is elected president. Donald Trump did this.
Campaigns focus their efforts on states which are thought to be winnable, the battleground states. Now for a new CNN poll that must be causing heads to explode at that #NeverTrump network.
In the new poll, 51% of registered voters nationwide back Biden, while 46% say they prefer Trump, while in the battlegrounds, 52% favor Trump and 45% Biden. Partisans are deeply entrenched in their corners, with 95% of Democrats behind Biden and the same share of Republicans behind Trump. The two are close among independents (50% back Trump, 46% Biden, not a large enough difference to be considered a lead).The article looks for and finds a number of dimensions on which Biden is ahead. None of those matter except as one likes to understand how Americans are feeling about this and that. It is just descriptive sociology, or if you prefer, demographics.
The individual who wins the battleground states becomes the president, end of story. A seven point Trump lead in the battleground states is huge.
