Joe Biden lead in polls does not ensure final victory for election
By Helmut Norpoth, opinion contributor — 06/05/20 04:00 PM EDT
Joe Biden is enjoying a comfortable lead over Donald Trump in national polls. The Real Clear Politics average has the former vice president ahead of the incumbent president by about 7 points; Biden is ahead even in the survey of a network, Fox News, not known as a liberal bastion. Does his lead in the polls now guarantee a victorious finish in November? The answer is a resounding no.
To begin with Trump, trailing Democratic contenders is nothing new for him. He was behind Hillary Clinton in polls at just about every moment in 2016 and wound up winning the election. This was by no means the rare exception that proves the rule. The terrain of presidential contests is littered with nominees who saw a poll lead in the spring turn to dust in the fall. The list is long and discouraging for early frontrunners. Beginning with Dewey (1948) it spans Nixon (1960), Carter (1980), Dukakis (1988), Bush (1992), and Kerry (2004), to cite just the most spectacular cases. What is it that makes early election polls such poor predictors of the finish?
One reason undoubtedly is the campaign. The real contest for votes in November does not begin in earnest until after the party conventions have formally nominated the presidential candidates. The best proof for the importance of the campaign is still Harry Truman’s “whistle-stop campaign†in 1948. Logging 20,000 miles on the Ferdinand Magellan with stops wherever the train took him, Truman literally gained ground on Dewey with every stop he made along the route. Polls missed the surge in Truman support since they quit polling a few weeks before Election Day, assuming that the race was over.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/501368-joe-biden-lead-in-polls-does-not-ensure-final-victory-for-election
