Everybody knows that national polls are fun to follow, but utterly irrelevant when it comes to the outcome of presidential elections. 

Joe Biden could win 100% of the vote in Blue states, blowing Trump out of the water in the popular vote, but if Trump gets a minor plurality of the votes in states with 270 or more electoral votes he would walk into the White House on January 20th, 2025. 

The same is true in the opposite scenario. The Electoral College matters and the popular vote is a sideshow. 

Still, the state of overall public opinion is relevant in other ways; it tells you a lot about the mood of the country, gives you a sense of what is likely to happen in a close race in swing states, and following the numbers gives us something to do as we try to guess what will happen on election day. 

So, in light of these facts, let's take a look at the state of the race today vs. that in 2020. We keep hearing about Trump's small but consistent lead in the polls in recent months; how does that compare to 2020?

If you look at the 2024 polls in isolation, you would have to declare this race a tossup. Trump has had a slight and consistent lead but nothing to write home about. With Kennedy in the race the lead is about one point, and the numbers aren't that much different in a head-to-head matchup. 

No doubt you would rather be in Trump's shoes, electorally speaking, than Biden's. But in a race this close with several months left, Biden has more than enough time to recover and pull ahead.

Right? 

Right?

Technically speaking, the answer is yes. But let's look at the state of the race in context and see what we think after looking at more data. 

Yikes! In 2020, there was no time when Donald Trump was even in striking distance in the national polling average. Now as we know, the final results were much closer than we might have guessed if we took these polls as gospel, at least when it came to the Electoral College, but by any measure, you would have to look at these polls and give Biden the advantage, even if you didn't know the outcome. 

It may be that there were shenanigans that gave Biden the edge to win in key states on election day (and a few days after), but anybody who thinks that Trump likely won the popular vote has much explaining to do, given the polls. 

As a practical matter, we can assume that a good chunk of Trump's improved popularity is an improvement in standing in Blue states, where it would take a massive shift in opinion that seems unlikely to change the outcome of the Electoral College vote count. However, it would be shocking to find out that large numbers of people in California and New York have shifted to Trump without seeing a similar trend in the swing states. 

In simpler terms, if Trump almost won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by millions of voters, it seems rather unlikely that he could win the popular vote and not sweep in the Electoral College. That's how the math tends to work in the real world. 

And, indeed, it sure looks like that is holding up in the swing state polls, in which Trump is ahead by relatively comfortable margins (outside Wisconsin, which is extremely tight). If the election were held today Trump would win the Electoral College by a comfortable margin. 

Of course, both Biden and Trump will focus on the battleground states. Joe Biden doesn't care if he loses a few points in New York and California, and Trump isn't spending his nights sleepless worrying about Texas or Florida. 

Regarding the question in the back of your mind: what about shenanigans? It's not just who votes that counts, but who counts the votes, right?

Right. It does matter quite a bit, but there are limits to the ability of people to cheat. First, Democrats went all out to "turn out" the vote in 2020, and it is hard to see how much they could improve their efforts in 2024. Second, when Biden was ahead consistently in the polls, it was easier to ignore any shady or unusual things that happened. 

Biden was ahead, so his winning was hardly shocking and easy to justify, even if some venues did unusual things like count votes behind closed doors or when they had supposedly quit counting. 

If Trump is ahead by 4 in Michigan in the polls on election day, a surprise 125% turnout in Detroit will raise eyebrows and be hard to explain away. The mainstream media may be willing to push the limits of credibility in order to convince people of the plausible, but the number of convincible independents would be rather small. 

At some point you can't explain the obvious away. In other words, there is a breaking point even for the MSM. Not MSNBC, perhaps, but many media outlets will throw in the towel and admit that Trump won. 

Obviously Joe Biden has a shot to win the White House in November, but you would have to bet against him. 

In fact, people are: