New polls show Biden winning suburbanites by a historic margin

In the average of all the polls, Biden’s ahead by nearly 20 points with suburban voters. This is a historic margin, if it holds.

The fact that Biden is doing so well in the suburbs shouldn’t be a surprise. The suburbs are a bellwether vote of sorts in our current political environment. That is, the suburban vote mirrors the national vote closer than the urban or rural vote.

Biden’s lead in the suburbs is reflective of him doing significantly better than Hillary Clinton. Four years ago at this time, Trump was beating Clinton by a 45% to 35% margin in the ABC/Washington Post poll among suburban voters…

Lyndon Johnson in 1964 was maybe the only Democrat in the last 70 years who probably won by double-digits in the suburbs. He won overall by 23 points that year. Although no exit poll data is available from that year, the American National Election Studies shows he did about 10 points worse in the suburbs than he did nationally.

The clear difference between the 1964 and 2020 elections is that Biden, at this point, is running ahead of his national numbers in the suburbs. Biden’s lead overall in the polls with a suburban crosstab averages out to be about 13 points.