Obviously, the fact that Clinton underperformed her pre-election polls in these states should give us pause. Amazingly, however, these Rust Belt numbers among White voters are so good for Biden that he’s in a considerably better position than even the final high quality pre-election polling that looked rosy for Clinton in each state.
We can drill down further to examine non-college educated White voters as well. Not every poll provides that crosstab, so I combined the different states to get a large enough sample to compare. Across the six polls that did include a crosstab for Whites without a college degree, the trend is very clear.
Biden’s doing on average 12 points better among Whites without a college degree than Clinton did in the combined sample of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin polls. He’s obviously still trailing among White voters without a college degree, but the margin on average is closer to 10 points in favor of Trump than 20 points.
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