I've had occasion to mention the tendency of Trump and his supporters to be strangely optimistic about the outcome of this election. But there is no polling evidence of a trend toward Trump. In fact, in the past month the RCP polling average has been remarkably stable. Biden's lead has hovered around 7 percent nationally, and in the battleground states around 3 percent. This is not to say that the Biden has this all sewn up, but to say that any expectations of a big win for Trump seem quite fantastic.
The single explanation for such optimism is usually that there are a large number of "shy" Trump supporters that will not talk to pollsters. Thus, so the story goes, they do not factor in these poll results. Whether or not there really is such a host of uncountable voters is debatable. It's important to note, however, that Biden's lead is well beyond the usual "margin of error," and the MOE is in part designed to account for such things as the shy voter.
But then there's the Electoral College. Might not Trump, yet again, lose the popular vote but remain in office with the help of the EC? It could happen, but he will have to close the gap pretty significantly. In what RCP calls the Battleground States, most of which Trump will need to win if he is to snatch an Electoral College victory in November, he actually did close the gap in the month of August (from 6.3% on July 28 to 3.2% on September 1). Since then, however, he seems to have stalled. Biden's lead has drifted back to 3.2% in these states.
This NYT piece refers to statistician Nate Silver's recent remarks that for Trump is to have chance to eke out a win in the EC, he will have to cut into Biden's popular vote advantage significantly. Silver says that a margin of 7 million votes (equivalent to about a 5% margin) would all but assure him the election (recall that Clinton defeated Trump in the 2016 popular vote by about 2.8 million). In other words, if the polling margin of today (7.1%) is the margin of victory in November, the EC will not be likely to give Trumpall the help he needs.
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