32 days and Counting

 Yesterday the first national polls dropped that included the night of the debate. 

• Rasmussen (9/23-9/29), usually quite favorable to Trump, put Biden's lead at 8%, up from 1% on its previous tally.
• Reuters/Ipsos (9/25-9/29) gave Biden a 9% lead.
• Economist/YouGov (9/27-9/29), like Rasmussen, gave Biden an 8% lead.
• CNBC/Change Research (9/29-9/30) put Biden's lead at 13%!

Now, that last poll may just be an outlier, but it's the first poll to include responses from the day after the now-infamous debate. I think it may well be a blip, but right now Biden's lead in the RCP Polling Average is up to 7.2% and definitely trending upwards.

I think that the general population puts less trust in polling than they do the daily horoscope, but it's important to note that the national polling in the last election was spot on. They were inaccurate, though, in a few key states, and thus missed the Electoral College advantage that Trump eventually enjoyed.

Let's assume they will be mistaken a few states yet again. They may be underestimating Trump's support in some states, but it's also possible they've overestimated it (perhaps as a result of over-correcting for the mistakes they made last time).

The point is, the consistency of this Biden lead over hundreds of polls cannot be dismissed. And given all this data and even a possible trend in Biden's favor, it is even appropriate to begin to consider the possibility of something approaching a Biden landslide.

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The president tests positive for COVID-19. Hard to say how this will impact the race. I assume he will cancel all in-person rallies for the next two weeks or so (longer if he starts to show symptoms). Hard to say whether the rallies actually impact the election outcome very much.

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See also:

Reaching the "Bannon Line" by Mike Madrid. Bannon said back in January that it would take only a 3-4% move of Trump's 2016 voters away from the president to bring about a defeat for Trump.

Because here’s what we know: Donald Trump’s swing vote is America’s suburbs. Those votes are slipping through his fingers. He’s underwater with every group imaginable, except non-college-educated white men. Older voters, college-educated voters, and college-educated white women are now leading a mass exodus from the president and coalescing in support of Joe Biden. In 2016, Trump won 65-plus voters by 7 points. This year, he is behind Biden by 6 points with those voters in the battleground states—a 13-point flip. Add to that, in those suburbs, he’s got a massive double-digit deficit to Biden—driven by Biden’s 20-point-plus lead among suburban women and, 39-point lead among college-educated white women.