Is Biden gaining older voters and losing young ones?
After impeachment, a coronavirus pandemic and four years of tweets, the early national polls show that the 2020 presidential campaign begins almost exactly where it left off in 2016.
Today, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by just under 6 percentage points among registered voters. Nearly four years ago, the final national polls showed that Hillary Clinton led Trump by around 5 percentage points among registered voters.
The similarities are even starker on closer examination. The polls depict an electorate that remains split in the same ways, with Trump and Biden drawing nearly identical numbers to ones the candidates did four years ago among white voters with or without a college degree.
But not everything is exactly the same, and even modest differences have the potential to alter the race. Biden shows early strength among older voters; Trump has made gains among nonwhite voters. There are early signs of an expanded gender gap.
All of this could change by November, but all of it could be decisive in a contest with the potential to be closely fought.
Here’s how the coalitions have or haven’t changed in the past four years.
What’s the same
• Trump trails by 5 or 6 points
In the compilation of comparable live-interview telephone surveys used for this analysis, Clinton led by exactly 5 points among registered voters in polls conducted after the third presidential debate in October 2016. Biden, in contrast, leads in similar polls by 5.8 points.
Of course, state polls struggled in 2016. But the national polls weren’t so bad. The national polls used here showed Clinton ahead by 3.7 points among likely voters, or only about 1.6 points more than her final 2.1-point popular vote margin.
It’s worth recalling that a 1.6-point shift in Clinton’s favor probably would have won her the election, and Biden probably will be considered a narrow favorite if he enters the election with a 5-point lead among registered voters.
• A huge split among white voters by college education
The defining feature of the 2016 presidential election was a huge gap between the preferences of white voters with or without a college degree. Four years later, this wide split remains essentially unchanged, with Trump leading by around 30 points among whites without a college degree and Biden holding a doubledigit lead among whites with a college degree.
It suggests that Biden, despite his reputed appeal to white working-class voters, has not succeeded in broadly winning back those in that group who flipped from President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.
• A relative Trump advantage in the Electoral College
Trump’s wide lead among white voters without a college degree means that he has retained his advantage in the relatively white working-class battleground states that have tended to decide recent U.S. presidential elections.
So far, state polls show that Biden holds only a narrow lead — perhaps around a combined 2 points — among registered voters in the states likeliest to decide the presidency: Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.
It’s consistent with the data from the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats won the U.S. House vote in Wisconsin and Arizona narrowly — and lost it in Florida — despite winning the national vote by 7 points. It’s also consistent with the major 2018 election surveys, which found Trump’s approval rating about even in the same states.
Trump’s persistent relative advantage in the Electoral College gives Republicans a chance to win the presidency without the popular vote for the third time in six elections.
What’s different
• A Biden surge among the oldest voters
The similarities between the 2016 and 2020 polls are stark, but there are notable differences, too.
One is that Biden holds a wide lead among voters 65 and older, upsetting for now a nearly two-decade pattern of Republican strength among the oldest voters. Overall, Biden holds nearly a 10-point lead among registered voters in this age group, while Clinton trailed among these voters by 5 points in the final polls.
This isn’t a small shift. It’s consistent across every live-interview poll, it’s not easy to explain, and it is fairly new. As recently as the 2018 midterm elections, the president’s approval rating among seniors was above water and Republicans won the group.
Part of the difference is compositional: Baby boomers now make up nearly 60 percent of registered voters over 65, up from 40 percent in 2016.
What explains the rest? One possible explanation is Biden himself. Older voters appear to have a favorable view of him, and it’s not hard to imagine why they might see him in a more favorable light than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or even John Kerry.
He’s the first white male Democratic nominee since 2004, and he’s probably the first one since 2000 or perhaps earlier who won’t easily be dismissed as a liberal.
• Trump gains among nonwhite voters
Trump, on the other hand, has made gains among nonwhite voters, one of his weaknesses in 2016. In recent polls, he holds the support of 22 percent of nonwhite registered voters, higher for him than in any of the late live-interview polls in 2016.