By Reece Nations, Managing Editor
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Despite initially being competitive, the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is securely within the grasp of former Vice President Joe Biden. Incumbent President Donald Trump will face off against Biden in November after experiencing no real primary threat within the ranks of the Republican Party.
In the United States, a presidential candidate needs 270 votes from the Electoral College in order to win the election. Each state’s electoral vote figure varies based on its population.
The number of electoral votes considered to “safely” belong to Biden and Trump are 183 to 125, respectively, according to consensus polling data collected by 270towin. This site’s interactive electoral map corresponds its configuration based on consistently updated polling data.
Latest data shows Biden’s lead over Trump. Image obtained from 270towin.
California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland are Biden’s largest safe states. Trump, in comparison, holds leverage over a wide swath of southern and midwestern states—Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky and Alabama safely and consistently poll in favor of Trump.
Electoral forecasters from Ipsos, an international market research consulting firm, gathered polling data from April 27 through April 29 for the international news organization Reuters. Ipsos’ data currently indicates Biden has an eight-percent lead nationally over Trump, by a margin of 47 to 39 percent of the vote, according to 270towin.
Similarly, The Economist—with assistance from YouGov, another international data-gathering consulting firm—released its own election poll that anticipates Biden’s lead to be six-percent over Trump. Presently, Biden has 14 conceivable avenues to the electoral vote threshold compared to 12 potential paths for Trump.
Swing states in this election cycle include Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nebraska, according to 270towin. In contrast to “safe states”, these battleground states can reasonably be won by either candidate on election night.
However, an Electoral College tie is still a very real possibility given the number of different conceivable ways the swing states could fall. For example, should Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nebraska be won by Trump while Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin are won by Biden, both candidates would sit at 269 electoral votes each.
Swing state combinations that would end in a tie. Image obtained from 270towin.
In this scenario, a contingent election would be triggered—an exceedingly rare event that has only occurred three times in U.S. history—where the presidency is determined by a vote in the House of Representatives and the vice presidency is determined by a vote in the Senate. This procedure was adapted into by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Most notably, President Andrew Jackson lost his re-election bid against John Quincy Adams despite winning a majority of both the popular and electoral vote, according to 270towin. Four candidates; Adams, Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay, were all vying for the presidency and none obtained the votes necessary to reach the Electoral College threshold; thus triggering the House vote that led to Adams’ election.
This scenario becomes far less likely should one of the candidates win a state from their opponent unexpectedly. Biden’s popularity versus Trump has remained competitive in the Republican stronghold state of Texas, for example.
Texas’ Trump versus Biden polling data. Image obtained from 270towin.
While polling data from the University of Texas at Tyler, NBC News, the Texas Tribune and Texas Lyceum all indicate Trump leads in the race, data from Public Policy and CNN suggests Biden trails closely, according to 270towin.
Conversely, Trump polls comparatively well in some states considered to be Democratic-leaning. In Colorado, Trump notched 45 percent of the state’s support against Biden and nearly 40 percent in Nevada. Both these states were won by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her campaign’s 2016 loss to Trump.
Only two states have adapted their voting rules to a split-electoral format: Nebraska and Maine. Rather than determine their state’s electoral votes based on a “winner-take-all” popular vote, Nebraska and Maine allocate two of their votes to the state’s popular vote winner and one vote to the winner of each of their congressional districts’ popular vote. There are two congressional voting districts in Maine and three in Nebraska.
Split-electoral votes have only occurred once in each state’s history, according to 270towin. In the 2008 election, President Barack Obama won an electoral vote from Nebraska’s second congressional district—he was the first Democrat to do so since 1964. The only other instance was in 2016 when Trump won Maine’s second congressional district despite Clinton winning the rest of the state’s electoral votes.
Votes siphoned away from Trump and Biden by third-party candidates may also occupy a pivotal role in how the general election plays out. Connecticut’s latest poll conducted from March 24 through April 3 by GreatBlue Research predicts Biden leading Trump by a 49-to-35 percent margin; with 16 percent of voters supporting some other candidate.
Local voter registration and election information can be found on the Texas Secretary of State website, or at votetexas.gov.
About Reece Nations, Managing Editor
