Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States

It remains something of a mystery why there's so little apprehension among liberal pundits and Democrats about the similarities between battleground state polling for the 2020 presidential election and 2016 contest -- which as you might recall did not turn out as expected.

Consider the case of Wisconsin:

The RealClearPolitics average had Clinton +6.5 in Wisconsin on Election Day in 2016. In August of that year, she had been +11.5. Not a single poll featured on RCP during the entire campaign showed Donald Trump winning the state. Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden has a +3.5 average right now -- which is to say, he is underperforming Clinton in the middle of a pandemic and ensuing economic collapse. This is the case in several battleground states. What happens if the coronavirus continues to ebb or the economy continues rebounding over the next couple of months?

A new CNBC poll, for instance, finds that as serious concerns about the coronavirus fell in six 2020 battleground states, approval of Trump's handling of COVID-19 rose.

This average, incidentally, was taken before the Kenosha riots. As Wisconsin radio host Dan O'Donnell points out to me, many Republicans in the state believe the August 2016 riots in Milwaukee over the shooting death of Sylville Smith (an incident that was eventually ruled to be justified) likely played a role Trump's win. It was around the time the polls began to tighten. "Milwaukee is seen outstate as being wholly unlike the rest of the largely rural population because of its crime and Democrat policies," O'Donnell says. "If people in, say, Appleton and Oshkosh (the other big swing area) and the heavily red suburbs think Milwaukee-style rioting could come to their cities next, Democrats are in big trouble here."

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