What the new polling on the US election tells us

Parse out the details of The Independent’s latest polls and you get to an interesting story, writes Dave Maclean

The Trump-Biden debate (AP)

Election polling, unfairly, gets a bad reputation. Stats show that polls of the 2016 presidential election were about as accurate as the average of polls going way back to 1972.

Most polling was off at a state level, but correctly predicted the popular vote. Hence Hillary Clinton’s 3 million vote margin but ultimate defeat.

Polling this time around is showing landslide levels of support for Biden, but the states themselves are a lot harder to call.

In other words, polling is flawed at predicting specific events, but great for gauging overall sentiment.

Which is what makes our recently exclusive polling for The Independent so fascinating. As well as elections, our pollster took the temperature on a range of issues, including the election aftermath.

There are red warning lights flashing across the board.

First, almost three-quarters of Americans fear riots and violence after Election Day. Over 70 per cent of both supporters of Donald Trump and Joe Biden said they have such concerns.

A tight, contested election would likely give rise to such scenes, and while Biden currently has a 10-point lead, there are some gaps in his support – his popularity among white college-educated and Black voters lags behind Hillary Clinton’s, for instance, and that’s with just two weeks to go.

Elsewhere, Trump’s feud with Dr Anthony Fauci appears to be having its desired effect: 54 per cent of the president's backers express confidence in a vaccine before a Fauci endorsement is mentioned in the polling. But after it is, that figure drops to 45 per cent.

So there are three things potentially to fret over: a close election, followed by violence, followed by scepticism over a silver-bullet vaccine if and when it finally arrives.

Usually, Election Day is like the political version of Christmas Day – after months of hype, it hits, and then … it’s done.

This year, Election Day feels like it could have the potential to be the beginning of several of the most chaotic weeks of recent times.

Yours,

Dave MacLean

US features editor