(JustPatriots.com)- President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden are neck-and-neck heading into November’s election.
Emerson Polling released data this week that shows the two major candidates are separated by only 2 percentage points, which is virtually nothing in terms of polling.
Biden received 49% support from people who responded to Emerson’s poll, while Trump received support from 47% of those who responded. This is a nice 2% improvement for Trump, who trailed Biden 50% to 46% in Emerson’s July poll.
The biggest contrast in the poll came in terms of how people are going to vote. Those who said they would vote by mail would be supporting Biden at a rate of 67% compared to only 28% for Trump. On the flip side, those who plan to head to the polls on Election Day support Trump at a rate of 57% compared to only 37% for Biden.
Half of people who plan to head to the polls to vote early said they would be supporting the president, with 48% saying they would be casting their vote for Biden.
In terms of job support, 48.5% of those who responded to the poll said they approved of the job Trump is doing, with 46.9% saying they don’t approve.
The Trump campaign received some more good polling news this week when the Trafalgar Group says Trump is ahead of Biden in some key battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Talfagar Group was the only polling company that correctly predicted Trump would win Michigan in the 2016 presidential election. Every other polling group predicted a large victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Now, the company is predicting a similar outcome. Trafalgar says Trump is ahead of Biden by roughly one point in both Michigan in Wisconsin, and is within a half-percentage point in Minnesota.
As the company’s president, Robert Cahaly, said on Twitter this week:
“Doubt what we @trafalgar_group say about #MI #Elections2020 at your own peril. History is not on your side.”
When asked why his company has gotten state results right when others were wrong, Cahaly said Trafalgar Group’s surveys “don’t get people who are too interested in politics. We better identify hidden voters.”
“When we talk about hidden voters, what we’re talking about is the social-desirability bias, and that is when people basically tell a live-caller what they think will get them judged least harshly,” he said. “Some races have that, some races don’t. In 2020, the presidential question has social-desirability bias.”
To find those “hidden voters,” Cahaly says his company has different strategies, explaining:
“I start with a voter file that has everything from occupation to incomes to education levels to voting history to likely religion. We give people multiple ways to participate in our polls. We do live calls. We do automated calls. We do texts. We do emails. We do other digital platforms.”
He believes other polls ask too many questions and focus too much on people who are thoroughly interested in politics. But there are plenty of other people who don’t fit into that category but still vote.
