Three potential wild cards for a razor-close Biden-Trump election
The Trump-Biden rematch is too close (40.8 percent to 40.3 percent in the FiveThirtyEight polling average on Wednesday) to handicap with confidence, and too frozen (Trump’s barely statistically significant lead has held for months) to deliver much horse-race drama. But if the candidates remain as neck-and-neck as they currently appear, some unexpected things could happen after the polls close in November. Three wild-card outcomes deserve closer consideration. The first is the possibility that Trump ekes out the most votes — and loses the presidency. Yes, it’s unlikely; FiveThirtyEight’s data wizards assign this possibility a 1-in-100 chance, compared with an 11-in-100 chance that Biden loses despite a popular-vote lead.
There are some signs the GOP’s alleged “structural advantage” in elections — its propensity to win more political power than its raw vote totals would suggest — is slipping.
consider the possibility of an electoral college tie, throwing the election to the House of Representatives. FiveThirtyEight’s model gets that result in about five out of 1,000 simulations. One route to a 269-269 electoral college split would be Trump winning back Pennsylvania and Michigan from Biden’s 2020 column and the map otherwise staying the same.
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