This column appeared on Broadsheet.ie on Oct 12th 2020. Here I take my courage in my hands and predict – three weeks out from the official US Presidential polling day – that Joe Biden will win the presidency… and win it comfortably.
This is less based on polling, though national polls continue to show Biden with a clear 7 – 9 pt lead over Trump, and is more predicated on the evidence from the Trump side that it knows its man is beaten and is now focused on challenging the authenticity of the result. The Trump campaign is spending billions so Trump can sit in his Maralago golf resort this time next year and tell himself: I didn’t lose, I was robbed!
When trying to forecast an election result a few weeks out from polling day political pundits protect themselves by saying well, this would be the result if people were voting tomorrow, but there are still a few weeks to go and anything could happen.
But, when it comes to this American presidential election, people are voting tomorrow, just as they were voting today, yesterday, last week and even back to mid-September.
According to Vote.org, 27 States are already voting in person and/or have totally mail-in ballots. 9 out of the 50 States have been open for early voting from six weeks before the November 3 polling date, including Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia and New Jersey. Early voting started in California a week ago.
Over 9 million Americans have already voted, this is 8 – 10 times as many as voted this early in 2016. In five states the number of ballots already returned is more than 20% of the 2016 turnout.
Continue reading “Biden will win. #Bigly. Trump is going down… but not in a way he’d like!”
Postscript: Perhaps a better way of summing up the Clinton/Trump debate is to say that she didn’t do much to reduce her unfavourable while Trump did a lot to increase his…. 
Here is my Broadsheet column from June 7th 2016. Published online here: 
derekmooney.ie 