Trump could lose the popular vote by 6 million and still win the Electoral College
Did you know that the Republican candidate for president has lost the popular vote every single time since 1988 with just one exception? That exception was in 2004 when George W. Bush beat John Kerry. Other than that one time, Democrats have been winning the popular vote in election after election. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump, and yet Trump won the election because of how the Electoral College works. So as we analyze this election, focusing on national polling numbers is not necessarily going to tell us who is going to win. Instead, we need to focus on the swing states, because getting to 270 electoral votes is how you win a presidential election.
In the end, pretty much everyone agrees that the outcome of this race is going to be decided by three states in the north (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan) and three states in the south (Florida, North Carolina and Arizona).
Trump won all six of those states in 2016, and most polls show close contests in all of them this time around.
So Democrats should not put too much faith in the national polls that show Joe Biden with a sizable lead. Most of those polls turned out to be not very accurate in 2016, most of them habitually oversample Democrats, and it is well known that many Trump voters are not really eager to talk to pollsters.
Ultimately, the truth is that this election is a lot closer than most people think, and it is easy to imagine a scenario in which Biden squeaks out a relatively small victory in the popular vote but loses the Electoral College just like Hillary Clinton did.
If you doubt this, just consider the numbers that Nate Silver has come up with. The following are what he believes Biden’s chances of winning the Electoral College are at various margins of victory in the popular vote…
- 0-1 points: just 6%!