Donald Trump’s path to victory narrow, not impossible

In the final days of the US election campaign, Joe Biden has a clear advantage in national and state polling and therefore many paths to achieving the necessary 270 votes in the electoral college. Donald Trump is well behind in the polling and has only a narrow, though not impossible, path to victory.

In assessing the various ways both candidates can win the presidency, it is important to note that Trump won a very narrow election victory in 2016. He lost the popular vote by 2.8 million to Hillary Clinton. It is very unlikely Trump will win the popular vote this year.

So, Trump’s task is to thread the needle of the Electoral College. Trump won the electoral college by demolishing the Democrats’ so-called “blue wall”: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But he won these three states by a small margin – a combined 77,744 votes.

Trump’s campaigning and advertising spend is almost exclusively focused on states he won last time. He is not looking to expand the electoral map. Many presidents have made gains when seeking re-election: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1956), Richard Nixon (1972), Ronald Reagan (1984), Bill Clinton (1996) and George W. Bush (2004).

There is one state that Trump hopes to pick up: Minnesota. Clinton won the state in 2016. The last Republican to win the mid-western state of Minnesota was Nixon in 1972. It is unlikely Trump can pick up this state.

Trump won 304 electoral college votes four years ago. The magic number is 270 to clinch victory. So, if he loses 35 votes, he’s toast. That could come by losing just Florida (29) and Wisconsin (10). Or he could lose just Pennsylvania (20) and Michigan (16). Two states stand between Trump’s re-election and defeat.

So Trump’s pathway to victory is to replicate what he achieved four years ago. It is possible that there could be another polling error in his favour. But we are past the point where this would be a normal polling error. But if the polling averages in 2020 are as wrong as they were in 2016, Trump would still lose.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden has an 8.6 per cent average polling lead in Michigan, 4.9 per cent in Pennsylvania and 8.3 per cent in Wisconsin. Trump is also trailing Biden in North Carolina, Arizona and Ohio, albeit by smaller margins, but they are states he carried in 2016.

More worrying for Trump is that he is behind in Georgia (16 electoral college votes), according to RealClearPolitics. The last Democrat to win Georgia was Clinton in 1992. Texas (38 votes) is also at risk of voting for Biden.

That is why this electoral dynamics favour a Biden victory.

If Biden holds all the states Clinton won in 2016, he has multiple paths to 270 electoral votes. He could lose Florida and Arizona but win the presidency just by picking up Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – reassembling the “blue wall”. This is Biden’s best bet.

Or Biden could win just Florida and Michigan to edge past 270. Or Biden could win Arizona and Florida in the sunbelt and pick up Wisconsin in the rust belt to claim victory. There are many ways to slice and dice a Biden win.

If Trump loses Florida or Pennsylvania with a combination of just two other smaller states, he will not be able to reach 270. If Georgia or Texas goes blue, it will be over quickly.

The bottom line for Trump is that he will need to win states that are too close to call such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio while also winning several states that are now “light blue” (leaning towards Biden) such as Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Hampshire. It is a tall order.

If the election looks close in several battleground states, we may not know the outcome on election night (Wednesday AEDT) due to the record early voting. But we will probably know enough to know where the race is headed.

Arizona, North Carolina and Florida will count most of their early votes on or before election day. But Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will not start counting most of their early votes until election day, and it could take several days to complete. That is OK – votes are always counted after election day.

Australian audiences should start to see the first results before 11am on Wednesday. At 11am (AEDT), polls close in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania with results to come at that hour. Most polls will have closed by 1pm with results to follow in the early afternoon. It will be thrilling to watch.