Presidency

The Path to the White House: How Trump and Biden can Win the Electoral College

By Gonzalo I Rodao Edited by Brenagh Rapoport

The 2020 presidential election is occurring in a highly tumultuous year. The United States has been facing an immense social divide caused by national Black Lives Matter protests, the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice in an election year, and the global COVID-19 pandemic. National unity in the country seems to be at an all-time low as American politics are increasingly polarized, evidenced by the fact that partisanship is increasingly the dividing line in political values, surpassing age, gender, and race.111 The road to the White House will require parties to secure the swing states and pull a few upsets, especially in the case of the Republican Party who are currently not favoured to win the presidency.

Unlike many other democracies, getting the most total votes (the “popular vote”) is insufficient to secure the presidency in the United States. Rather, the president is chosen by the 538 electors in the Electoral College. States have a varying number of electors assigned to them based on their number of congressional districts. Almost all states operate on a winner-takes-all system: the candidate who wins a simple majority of the votes in a state claims that state’s electors, who then vote for that candidate in the Electoral College. A candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to secure the presidency. Therefore, it is all about the states when it comes to American politics. The presidential election is often decided by the candidate that can secure the “swing states”, those whose allegiances do not lie firmly with either party.

Current polls at the time of this article favour Democratic candidate Joe Biden to win the presidency, with Biden averaging more than 9% above incumbent President Trump.112 According to opinion poll analysis website FiveThirtyEight, Biden is favoured to win the election in 87 of 100 outcomes, based on over 40,000 statistical simulations.113 He has already practically secured 212 electoral votes thanks to states like California, New York, and Illinois that will predictably vote Democrat.114 The question therefore lies with states that are leaning Democrat (less than a five-point predicted margin of victory for the Democrats), particularly Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) and Michigan (16), and the swing states, especially Florida (29) and Ohio (18).115 In an ideal scenario for the Democrats, Biden secures all the Democrat-leaning states and the swing states (375-163 electoral votes). Even in the case of Biden only winning the Democrat-leaning states and Trump winning the swing states, the total tally would be 290-248 electors for Biden. The

111“In a Politically Polarized Era, Sharp Divides in Both Partisan Coalitions,” U.S. Politics & Policy, Pew Research Center, December 17, 2019. 112 Nate Silver, “2020 Election Forecast,” FiveThirtyEight, October 23, 2020. 113 Ibid. 114 Josh Holder and Alexander Burns, “The Battleground States Biden and Trump Need to Win 270,” The New York Times, September 1, 2020. 115 Ibid.

deciding factor for the Democratic Party will therefore be whether they can secure a sufficient turnout among their voters, the failure of which cost them the 2016 election.116

History favours the re-election of President Trump, as only ten American presidents have tried and failed to win re-election.117 Nor is Trump’s current low standing in the polls a definite indication of the outcome, as he won the presidency in 2016 despite the polls favouring Democrat Hillary Clinton.118 Many political analysts believe this was partly due to a factor the polls did not take into account: the secret Trump voter.119 It is no secret that the business-magnate-turned-politician is quite controversial. Many Trump supporters were afraid of telling pollsters their real political affiliation in 2016, as it was an unpopular opinion to support him, causing inaccurate predictions based on polls.120 It is imperative to remind the reader inclined to dismiss him based on the polls that Trump won states in 2016 where he was predicted to lose by double digits. Any scenario involving a victory for Trump would likely require him to win all the swing states, to give him a possibility to win by 270-268. This would give him one of the tightest victories in American history, besting even that of Bush v. Gore in 2000, which was decided by 5 electoral votes.121 If Trump also manages to secure Democrat-leaning states (known as “flipping”), as he did in 2016, this would give him a wider margin of victory.

Therefore, the question arises: can we ultimately trust the polls as an effective way of predicting an election? One thing remains clear: those “secret” Trump voters did not hesitate to go out and vote for him in 2016, while his detractors, anticipating a relatively easy win, did not feel the urgency to vote. If Trump can again count on his base’s participation and the same idleness from the opposition, he will likely be elected to a second term in office.

With the 2016 presidential election having been perhaps the biggest upset in American political history, will the polls get it right this time, or will Trump pull off another underdog victory? Once again, voter turnout will be the single largest determinant of who is elected to the US presidency this year.

116 Eddy Fougier, “La Surprise Trump : Les Raisons d’Une Improbable Victoire,” L'Europe En Formation 382, no. 1 (2017): p. 9. 117 James Crump, “How Many US Presidents Have Lost out on a Second Term?” The Independent, October 23, 2020. 118 Eddy Fougier, La Surprise Trump : Les Raisons d’Une Improbable Victoire. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 Sarah Pruitt, “8 Most Contentious US Presidential Elections,” History.com, April 26, 2016.