With less than two months until Election Day, it looks like former Vice President Joe Biden has the current edge over President Donald Trump.
According to The New York Times’s most recent batch of polling, Biden leads seven to 10 percentage points ahead of Trump nationally, with a two- to nine-point lead in different swing states.
Though the former vice president is ahead right now, it’s important not to count the chickens before they hatch. The outcome of this race is nowhere near set in stone and, as 2020 has certainly proven, a lot can change in a few short months.
America faces incredibly tumultuous times as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, massive racial justice protests sweep major cities across the nation and the economy continues to plummet rather than recover.
American life this year has essentially become a “confluence of crises,” wrote U.S. News writer Susan Milligan. Living through 2020 is something akin to living through the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the massive financial collapse of the Great Depression in 1929 and the civil unrest of the 1960s — all at once.
At this point during any other presidential election year, the state of the race would be at the top of everyone’s minds, blanketing the airwaves of cable news and the front pages of national newspapers. Not in 2020.
The immense amount of unrest and uncertainty in the country has quickly turned this race into one that centers on the candidate’s ability to tackle these pressing issues.
According to FiveThirtyEight polling data, as of Wednesday, 66.9 percent of Americans feel either “somewhat” or “very” concerned about the possibility of themselves or their loved ones becoming infected with the coronavirus.
As the number of cases in the United States climbs to nearly 6.4 million and the death toll to nearly 200,000, it is easy to understand why so many Americans feel such concern.
The prioritization of health and safety have created a massive shift in the way people live every aspect of their lives. Expectedly, this concern is also set to shift the way Americans cast their ballots in November.
Rather than waiting to vote in long lines surrounded by strangers, experts predict around 80 million mail-in ballots will be cast this fall. The shift to mail-in voting is also predicted to increase voter turnout rates in states that make the mail-in voting option easy and accessible.
In addition to increased voter turnout, polling shows that the majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic and trust Biden’s ability to guide the nation through this crisis. These factors could prove very beneficial for the former vice president come Election Day.
Biden 1, Trump 0.
Along with the pandemic, the recent surge of the Black Lives Matter movement and racial justice protests across the country are impacting votes.
According to a poll conducted by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, seven in 10 voters believe race relations in the U.S. are bad, but are divided about the root of the issue. The poll found that 46 percent of voters believe the country’s racism is systemic while 44 percent believe racism is an interpersonal conflict.
Despite this division on the root of racism, a recent Quinnipiac University poll reported 58 percent of likely voters trust Biden to calm the waters and effectively handle racial inequality.
Biden 2, Trump 0.
While Biden continues to outperform the president on issues such as the pandemic and protests, Trump may have the edge over Biden in one key area — the economy.
The pandemic plummeted the U.S. economy into a deep recession just a little more than a decade since its last. During the first month of the pandemic alone, 14 million Americans lost their jobs and were shoved onto unemployment rolls with the hopes that the $600 a week in additional benefits would keep them afloat until lockdown restrictions ended.
Since that peak, 8.6 million jobs were added back to the economy, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Despite the terrible economic collapse under Trump’s administration, a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll reports 53 percent of Americans trust Trump to lift the economy back up over Biden.
With the state of the economy being the No. 2 issue — just behind the pandemic and public health, according to a Fortune-Survey Monkey poll — perhaps Trump’s image as the better businessman will help him in November.
Biden 2, Trump 1.
No matter what the state of the race looks like today, tomorrow or the next day, it’s important to remember that it’s still anyone’s game. Anything can happen between now and November.
So, no matter what the polls say or how you think things are going to shake out, remember to go out and vote. Never get too confident in your preferred candidate’s chances of winning that you don’t show up to vote. Never get so discouraged by your candidate’s chances of losing that you don’t show up to vote.
If you have the ability to vote, you should absolutely exercise that right and privilege on Nov. 3 — no matter what.
