Biden’s Lead Declines

It was over 10, I believe, certainly at 9+ but it has been on a steady decline for a couple of weeks and you can see in the bottom box his lead compared to Hillary Clinton’s at this same point in the 2016 campaign is practically non-existent nationally and just a tiny bit better in the Top Battlegrounds. 5.1% in the Top Battlegrounds is still too large for Trump voter suppression and Russian-Trump vote theft to make up; the CW is when there is ~3% difference they can. The battleground number aggregate is down only from 5.4% most recently but that is probably due to the lack of many new polls in the individual states. However it is that little down. You can also see that RCP’s no-tossup Electoral College count is unchanged. Three major, reputable EC counts, those of RCP, Cook, and NPR have Biden over 270 in no tossup maps, but the declines, especially nationally, are concerning. The trend is allowing a bit of reasonable doubt to seep into the inevitability of President Biden. Trump has kept out of the shit puddles, he has largely been silent, since the new campaign manager took over and personally, I would credit that for the narrowing of the gap. Polls are expensive and if you look at the recent polls responsible for this narrowing, none are by the major consortiums: NYT/Siena, WSJ/NBC,  WaPo/ABC, Fox. There’s the Hill, Emerson, Rasmussin, a real outlier and GOP-biased firm. But, Rasmussin actually was the most accurate performing of the polling firms in 2016. So, bottom line: not good, concerning.