Biden Leads Trump, But Can Polls Be Trusted This Year?

Biden Leads Trump, But Can Polls Be Trusted This Year?— Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election four years ago brought into question as never before the reliability of opinion polls. Can they be believed this time around?

What do the polls say?

With 16 days to go before the November 3 election, Democrat Joe Biden is ahead of the Republican president by 9.0 percentage points nationally, according to polling averages from the RealClearPolitics website.

But in the United States, candidates win the White House not through the popular vote, but with the Electoral College.

In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but won enough states to garner the electoral votes needed to become president.

This year, six states are seen as key to winning the White House — Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

But if the polls are correct, Biden also has the advantage there, although he is at times within the margin of error, ranging from 1.7 percentage points ahead in Florida to 7.2 in Michigan. 3

Where were the errors in 2016?

The polls on the eve of the vote in 2016 correctly predicted a slight national lead for Clinton, but the place where the polls missed were in some of those Midwestern swing states that Trump eventually won, Chris Jackson of Ipsos Public Affairs told AFP.