Former Vice President Joe Biden is leading in most polls in enough battleground states to win the presidency in election 2020. However, that was true in 2016, too, and Donald Trump pulled off an upset victory.
Here are seven possible electoral college maps for a Biden win.
As election day grows closer, many people are wondering which electoral college pathways will put Biden – or Trump – in the Oval Office. We previously wrote about several possible electoral college pathways for Trump. You can read that article here.
In this article, we will focus on 7 possible electoral college pathways that would make Joe Biden president. Of course, there are others, but these are some of the most interesting predictions.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Biden Wins Florida
To be honest, in some ways, it all comes down to one state on Tuesday: Florida. There are a couple ways that Trump could win without Florida, but there aren’t many. If Biden wins Florida, it dramatically increases the chances he wins the presidency. Pennsylvania would be critically important to Trump in such a scenario. Trump would need to pick up almost all remaining battleground states if he loses Florida.
To show the dominance of Florida, in this map, we gave Biden Florida and Pennsylvania, but we gave Trump other battleground states (like Wisconsin and Michigan) that polls don’t show him likely winning (unless, of course, they are wrong).
2. Maine’s Congressional District Puts Biden Over the Top
There are two Congressional Districts that each award a single electoral vote. Maine is one of them. Could it put Joe Biden over the top?
Maine’s 2nd Congressional District went narrowly to Trump after not going for a Republican for years, but polls show Biden with a slight lead, according to WABI5. This led Donald Trump Jr. to recently say the district could determine the election.
This scenario presumes that Trump wins key battlegrounds like Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona.
Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District could go either way. According to Fox News, Trump narrowly won the district in 2016, but a recent poll put Biden up by 1. Obama won the district in 2008, but Mitt Romney won it in 2012, according to Fox News.
Nate Silver, political data prognosticator, predicted, “It’s all going to come down to the recount in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.”
The above electoral map also requires Biden to win Nebraska’s congressional district.
3. Biden Wins North Carolina
If Biden wins North Carolina, it’s a lot tougher map for Trump. In fact, North Carolina is so important that Biden could lose a big Midwestern state, like Pennsylvania, and still win the presidency. See:
4. Biden Wins Back the Trifecta of Midwestern States That Clinton Lost in 2016
The big story in 2016 for Trump: He won a trifecta of Midwestern states that few saw coming and were historically blue states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Will Biden perform better in these states than Hillary Clinton did?
Trump won them by driving out new voters in rural areas and due to smaller turnout in the cities for Clinton than Barack Obama enjoyed. Biden is winning in most polls in each of these three states.
If Biden wins all three of those states back, he wins, and we even gave Trump everything else, including Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and so on.
5. Biden Wins Georgia
Could Biden win Georgia? The polls show he has a chance. If he wins Georgia, Trump is going to have to make that ground up elsewhere, narrowing his pathways to victory.
If Biden wins Georgia, he can weather a surprise Trump win in another battleground state – say, Michigan.
6. Biden Wins Arizona
If Biden flips Arizona, it’s going to be a lot tougher for Trump to win the presidency. To show the importance of Arizona, we even gave Trump Pennsylvania in this map, but it’s not enough for him.
7. Biden Wins Pennsylvania
Can Trump win without Pennsylvania? Yes. But it would be much, much harder. If Biden wins Pennsylvania, he can afford to lose a state like Wisconsin and still win (this requires him to win the two Congressional districts, though).
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