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Biden: I'm afraid Trump will try to steal the elections 0:34
(CNN) - Joe Biden is reaching heights that Hillary Clinton never reached at this point in the campaign against Donald Trump. The former vice president has a significant national advantage of around 10 points and more than 50% support.
However, a look at recent polls suggests Trump is outperforming his four-year-old performance with a key part of the Democratic coalition: Hispanics. This could have implications for the electoral strategy that Biden may need for the fall if he wants to beat the president.
Clinton crushed Trump with Hispanic voters registered in the latest 2016 pre-election polls. She led 61% to 23%. (I use the pre-election surveys for an apples-to-apples comparison for the current surveys.)
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Biden, on the other hand, has an average of 58% to 33% lead among Hispanics registered as voters in an average of eight live interview surveys conducted in the past two months. These eight polls were for which I was able to obtain a breakdown among white, Hispanic, and black voters. In total, we are seeing around 700 to 800 Hispanic voters in total.
If we look at the polls done in the last three months (so we're looking at 15 polls and over 1,000 interviews), Biden is 58% by Trump's 32%.
Making the calculations, Biden's margin of about 25 points is more than 10 points less than Clinton's. This is more because Trump is doing better without third-party candidates than Biden, who is taking a smaller share of the vote, although both seem to be happening to some degree.
Biden's weakest margin occurs even when he is generally better. In the past two months, Biden's overall margin over Trump is nearly double in these eight polls (9 points) from what Clinton was among registered voters (5 points) in the final 2016 polls of registered voters.
Biden's relative weakness with Hispanics dates back to the Democratic primary. In assemblies and primaries where Hispanics made up at least 5% of primary or assembly voters in the input and output polls, Biden averaged 32% of their votes. He averaged 38% of the overall votes in these contests.
Biden is doing better than Clinton overall because of how he is doing with black and white voters.
Biden, while dragging Trump, still far outpaces Clinton among white voters. Trump was 50% to 44% ahead of Biden in the past two months. The president's margin with white voters has been cut in half from 51% to 37% he enjoyed in the final 2016 polls. As Nate Cohn of The New York Times points out, Biden is best among whites with and without college degrees. .
Plus, he basically maintains Clinton's ground with black voters. She averages an 83% -8% advantage with black voters in the past two months. Clinton was ahead of 83% to 5% in the final 2016 polls.
LOOK : Joe Biden: My fear is that Trump will try to steal the presidential elections
Now, obviously we will have to see if the current contours of the elections remain the same. There is no guarantee that that will happen.
However, if current racial and ethnic voting patterns remain relatively constant, then it makes a big difference on Biden's easier path to 270 electoral votes. White voters tend to represent a much larger portion of the electorate on the northern battlefields (for example, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) than for the Sun Belt (for example, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas). Hispanic voters, meanwhile, are quite prevalent in many of the Sunbelt states.
This could mean that Biden's best chance to accumulate 270 electoral votes passes through the north, just like the president he served under, Barack Obama.
Biden's poor performance with Hispanics can also make you think about choosing a Hispanic running mate. New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham remains among the vice president options. Research tends to indicate that vice presidents don't matter much, but Biden's surveys of Hispanics may still play a role in her selection of vice president.
Either way, polls seem to show that Biden's campaign has something to do with Hispanic voters. If Biden can improve with them, he can further expand his national leadership. If he can't and Trump closes the gap overall, Biden's relative struggles could make a difference this season.
Joe Biden