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Trump on Monday in the election campaign in North Carolina
Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP
Actually, Joe Biden should win this election.
America is currently being overwhelmed by the third corona wave, the worst so far;
the clinics are filling up with patients; the majority of Americans have no confidence in their president's crisis management.
Nationwide, Biden is on average 8.5 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, even Arizona and Georgia, once conservative strongholds, are within reach for the Democrats.
The polling website FiveThirtyEight sees Biden as the winner with an 89 percent probability.
And yet it is possible that Trump will win in the end.
What could happen?
The short answer: A lot would have to go wrong for Biden in many places.
In a few (few) states, the opinion polls could be clearly but not catastrophically wrong with their forecasts;
also, after the counting, the two candidates in one or more states could be so close together that a recount of the votes is necessary.
Democrats have fond memories of the traumatic year 2000, when Al Gore lost the narrowest possible loss to George W. Bush in Florida after the Supreme Court intervened - a body that is now run by a
clear
Conservative majority is dominated.
Trump could also sneak victory with a mixture of voter intimidation and legal tricks, despite the majority of voters in favor of Biden
voted.
Or a combination of all of these scenarios.
Trump is helped by a distortion built into the system
Biden is ahead in the polls of many major states, but not unattainable.
Although most demoscopic models see the Democrats as a favorite, a Trump victory is still plausible, writes Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight.
Trump is helping to ensure that the 538-vote body of electors in the US presidential election gives the smaller, more rural (and tends to be conservative) states more weight than larger, urban (and tends to be liberal) areas.
As early as 2016, Trump was only able to win against Hillary Clinton with this system-built distortion in favor of the Republicans.
Clinton received almost three million more votes nationwide than Trump, but lost key states and thus the majority of the electorate - one of the reasons why Democrats are calling for this body to be reformed or abolished.
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In contrast to Clinton four years ago, Biden is sitting nationwide on a thick survey cushion that has been stable for months, but his lead in many swing states is quite thin in some areas.
Of six decisive states - Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - Trump has recently caught up a little in four states - even if Biden is still leading everywhere by at least two percentage points.
In Pennsylvania, Biden is currently averaging 4.8 percent ahead, but that's not a dramatically good lead.
He must win back voters in states that have been neglected by the Democrats for years, particularly in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
At least in Michigan and Wisconsin, things are looking good for Biden.
If he wins Florida and Pennsylvania, he'll become a favorite
But if he loses in Pennsylvania, where the polls are tighter, things will quickly get gloomy from a demoscopic point of view: In Florida, Biden leads by an average of only 2.5 points, which could break away if the polls in Pennsylvania were already wrong.
If Trump wins these two states, he will go from underdog to favorite: In this case, FiveThirtyEight sees an 84 percent chance that the president will win.
Trump would have to be very lucky for that.
Turnout among Republicans should explode, enthusiasm for Biden should be less than expected, especially among young African-Americans;
voter turnout among Democrats would have to purr, for example because of unrest in front of polling stations;
Trump's campaign team should triumph in legal skirmishes over absentee ballots in many areas of the country;
and the few remaining undecided voters would have to turn to the Republicans.
An army of lawyers
As unlikely as it sounds in view of the polls, it is not impossible.
Trump's average approval ratings have risen from a low at the end of July, when only 40.4 percent of citizens were satisfied with his administration, to 45.6 percentage points, which is probably also related to better economic forecasts.
A poll in Iowa on Saturday found Trump surprisingly seven percentage points ahead, suggesting he remains solidly based among women and independent voters in the state.
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Trump supporters in Pennsylvania
Photo: TRACIE VAN AUKEN / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
In addition, Trump's team has sent a small army of lawyers to the crucial states to torpedo the Democrats' chances of a tight election result.
In Texas, judges on Monday denied a request from Republicans to ditch 127,000 ballot papers from voters who turned in drive-thru polling stations.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans could try to block postal votes that arrive after polling stations close.
Trump has been flying through the country like a man possessed for days, with three, four, five appearances a day and thousands of fans each.
He is leading the more energetic, more explosive election campaign and has successfully whipped up his base.
This choice has not yet been decided.
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