The controversy of the unpopular; Comparing the performance of Trump and Biden in election polls

Fars News Agency International Group – On November 5, Americans will go to the polls to choose their next president, and it seems that the two main candidates of this competition are Joe Biden again, just like four years ago. It will be from the Democratic Party against “Donald Trump” from the Republican Party.

Although the intra-party stage of the election has not yet ended, it seems that Donald Trump’s candidacy is certain. If Trump and Biden face each other, for the first time after 70 years, two candidates will face each other and put their records in the White House to a referendum.

After losing the presidential election 4 years ago, Donald Trump tried to annul the result of the election. He is now facing federal charges in this regard and trying to create a rebellion in America.

On the other hand, the characteristic feature of Biden’s presidency is high inflation, scattered riots in the world, including Afghanistan, Ukraine and It has been the region of West Asia.

Many polls show that both Biden and Trump are unpopular, and this time the American election is a fight instead of a competition about which candidate is more popular. It will be about which one is less unpopular.

Among the other notable points in this election is that, unlike the previous rounds, the November voting this year will not be a referendum only on Biden’s record. was, but the performance of the two presidents will be compared in various fields, including economy, foreign policy, immigration and other domestic issues. He has a slight advantage over Joe Biden. Some polls, of course, present Biden as the winner of the competition.

Recently, the Economist magazine, in order to provide a more comprehensive index of the performance of these two politicians in the polls, compared their average performance in important polls that have been done so far.

The results of this research show that Donald Trump has recorded a better performance than Joe Biden with an average of 2.3 percent advantage. The important thing is that in the 6 gray states on which the outcome of the US election depends (the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), Trump is 3.8% ahead of Biden on average.

Trump’s performance in the polls was not so favorable in any of the two election contests in which he participated. Is it time for America to prepare for the second term of Donald Trump’s presidency?

The answer to this question is still negative. There are 9 months left until the elections, and if we look at the issue from a historical perspective, the polls that Elections that take place before the summer of the year have always been a poor predictor of the final outcome of the election. In the 2016 election, when Trump and Hillary Clinton were competing, polls presented a wrong perspective of the future president even a few days before the election.

However, this point should also be considered He thought that the favorability of the polls in favor of Trump at this point is more decisive than the candidates of the past periods who enter the field as a challenger to the incumbent president. and Trump have been held, the range has been very different. In some polls, Trump is ahead of Biden by 8%, and in others, Biden is behind Trump by 6%.

One ​​advantage of using an index called the average is that They neutralize the effect of outliers as mentioned above. Of course, the polls that consider the average also differ from each other in terms of methods and degree of accuracy. They are known to have the highest accuracy. Joe Biden has performed better than Trump, and on the other hand, institutions with weaker performance believe that Trump won.

The economist used a method in his research that Surveys with a larger sample size and more recently conducted are given more weight than other surveys with a smaller sample size and with a longer time interval. With this method, Donald Trump is 2.3% ahead of Biden.

But if the average is calculated in an unweighted way, in such a way that the results of the polls of 6 months ago are weighted with the results of the polls of last week. have the same, then Biden is ahead of Trump by 0.2%.

To all these complications, it should be added that the results of the polls, at best, reflect the public’s opinion about a candidate and can predict the superiority of popular votes. But we know that in the American elections, because the president is elected based on the electoral votes and not the direct votes of the people, getting a higher vote does not guarantee victory in the elections. For example, in 2000 and 2016, Republican Party candidates won elections despite having less popular votes.

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