Trump is trailing Biden by an average of 10.5 percentage points less than a month before Election Day

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Trump is trailing Biden by an average of 10.5 percentage points less than a month before Election Day
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  • Election Day is 22 days away.
  • Already, Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 10.5 points in an average of 2020 presidential election polls from FiveThirtyEight.
  • Over 9.5 million people have already voted across the United States and voting experts predict that mail-in voting will make up more than 50% of the overall vote.
  • As millions continue to cast early votes, the window to convince undecided voters is quickly closing.
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With just over three weeks to go until the Election Day on November 3, Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 10.5 percentage points, according to an average of polls by FiveThirtyEight.

At this point in the 2016 election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was 6.9 percentage points ahead of Trump, FiveThirtyEight found.

According to CNN, in the 21 presidential elections held since 1936, only five challengers to the sitting president led at this point in the race. Of those five, only Bill Clinton led by more than 5 points. Biden is the first challenger to an incumbent president to poll above 50% this late in the campaign."

After a contentious battle in the first presidential debate on September 29, the Trump campaign wanted nothing more than to jump back onto the campaign trail and drum up support before the election. Instead, a major wrench was thrown into the plan: Trump tested positive for COVID-19 and wound up in hospital.

The president's diagnosis prompted the Commission on Presidential Debates to change the second debate's format from in-person to virtual. But this displeased Trump and he backed out. Both Trump and Biden will now host town halls on October 15 instead.

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After being sidelined at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and sequestered to the White House to recover, Trump's window to win over undecided voters is quickly closing.

As it currently stands, the Trump campaign is failing to win over the female vote. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, Biden leads among women voters by an average of 18.6 percentage points in the 46 national polls tracked by the organization.

While Trump struggles to gain the trust of women voters, Biden has consistently struggled to win over Cuban-American voters in Florida, a state that he needs to win for an easier path to the Oval Office. Florida is home to nearly two-thirds of the nation's 1.2 million eligible Cuban-American voters, who were about twice as likely to vote for Trump in 2016 than non-Cuban Latinos in the state.

While his polling numbers within this group are improving, Biden still trails Trump by 26 points, according to a recent poll from Bendixen & Amandi International and the Miami Herald.

Since the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Trump campaign's apparent hope is that the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court will push Republican voters to the polls. That push, however, may be for naught as an Insider poll from late September shows only 52% of conservative voters think the open seat should be filled before the election.

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As of October 12, over 9 million ballots have already been cast through early and mail-in voting. At this point in 2016, only 430,000 mail-in votes had been cast. Voting rights experts anticipate voting by mail to make up 50% to 70% of the total vote in November.

If Biden or Trump wishes to make significant polling or electorate gains before the election, they must act now — the longer they wait, the more early votes they stand to lose.

Expanded Coverage Module: insider-voter-guide
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