Trump's Chances at Re-Election Grim Heading into RNC

With last night kicking off the Republican convention, I've decided to look into how likely it is for President Trump to win re-election. In short, it's not looking amazing. The Economist forecasts that Biden has an 89% chance of winning the election. This leaves Trumps re-election campaign with just an 11% chance of victory. They also give President Trump just a 2% chance of winning the popular vote. This doesn't look good for the president.

As for FiveThirtyEight's election forecast, they give Trump just a 26% chance at winning the election. While that number is a lot better for President Trump than that from the Economist, it's still not great. This prediction also outlines all the possible paths to 270 held by each candidate. Needless to say, Biden has many more options going into November.

However, we can't count out Trump just yet as he is known for outperforming polls and proving political analysts wrong. In late August of 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a 12 point lead over Trump among likely voters. That's better than the 9 point lead that Biden holds over Trump today. While the polling errors of 2016 have been widely corrected, there's no guarantee that Trump won't outperform the polls yet again and win his re-election bid.

Click here for The Economist's 2020 election forecast!

Click here for FiveThirtyEight's 2020 election forecast!