The week's big question: What will happen in the 2020 election?

1. Let's talk election predictions

Election Day is nearly here, and it's bound to be tense: Polls have consistently shown Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading President Trump — sometimes by double-digits — but a new round of polls show Biden's lead in key swing states narrowing. With the record number of mail-in votes being cast this year thanks to the raging coronavirus pandemic, some experts warn it could be weeks or even months before we know the election results. Meanwhile, Trump has hinted that he will not allow for peaceful transition of power should he lose, stoking fears of a constitutional crisis. But the presidency isn't the only thing on the ballot: The results of key congressional races will shape governance for the next four years, no matter who takes the Oval Office.

In many ways, this has been one of the wildest, most contentious campaign seasons in recent memory, and there's a lot at stake. This week's question is: What are your election predictions?

2. A decisive Biden victory on Election Night

One of the most striking things about this election cycle is the extent to which many of us are terrified of making predictions. Most of us were burned four years ago when we laughed off those who insisted Donald Trump would win, and we obviously don't want a repeat. And besides, we really don't want to jinx it. So, like many others, I don't want to sound too confident. The polls point to a decisive victory for Joe Biden, and (contrary to myth) the polls weren't that far off last time.

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But are there people who are "shy" about admitting that they plan to vote for Trump? Are there people who intentionally want to create chaos by lying to pollsters? Are there enough of them to sway the results? Probably not. No one knows.

If I have to go out on a limb, my prediction is for a Biden win, clear enough that we'll know it on Election Night, though the final tally may not be known for a few days, and Trump may contest the results. The Democrats have a good chance of flipping the Senate, or at least gaining one or two seats. If the Republicans keep control of the Senate, it's very likely they'll start preparing the ground for an investigation of Biden, with an eye to impeachment, even before the dust has settled — not with the goal of removing him from office (that would give us President Harris!), but of keeping the administration hamstrung.

If the Republicans lose the White House and the Senate, expect a major shakeup in the GOP — and perhaps even its breakdown.

3. Trump defies the polls again

"A daring pilot in extremity; / Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high / He sought the storms." These lines from Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel are the best gloss on Donald Trump during the last month of his re-election campaign. Brash, confident, utterly reckless, and frequently incoherent, this is a president who has decided that he wants to win on his own terms or not at all.

This is why, with a rashness perhaps worthy of the man himself, I predict that Trump will be re-elected next Tuesday. I even think it is possible that his margin will be less narrow than last time. In 2016 Hillary Clinton’s 11-point polling lead in Minnesota metamorphosed on election day into an exceedingly thin margin of victory; Biden’s apparent polling advantage in the same state today is half the size.

Why do I expect Teflon Don to survive Russian fan fiction, impeachment, eight months of scientifically dubious lockdown measures, and the near-collapse of the (misleadingly) strong economic indicators over which he presided? In short, nothing I have read from the polling industry has given me any confidence that adjustments have been made to correct the errors of 2016 — or, indeed, those of 2018, when pundits were shocked by the gubernatorial victories of Brian Kemp in Georgia and Ron DeSantis in Florida.

A more interesting question is what will happen if Trump does pull it out. I expect protests, rioting, and looting on a scale not seen so far this year. On that cheerful note: happy All Saints Day!

4. Sure, Trump could win. But all the data points to Biden.

The hard data compels me to predict that Joe Biden will win the presidency. The polling averages, both nationally and in the key battleground states, show a lead that is both more durable and perhaps more comfortable than Hillary Clinton's four years ago. The down-ballot polling looks better for Democrats and seems to undercut the shy Donald Trump voter theory. The early voting trends appear favorable to Biden.

Then there is just the gut-level feel of the election. Trump won in 2016 by receiving less than 80,000 more votes than Clinton in the Rust Belt states that swung the Electoral College with significant third-party candidates on the ballot. Remove those candidates and add in the pandemic, the resultant economic downturn, and the various racial justice protests, and you erase more of his support than the movement of some Evan McMullin (and maybe Gary Johnson) voters back into the Trump column can possibly compensate for.

But unlike most believers in this conventional wisdom, I don't dismiss the case for a Trump win. I find many of the arguments plausible. I just don't see enough evidence to make them myself. Nevertheless, just as Biden is within striking distance of the biggest Electoral College landslide since at least 1988, all it takes is a few points for Trump to hold the Sunbelt, Pennsylvania — and the presidency.

Then there is the small matter of polling in a pandemic, especially when one candidate's supporters are substantially more risk-averse than the other's. Could that swing Election Day turnout as much as it does campaign event turnout, even to a degree early voting can't protect against? I haven't seen polling misfires in any of the post-COVID-19 primaries or special elections serious enough to make me predict it. But it is not a crazy theory.

It is probably too much for Trump to hope the conditions of 2016 can repeat themselves. But because 2016 did happen, Biden can't dismiss the possibility either. So I bet Biden, but cautiously.

5. Win or lose, Trump's base will remain the same

White evangelical leaders have spent the days leading up to the 2020 election doing pretty much what they have done the last four years: debating whether or not Christian voters should support Donald Trump. It's not a balanced deliberation, for sure. The pro-Trump forces greatly outnumber those who have spoken out, and the outright Biden endorsers are even fewer. But the fact that, to any extent, Trump remains a point of contention among white evangelical leaders only highlights how thoroughly white evangelical laypersons have remained the president's most solid and unquestioning base of support throughout his disastrous presidency.

They will also be his strongest backers on Nov. 3, just as they were in 2016. Then, 81 percent of white evangelicals sided with Trump. If, at the time, some voiced qualms about supporting the thrice-married, serial adulterer casino magnate and defended their vote as a protest against Hillary Clinton rather than an endorsement of Trump — a distinction that, of course, makes no difference when votes are tallied — those reservations have been almost entirely replaced by a full-throated and ferocious enthusiasm for Trump while in office.

Tellingly, while Trump's support among almost every voting group has diminished during 2020, white evangelicals have remained fairly steady, despite — and perhaps even because of — his terrible handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Among all religious groups, the Pew Research Center recently found that white evangelicals alone did not list coronavirus among their top three "critical issues." Instead, they ranked abortion first while only 35 percent of them considered COVID-19 to be "critical." With his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and his open mocking of the virus and those who take it seriously, Trump is making his final case to the voters who are already fully in the tank for him.

Many Americans may wonder how a callous indifference to — or, worse, an outright denial of — the deaths of over 230,000 Americans squares with a pro-life stance. Yet white evangelicals are poised to certify that very position next Tuesday. They may win this election. But in joining with Trump, they may one day realize how much more they have lost.

6. A 2016 repeat — and a deflated mainstream media

This election feels strangely like 2016, and it is plausible we are headed for a similar outcome. Why? Because if there is one thing we should all have learned from 2016, it is that both pollsters and much of the mainstream media were wildly off in their predictions, detached from what motivates nearly half of voting Americans. This year, little has changed: Much of the media wants Joe Biden to win, and their projections reflect that bias.

This week's reveal of "Anonymous" — the "senior Trump official" who wrote a 2018 op-ed in The New York Times claiming to be part of the "resistance" inside Trump's White House — perfectly captures the unvarnished advocacy against President Trump by major publications. For two years the American people have pondered the identity of this administration official, who was so important, so senior, that the Times granted them the rare cloak of anonymity. Could it be Vice President Mike Pence? Nikki Haley? Jon Huntsman?

No, it was Miles Taylor. Never heard of him? That's because he was a mid-level bureaucrat at the Department of Homeland Security, not some top-tier senior official close to the president's inner circle. But the Times was deceived by — or indifferent to — its own bias, and misled the public. How many other anonymous sources featured in stories were of the Miles Taylor sort?

As the election looms, the commentariat is sure of a defeat for Trump. But they fail to acknowledge his many accomplishments. They fail to so much as report on the corruption allegations against the Biden family. And they refuse to grapple with the real fear Americans have of the influence the radical left-wing of the Democratic Party might have on a Biden agenda. Ignoring these realities came back to bite them in 2016, and will do so again in 2020.

7. The Trump disaster comes to its well-justified end

I think Donald Trump is going to lose. Political polls are a triggering topic because of the nightmare that was the 2016 election, but they weren't that wrong then and, in this case, there's no James Comey to play spoiler and no misogyny to further derail a candidacy. Though The Trump Show has enriched many, most Americans have long grown tired of one person sucking up so much of the air.

This was all true before the pandemic began, but Trump's continued gross mishandling of the virus has sealed his fate. What can I say? No matter how bigoted this country is, folks don't want to die under a tyrannical dummy who thinks his delusions supersede reality — and our lives. All he needed to do was embrace science and do what he often does best: spend other people's money to his benefit. He was incapable of even that, and there's only so much failing up that even a Trump can do.

The only way he can "win" is by stealing the election via massive voter suppression. If this were any other country — notably one populated primarily by nonwhite people — American media would be calling the Trump re-election campaign for what it is: a strongman attempting to silence democracy.

His loss will be relieving but doesn't immediately make me excited for the future. The damage he has wrought will take decades to dismantle. Moreover, there are already others in the GOP waiting to build on his repugnant legacy. But I believe this is the end for President Trump. This disaster should have never happened, but good riddance all the same.