On the surface, the poll released this morning by CNBC/Change Research (a left-leaning polling firm) is filled with good news for the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Biden leads President Donald Trump by 8 points (51-43 percent) nationally. Biden is also ahead in all of the most important battleground states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina). This means that if the polls are accurate and if the election were held today, Biden would beat Trump soundly and easily.
But dig down a little more deeply into the numbers and Biden's lead looks far more tenuous. He's ahead of Trump by a fairly comfortable 6 points in Michigan and 5 in Wisconsin. But he beats Trump by just 3 in Pennsylvania, 3 in Florida, 2 in Arizona, and 1 in North Carolina. (None of those results vary more than 1.5 percentage points from the state's polling average on RealClearPolitics.) And all the battleground states have Trump doing significantly better than his national numbers. That could portend another ominous gap between the popular vote and the all-important electoral vote tally.
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