Decision 2020 Updates: Notes and Polls; 3 Days Remaining !!

• President Donald Trump is surging down the stretch, closing Joe Biden’s national lead to just 4.8 percentage points and the battleground margin to just 3 points and within the margin of error, according to the latest Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP poll.

Most notably, according to the poll, Trump has gained on Biden with 48% of the Hispanic vote and 13% of the Black vote; Trump had just 8% of the Black vote in 2016.

“Biden has a narrow 3-point edge in swing states, those six states decided by less than 2 points in 2016,” the IBD/TIPP poll found, the New York Post reported.

The national daily tracking poll gave Trump a 1-point bump from Friday:

• Biden 49.5%.
• Trump 44.7%.

The 4.8-point lead is just outside the margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

The midwestern “blue wall” that Trump broke in the 2016 presidential election gives Biden just a 2-point lead, which is within the margin of error.

Here is the regional breakdown:

• National: Biden 49.5%-46.3%.
• Midwest: Biden 48.4%-46.3%.
• Northeast: Biden 57.3%-34.6%.
• South: Trump 49%-45.6%.
• West: Biden 51%-43.5%.

Notably, the IBD/TIPP point had just a 1-point Hillary Clinton lead in the final weekend before the 2016 election, making a statistical tie and one of that election’s most accurate pollsters. The IBD/TIPP poll surveyed 1,047 likely voters from Oct. 26-30 with a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Friday on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” that President Donald Trump has a real shot of winning Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes.

• A website that Minnesota residents can use to track their absentee ballots crashed for more than an hour Saturday morning three days before Tuesday’s election. The problem stemmed from a “hardware issue” impacting online tools for voters and site issues with the Statewide Voter Registration System, a spokesperson from the secretary of state’s office told the Associated Press.

• President Trump is attracting more than traditional Republicans to his recent rallies in key battleground states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin according to Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.“We are seeing DEMOCRATS and INDEPENDENTS turn out in droves for Trump’s rallies,” McDaniel said, indicating that a majority of those signing up for the recent rallies in both Rochester, Minnesota, as well as Green Bay, Wisconsin, are “not Republican.”

• Notable pollsters are cautioning Americans to refrain from getting too comfortable with polling predictions as Election Day approaches, suggesting polls may not account for “shy” or “hidden” Trump voters– those who are largely responsible for President Trump’s upset victory four years ago. In this election, the magnitude of such voters could be even greater. Link to Politico story; HERE

• The presidential race in battleground Arizona is tightening in the final days leading to Election Day, as President Trump is diminishing Joe Biden’s (D) edge in the state, a Trafalgar Group survey released Friday revealed. The survey found Trump leading in the Grand Canyon State 48.9 percent to Biden’s 46.4 percent. Less than one percent now remains undecided, according to the survey

• Nevada tightens:
  

  The Trafalgar Group survey, taken October 28-29 among 1,024 likely voters, shows Biden with a 2.3 percent lead, garnering 49.4 percent to the president’s 47.1 percent. Biden’s lead is within the +/- 2.98 percent margin of error, pointing to another tight race in the battleground state: Similarly, a SurveyMonkey/tableau/Axios survey highlighted this week showed another dead heat in Nevada, with Biden leading by a single percentage point
• Important Polls for 10/31/2020