Daily US Times: Former Vice President Joe Biden now holds his largest-ever lead over President Trump, just a week ahead of the election. The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows a 12-point margin for Mr Biden that’s four times the size of Hillary Clinton’s national advantage over Trump at this point in 2016. Biden’s lead is now his biggest yet.
The survey, which was conducted from Oct. 23 to 25, found that 54 percent of likely voters have either already voted for the Democratic candidate or plan to vote for him by Election Day. Just 42 percent of likely voters say they are casting their ballots for President Donald Trump.
In comparison, a YouGov poll conducted one week before the last general election showed Clinton leading Trump by 3 percentage points among likely voters at this stage, 48 percent to 45 percent; the average of all national surveys gave Clinton a lead of 2.2 percentage points.
As the polls predicted, Clinton wound up winning the national popular vote by 2.1 points — even as a combined 77,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin put Trump over the top in the Electoral College.
Despite Biden’s lead, none of these numbers guarantees a Democratic victory, let alone a dozen-point landslide. No candidate since former President Ronald Reagan in 1984 has won the presidency by a double-digit margin, and no incumbent since Herbert Hoover in 1932 has lost by more than 10.
Yet the new Yahoo News/YouGov poll underscores how much more challenging it will be than it was in 2016 for Trump, a Republican, to pull off another upset on Election Day.
Biden is stronger than Clinton with every key demographic group, according to the survey.
Just 3 percent of last election’s Clinton voters say they are now voting for Trump, that is more than twice as many 2016 Trump voters (7 percent) say they are voting for Joe Biden.
Among independents, the Democrat leads by 9 points (45 percent to 36 percent) — a bloc that Trump won by 4 points (46 percent to 42 percent) in 2016.
Trump trounced Clinton by 20 points (57 percent to 37 percent) among white voters in four years ago. Today, Joe Biden trails by just 3 points (47 percent to 44 percent).
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