Don Lemon is shocked that rioting (not protesting ) is affecting the polls negatively. 

Well we're now past Labor Day, which is generally the point at which people start paying serious attention to elections in this country. So where are we as of this moment? As of today...

-Biden leads Trump by 7.5 percentage points (50.5% to 43%) in the moving average of polls according to Real Clear Politics.
-Biden leads Trump by 7.6 percentage points (50.5% to 42.9%) in the moving average of polls according to FiveThirtyEight.

This compares with a 7.1 and 7.3 percentage advantage for Biden in the same two polling averages respective a couple weeks ago. So, in other words, not much is really changing and, if anything is, it favors Biden. This contest appears to be pretty much set in stone.

Since the conventions, we've seen marginal increases in support for both Biden and Trump, indicating that undecided voters and those previously favoring third party or independent candidates are, unsurprisingly, starting to rally around one or the other of the major party candidates. That pattern will likely continue as we move closer to election day, as it always does. That's all that's really changed of late though. The issue for Trump continues to be the same: he keeps wanting to talk about urban crime and playing to white identity politics, but the public is way more concerned about the coronavirus pandemic, which has been the focus of Joe Biden's campaign.

Trump's only real hope at this point is the debates coming up starting at the end of this month. He badly needs for those to shift the narrative of this election away from himself somehow.

Criticize whatever party you like, but posts that are just pure attacks are not ok.

There's a lot of legitimate ways in which Trump can pull a win.

There's tightening polling in Pennsylvania, Biden weakness with Latinos in Florida and Nevada, Wisconsin questionable voting laws, Democrats are overwhelmingly choosing vote by mail, and Trump's aggressive push to flip Minnesota.

It's not over yet.

Good advice for someone who's never met a farmer who generously hands out knuckle sandwiches. Only few today would be so kind.

Gotta admit, the joke surprisingly has a bit of wit, even if it's too far beyond a tac for tit. It's progress however, of sorts.

Letterkenny training. Highly recommended. Clears up all the politically incorrect misconceptions.

New polls have the race staying at the status quo, which is good news for Biden who is leading.

A couple of interesting tidbits. Polls in Ohio are strange with Rasmussen and Zogby, both of which tend to favor Trump, having Biden up by 4 and 2 respectively. Meanwhile, morning consult has Trump up by about 5. So, Ohio is strange. High rated pollsters have not done any there in a little while so it's hard to get a sense of the race. Ohio is a must win for Trump. For Biden, it doesn't matter all too much at this point. Biden would only really need Ohio if he lost Pennsylvania, and it's hard to foresee a scenario where Biden wins Ohio but loses Pennsylvania.

Biden's leads in New Hampshire and Nevada are looking a little thin. NYT has him up by only 3 in NH. This was a state Hillary won by less than a percent in 2016. In Nevada, Times has Biden up by 4. That's more than Hillary at this time, who wound up winning the state by about 2%. If Biden lost these two states it would give him less wiggle room in the rust belt states.

The good news for Biden though has less to do with how much he's up, and more to do with how many voters are decided. According to the latest Fox News poll, Biden is up by 5 with 97% of the vote accounted for. Monmouth University also has 97% of the vote accounted for, with Biden up by 7. Around this time last year, Monmouth showed that about 92% of voters were decided. On election day, the times had 91% of voters decided and Fox had 95. This trend also holds up on a state level. For instance in Pennsylvania, on election day, the polls showed about 92-93% of people had decided. Polls being conducted now in Pennsylvania show about 96% of voters have decided.

So, that leads to two conclusions. First, there's a bit of a less chance of a last minute shift. In 2016 there were enough undecided voters that if they broke for Trump, they could have tipped the scales, even if the polls were accurate. Last minute news bad news from Clinton didn't help. However, this time around there are far less undecided voters. If Fox's poll is right, it wouldn't matter if every undecided voter decided on Trump, it wouldn't be enough. Trump has to actually change the minds of Biden voters.

And honestly... that doesn't seem likely. After four years of Trump, it's hard to see a huge amount of people changing their mind on him, absent a huge scandal rocking the Biden campaign. And... that doesn't seem likely either. Protests/riots haven't seemed to shift public opinion and I'm not sure a vaccine would either. Meanwhile, a lot of people with dirt on Trump are deciding to air it now (there's no better time to sell a book). The best hope for Trump is that the polls are really really inaccurate.

Edit: A more detailed analysis of Monmouth's University's latest poll seems to bear out my theories. 

In regards to Trump, 37% say they are certain they'll vote for Trump, and 1% say they're very likely to. 50% say they are not at all likely to vote Trump. In regards to Biden, 43% say they are certain, 4% very likely, and 40% say they're not at all likely. About 7% for each candidate say they're somewhat likely. The interesting thing is that the "not at all likely" number has not shifted much for either candidate. 

Trump needs to nationally get to within about 3 to have a chance in the electoral college. He has 38% of solid votes to Biden's 47%. About 1% say they probably won't vote (surely more will not). Then there's about 14% who are wishy washy but leaning towards one candidate. If we assume that Trump takes 60% of that wishy washy group, and the rest vote as expected that would lead to 46.4 for Trump and 52.6 for Biden. If the national numbers turn out like that it is exceedingly unlikely that Trump will win in the electoral college. Hillary won the popular vote by 2.1% and Trump won by about 1% in Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Hard to imagine the national numbers shifting that much and none of the change being felt in any swing states.

1. Biden dropped from 50+ to 50% there. Either way that's not enough for Trump to beat him, and I really doubt Trump will be able to pass him there. Also, Biden being from there certainly helps him in the end.

2. Trump ain't doing too well with Latinx people either, which is understandable considering how he treated them in general over the last 4 years. But I agree they probably will have a lower turnout this year due to this. Still, Biden is at close to 50% in Florida and hasn't lost a poll in Nevada since October last year, so before he even was nominated.

3. Yeah, those are really something else. Still, Biden is polling above 50% here, so he should be safe.And while Biden dropped down in the polls, so did Trump. The gap didn't narrow, in fact, it's growing slightly. If he would loose that one, I'll call foul on it for sure.

4. Why should this be a bad thing? Because of the shenanigans at the USPS?

5. Well, going by the polls, not only is Biden leading by 5% over the polls from last month, the gap is widening in the latest polls, not narrowing. Trump only had one winning poll here - and that one is from a pollster banned by 538 for faking numbers, so take of that poll what you will.

BREAKING: In 4-3 decision, Wisconsin Supreme Court keeps the Green Party ticket off of Wisconsin's ballot.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joins the court's three liberals to form a majority.

This means clerks do not have to reprint ballots and can now mail them.

— Patrick Marley (@patrickdmarley) September 14, 2020

To give a bit of context...

The Green Party candidate needed 2000 signatures to appear on the ballot. She submitted those, but many of the signatures had the wrong address for the candidate. The candidate said that it was because she moved recently.

Accordingly, her application was rejected on August 20th. She filed a lawsuit on September 3rd. Statutes require ballots to be sent out by September 16th.

The court did not address whether or not the claim of Walker, the candidate argued the election committee fucked up by not counting the signatures, were valid. Instead they ruled that because she did not raise the objection in a timely fashion, waiting about two weeks from notification, in a time sensitive matter they would not accept the case. Because the only way to address the complaint would be to miss the deadline for sending out ballots, or send out duplicate ballots which could lead to confusion.

For the conservatives who take issue with that decision, election deadlines tend to be very strict. Bush v. Gore which essentially decided the presidency was largely decided because a recount could not be feasibly done before the results had to be certified. So, to argue that the process should be delayed to get the green party candidate on the ballot seems inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent (which doesn't necessarily govern the matter, but seems like it should hold water nonetheless).

As a practical matter, this is good for Biden, and I'd argue, generally good for democracy. There is a legitimate problem that a candidate who maybe should have been on the ballot will not be. But, the only possible answer, mainly due to that candidate's delay, would be to delay ballots getting to voters and send out at least some duplicate ballots. Neither option was perfect, but the second I think was more problematic as putting more stress on the mail in ballot system can lead to votes not being counted before the deadline (which would be a huge constitutional kerfuffle) and potential confusion in general. And, let's be real, it's a party that was to receive very little support. It's unlikely the amount of green party voters will sway the election. Although, it did in 2016, so if Biden wins by less than 30,000 or so, that would be interesting...

Thanks for the context. Less options to elect from is always bad, and a lot of it sounds like a coalition of both major sides to keep a smaller party from the ballot. You could argue though, if or if not such a complaint should be reason to wait and hold the election later.

An example from germany: in the election for the Bundestag 2005 (german parliament) a candidate from a county died before the election but after the ballot was printed, so the election was moved in order for the party to nominate a new candidate. This had a major effect, not because of that candidate (who had no chance anyway), but because the biggest party CDU only could lose a seat, if they got *too many* votes. That was due to a really fucked up system of turning the votes into seats. In result the supreme court decided to renew the system (which was in place decades before).