The poll is largely in line with the average poll since April which places Biden 6 points ahead of Trump at the national level.
What's the point: Biden's advance is about as stable as possible. Not only has it increased by 6 points in the past month, but the average of polls since the beginning of the year places it at the head of 6 points. In addition, all the surveys carried out since early 2019 earn him 6 points.
Consistency in polls is breaking records. Biden's advantage is the most stable in a race with an outgoing candidate since at least 1944. This could mean that it will be more difficult to change the course of the race in the future, although this remains more than close enough so that either candidate can easily win.
To find out, I went back and looked at how all the national polls deviated from each other from January to early May of the election year.
This year, 95% of all individual surveys so far have shown a result less than 6 points from the average. This is basically what you would expect if you took a lot of surveys and the race did not move (that is, the only changes are the statistical noise of the sampling). It's a ridiculously small range historically speaking.
The previous lowest for a similarly constructed 95% confidence interval was 8 points (2012). The median cycle had a 95% interval of 13 points from the average of the surveys. In other words, about double the scope of the polls we've seen so far in 2020.
Sometimes, of course, the range of outcomes can be even wider than the median cycle. Lyndon Johnson had an advantage of about 35 points to a lead of over 60 points over Barry Goldwater in the early months of 1964. Jimmy Carter opened 1980 with a lead of 30 points or more in some polls over Ronald Reagan. In early May, his lead was reduced to a single digit, and he even dragged Reagan into a few polls.
The 1964, 1980 and 2004 campaigns are of particular interest because they both suffered system shocks a few months after the start of the election year. John Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, the Iranians took the Americans hostage in November 1979 and the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003. The first two were particularly volatile, while 2004 saw some change. George W. Bush's voting edge soared in double digits and sometimes 15 points north in early January 2004. At the end of April, he was trading prospects with John Kerry.
This year we have seen virtually none of these changes in the national surveys, although we have experienced a unique health pandemic. This could make you doubt that polls will progress a lot in the future in 2020.
Indeed, there seems to be a certain relationship between the early movement of the ballot and the way in which the early ballot predicts the results. In cycles with smaller than normal early movements, the average difference between the surveys during these four months and the final results was 5 points. In cycles with larger than normal early movements, the average difference between the surveys during this period and the final result was 14 points.
In other words, it would be suitable for earlier models if the polls at this time are generally close to the results. That's what you'd expect, given that more voters have a strong opinion of Trump than any other holder since at least 1980 (when the question was first asked), as I've noted before.
The obvious downside here is that a 5 point difference between where the polls were and November's results could be huge this year. Biden is up only 6 nationally on average. A change of 5 points in the direction of Trump would mean a victory of one point by Biden in the popular vote. This could very well leave him on the wrong side of a popular vote and a split in the electoral college. Remember, Trump lost 2 points nationally in 2016 and still won a college victory.
And we're only talking about the average here. The 1956 campaign, which saw limited changes at the start, had Democrat Adlai Stevenson do 10 points better than his first poll tied it down.
In the end, although the stability of the race from 2020 so far projects towards minimal movement from now on, this does not guarantee Biden a victory. There is still a range of possible outcomes.
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