Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
Pennsylvania has a Democratic governor. That's going to cut down on some of the stuff we'll likely see in Florida and Texas.

You shouldn't look at those polls as if they were independent of one another by the way. 2016 polls didn't account for education; the 2020 polls do. It's telling that Biden is up by very similar margins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. It's highly unlikely that only one of those is wrong. Unless you think Trump has a real shot at all of those states...

Even if, for whatever reason, the polling is really off in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania alone, Biden still wins by taking Arizona (even if he loses Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina).
I think the environment, overall, is definitely in Biden's favor. But I don't think it's anything close to guaranteed. The polling might have been corrected some since 2016, but the wild cards in 2020 are so numerous and complex that we can't possibly expect the polls to be a good measure of who will actually vote, how they will vote, and which of those votes will be counted.

You're right that the polls in different states are correlated, but that actually undermines your point. It's not likely that PA polls will be uniquely off - it's more likely that systematic factors mean that all of the purplish Midwestern states are shifted one direction or another due to the aforementioned wild cards.

If you asked me to put money down on the victor, I would definitely put it on Biden. But just because he's the most likely victor doesn't mean I have a great deal of confidence in the outcome - even assuming there aren't shenanigans wrt not counting mail in ballots.