Following the addition of two new polls, Joe Biden now leads Donald Trump 50.1 percent to 43.4 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of Wisconsin polls.
Biden’s 6.7-point lead is almost identical to Hillary Clinton’s 6.5-point lead over Trump in the final RCP average of Wisconsin polls in 2016 — right before Trump surprised the world by winning Wisconsin by 0.7 points. Sean Trende recently wrote that it’s not clear that pollsters have fixed the problems that bedeviled them in the Midwest in 2016.
But the Biden 2020 campaign still looks stronger than the Clinton 2016 campaign in Wisconsin because Biden’s overall level of support is higher and there are fewer undecided voters.
In 2016, Clinton garnered 46.8 percent support in the final RCP average of Wisconsin polls; she ended up with 46.5 percent of the vote in Wisconsin. That year, Clinton never topped 50 percent in RCP’s Wisconsin polling average.
Another reason to think the Wisconsin polling average will be more reliable in 2020 than 2016 is that we are getting a lot more data. In 2016, there were two public polls of Wisconsin conducted in all of September. In 2020, there are already nine public polls of Wisconsin conducted entirely or partly in September. Biden was at or above 50 percent in seven of the nine polls.