Is The 2020 US Election A Replay of the 2016 Election?

 

At this point in the 2020 US election, it seems that many folks (including me) are getting PTSD because of the 2016 election. So, perhaps it makes sense to go back and take a look at what happened in 2016, and compare it to what is happening now in 2020. During a Mercury retrograde period, analyzing the past is often helpful.

I suspect that people being worried about that is helpful. This is because folks will not become complacent. They will make the effort to get out and actually vote. That’s the way it seems to be happening in my sphere. I suppose it might paralyze some folks and they might give up, but I’m not seeing it. 

Let’s take a look at the (national) polls first. As I write this post, we are ten days out from the (end) date of the election of November 3, 2020. It’s helpful to know that the (end) date of the election in 2016 was November 8, 2016. So, we are five days closer to the actual (end) date in 2020 than we were in 2016 on October 24. Anyway, add five days and you get October 29, 2016. The RCP national polling average in the Presidential race had a gap of 2.6 points in favor of Hillary Clinton. The RCP polling average today (October 24, 2020) is 8.1 points in favor of Joe Biden. That is significant. Could he make up enough of that difference to still win the election in the electoral college? Yes, but it’s very likely to be much more difficult this year. 

Let’s also take a look at the Astrology for comparison’s sake. I mentioned that Donald Trump had his Jupiter return in 2016. That was exact on December 4, 2016. That is almost a month after the election. Debbi Kempton-Smith states in “Secrets From A Stargazer’s Notebook” (page 207):

“It is a good idea to check in with an astrologer a few months or years before your Jupiter Return, so the stargazer can tell you the date it becomes exact. Jupiter is an expansive planet, and the luck can come up to eight weeks earlier than the exact day.”  

Hillary Clinton’s largest polling average lead (in October) came on October 17, 2016 - she was in the lead by 7.1 points then. That was after the Access Hollywood tape became public. But, her numbers began to diminish right after that. By October 28, 2016, her polling average lead was only 3.8 points. That is the date that Comey reopened the Clinton email investigation. Her numbers continued to fall after that. She got down to a lead of 2.9 points before returning to a lead of 3.3 points on election day. The final result was that she led the popular vote by 2.1 points, but lost the electoral college vote (because of a little over 70K votes in three states).

Another difference between the elections in 2016 and 2020 is that there were a lot more undecided voters in 2016. There was also more interest in third party candidates. Even on October 17, 2016, Hillary was only at 46.2%. Trump got almost all the undecided voters. On October 24, 2016, Biden is at 50.8% in the RCP national polling average. He’s at 51.9% in the 538 polling average. 

Let’s just look at one battleground state - Pennsylvania. Clinton’s polling average lead in that state (per RCP) on October 17, 2016 was 6.8 points. On October 28, 2016, it was 5.2 points. And, after Comey reopened the email investigation, her numbers plummeted to a lead of 1.9 points on election day. She lost the state by 0.7 points.

By comparison, the 2020 election polling has been remarkably stable with Biden leading by seven or eight points for most of the last three months. The biggest variance came after the first debate when Biden’s lead got up to double digits. It has now come back down to about eight or nine points. So, could Trump come back and win? Yes, perhaps. But, it looks very unlikely at this point. It’s 2020 - not 2016.