There is a wide divergence of opinion as to the credibility of the current polls. Most media outlets and academic institutions have Biden up by a solid number. Some have him up by double digits. But Professor Helmut Norpoth and certain others rebel against conventional wisdom and see the president with an advantage and a clear path to reelection.

Jeffrey Gundlach is one of those people. Gundlach, like Norpoth, in the face of much opposition, correctly called 2016 for Trump.

“Will Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in November? I don’t think so,” Gundlach, CEO and chief investment officer of DoubleLine Capital, which has $148 billion in assets under management, said to the press Tuesday evening.

He called the current political atmosphere a “highly toxic political environment” that makes the polls “very, very squishy.”

A RealClear Politics average of national polls showed Biden leading by 7.3 points on Wednesday. The margin in key battleground states has Biden up 4.3 points. Three points is the error of margin. Thus with the Trump campaign being less than 2 percent off that margin in battleground states, and with a recent CATO Institute survey showing over 60% of voters afraid to reveal their political preferences because of social pressure, political handicappers are starting to turn their bets from a Biden win to a Trump win, albeit either by a tight margin.

This regards the electoral college. Most polls credibly have Biden winning the popular vote, as the GOP has only won the popular vote once since 1992. Also, given the timing, many analysts think the president is exactly where he needs to be, the hunter not the hunted, going into the fall campaign season.

The good job numbers news as of late is certainly aiding his efforts. The latest jobless claims figures just out from the Labor Department Thursday, which cover the week ending August 8, show that 963,000 workers sought unemployment aid last week. Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected 1.12 million new claims. This is the third straight month the Trump administration has beat job number expectations.

 

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The figure, the lowest since March 21, just as the pandemic brought the economy to a serious halt, indicates there’s momentum behind the economic recovery, despite fears that an autumn resurgence of COVID cases and new business closures would stop the strong recovery.

Voters traditionally vote on the economy and war and peace. Today’s news of a peace breakthrough in the Middle East, combined with the job numbers news, gives the Trump campaign a spike towards the top of the charts and steals the spotlight away from the Harris vice presidential nomination choice.

If Trump can close the deal during the debates, if Biden debates him at all, then by mid-October, when the polls become much clearer and indicative of the fall result, the reelection chances of the president may look much rosier than today. If so, except the Democrats to use any weapon and tool, no matter how dishonest or unethical, to stop him.