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The Race is Set

Historically, the two weeks before an election don’t matter.

Peter Ramirez
2 min readOct 19, 2020
Illustration by Peter Grabowski.

The Trump campaign is in overdrive. The president is holding multiple rallies a day, hoping to cut into Biden’s lead just two weeks before voters issue their verdict.

There’s only one problem — the final two weeks don’t really matter. Historically, anyway. Let’s look at how much the polling average has changed in the fifteen days before an election, courtest of FiveThirtyEight.

(Year, Fifteen Days Before, Election Day, Change)

2016

Clinton +6.9, Clinton +3.8 (Change: 3.1)

2012

Romney +1.2, Obama +0.4 (Change 1.6)

2008

Obama +6.8, Obama +7.1 (Change 0.3)

2004

Bush +2.4, Bush +1.6 (Change 0.8)

2000

Bush +2.7, Bush +3.5 (Change 0.8)

1996

Clinton +14.9, Clinton +12.8 (Change 2.1)

1992

Clinton +14.1, Clinton +7.1 (Change 7.0)

1988

Bush +11.8, Bush +10.4 (Change 1.4)

1984

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Peter Ramirez
Peter Ramirez

Written by Peter Ramirez

political science researcher. former valedictorian. reader/writer. host of “Politics Mostly” podcast.

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