Late last week, Fox News released polling from Virginia that showed President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump tied at 48%. This poll came on the heels of a Roanoke College survey that found the two tied at 42%.
There’s been a lot of head-scratching about these results. After all, not only have Democrats carried the Old Dominion since 2008, but the commonwealth’s suburban voters have been some of the most anti-Trump in the country. Moreover, if Biden’s at risk of losing a state he carried by 10 points in 2020, he’s got little chance of winning in the swing states. Or, as one Democratic strategist put it to me, if Virginia is really in play, the question isn’t whether Trump gets 270 electoral votes, the question is how much higher than 270 does he get.
So, are these numbers right? And if so, how seriously should we be taking them?
First, let’s do some back of the envelope math.
Right now, the FiveThirtyEight polling average finds Trump leading the national vote by about one point. That would
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