OK so we're not far off 48 hours away from close of polls in the first eastern states and the NYT just released a load of high quality state level polling with big sample numbers (like well over 1000 interviews in each state). So where are we at?
Donald Trump won in 2016 because he won surprising - and surprisingly narrow - victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He is exceedingly unlikely to flip any of the states Clinton won this time around so his path to retaining the Presidency rests on keeping these three states (and all the others he won of course).
NYT has Wisconsin as a +11 for Biden. There was a +17 for Biden in the state recently which is probably a massive outlier but with Covid rampaging through the state, this looks like a lost cause for the President. The same can be said for Michigan where NYT and ABC both had Joe Biden up by between 5 & 8 points the other day. Other polls show even bigger leads in the state. The Upper Midwest is done.
Pennsylvania... should be OK as well. NYT have Biden up by 6 in a poll of over 1800 likely voters, outside the margin of error. The issue with Pennsylvania is around counting votes and court cases. The state will likely not even be close to a final total until Friday and the GOP are making noises about the Dems 'stealing' back the likely election day deficit when the mail vote is counted. Obviously this isn't stealing but it's being set up for muddied waters.
However, while Trump pretty much HAS to win Pennsylvania in order to be returned to the White House, there's another route for Joe Biden if he loses there and it runs through Arizona. NYT just polled over 1200 people there and put Biden up by... 6 points. That's pretty hefty and outside the margin of error. The interesting thing is that in recent years polls in the south west have tended to understate the Democratic vote - possibly because polling Latinos is a challenge for pollsters. It does look very much like Arizona could go blue for the first time in decades and take Biden to 269 electoral college votes even without Pennsylvania - and with credible polls of Nebraska's second congressional district showing Trump behind by between 3 & 12 points then that's 270 and the Presidency for Biden.
Of course Biden also has small but fairly consistent leads in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. And then there's Texas - which I still really don't want to call - and Ohio and Iowa which are at least feasible for Biden. Any of those would be the icing on the cake but at this point I just don't see how Biden doesn't get to 270. Not with those leads, at this stage of the game and with no real political (as opposed to legal) challenges in front of him. He is undoubtedly going to win the popular vote by more than Clinton did and he will win enough states to take the White House - he may even get way past 300 EC votes and even past 400 if Texas falls.
None of this accounts for legal fuckery of course. But if the win is big enough and early enough, there is no way that even those judges can steal this for their guy.
en.wikipedia.org
