Four years ago, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton saw her polling lead drastically shrink in the waning days of the 2020 campaign after former FBI director James Comey released his now-infamous letter announcing a new discovery related to the Clinton email investigation.
This year, writes CNN election expert Harry Enten, Democratic nominee Joe Biden is facing no such erosion at the polls eight days before election day.
"By this point four years ago, he was rapidly closing the gap with Hillary Clinton," Enten argues. "No such advancements can be seen in the 2020 polling against Biden."
The current national polls show that Biden now has a lead of between 8 and 9 points, according to polling averages from Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight. By contrast, polling averages show that Clinton's lead in 2016 shrunk to just 3 points eight days before the election, despite being up by an average of 6 points just one week prior.
More crucially, notes Enten, is that Biden is pulling in more than 50 percent of voters in national polls.
"Clinton's 45% vote share was low enough that it left Trump with a lot of room in the final week of the campaign to corral voters who favored neither candidate at this point," Enten argues. "All Biden really needs to do right now to win is hold onto the voters that he has."