The primary races are over.  Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president.  Donald Trump will be the Republican.  They face off in a general election on November 3.

Between now and then there will be scores of polls claiming one candidate or the other is ahead in the race.  That stuff is meaningless.  (See all the 2016 polls claiming that Hillary Clinton would be our next president.)

The presidential election is not a national election in which the candidate with the most votes wins.  It’s a state-by-state election in which the candidates accumulate electoral college votes in each state.  So national polls tell us nothing.  To understand what the electorate might do on election day, you need to look at polls from each state and add up electoral college votes.  There are no polls in many states.  And there are inaccurate polls in others.  Beware.

And even if you get hold of accurate state polls, don’t look at them until October when voters have begun to make decisions they will stick to on election day.