Chunk 3: National polls and Hillary Clinton’s taco.

As the US election gets closer, you'll regularly hear news updates with the latest polls. Like yesterday, when they declared that "Biden has opened up a 15 point lead over Trump". Generally, these are national polls, meaning they've asked people from right across the US who they're considering voting for (and they might not even be registered voters, which we’ll get to another time), and then rolled them all together for one total figure. That can mean these figures may be very misleading to the final outcome. To explain, let's talk tacos …

Imagine that there are five people in your house, as there are in mine, and that three of you want tacos for dinner. That would tell you that 60% of the house want tacos (me good at math).

But, if only one of those people is going to the supermarket to buy the ingredients, and they absolutely don't want tacos, then no one's having them. That one person might only have 20% of the vote, but their 20% counts for more than anyone else’s in the house, comprende?

Now, let's apply the Taco Principle to the 2016 election ...

Hillary Clinton actually won 48.18% of the final vote to Donald Trump's 46.09%. The majority of the American population wanted her to be their president. So why did she lose the election 304 electoral college votes to 227? Because Trump's % of the vote came in states that had more electoral college votes. Or, put another way, the states he won had more of a say in what America was having for dinner, and they didn't like the look of Hillary's taco. 

For a truer indication on where this next election is headed, ignore the national polls; listen to who is leading in those swing states I listed in Chunk 2. That’s where the election will be won and lost.