Kathmandu. The Election day in the United States of America, on November 3, will conclude one of the most divisive presidential elections in its history. With a record number of votes being cast this time around, polls have indicated that the Democratic nominee Joe Biden has taken a significant lead over Donald Trump.

The former Vice President, Joe Biden, who has decades of experience in politics, has a lead as per the polls monitored by CNN. According to the numbers provided by the news agency, he has been ahead of the President in almost every “high-quality” poll this election season. Biden has a backing of 54%, in comparison to the 42% who support Trump.

Biden does seem to be gaining more ground in battleground states, Michigan and Wisconsin, as presented by Fox News. These were the states that Trump won by an incredibly slim margin in 2016. A cursory glance at these reports would indicate that Biden will usher in a new administration by the end of this year.

It becomes significant to grasp here that while national polls do show how popular a particular candidate is across the board, it does not signal an absolute victory for the nominee, as was seen in the 2016 Elections. Hilary Clinton had pocketed more than 3 million votes against her opponent, and Donald Trump still ended up winning the race.

The Electoral College that has been critiqued by several prominent politicians, including the highly popular Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, will cast the decisive electoral votes and determine the results of the race. As per the polling by BBC, Biden has assumed the lead. However, while Trump’s backing remains static at 42%, Biden is shown to have a backing of 51%. On top of this are the swing states that have been crucial in Presidential Elections. Ohio, for example, is considered to be “a presidential fortune-teller,” which has backed the winner in most races.

A lot of Trump-voters are probably going to be active on the Election day itself. In many states these votes will be counted before the ballots that have been tallied, and reported up until this point.

The Hill has claimed that Trump is predicted to “win big”, and that there were some fundamental problems with the majority of the polls. The publication has ascertained that the framing of the questions and the want of the voters to provide socially desirable answers are major determining factors. Additionally, the content supplied by the news platforms, as well as the sampling methodology also has a considerable impact on the polls.

Casey Klofstad, the Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, commented that while polls are reliable, they are not “infallible.” “It is not a crystal ball. Always look for the margin of error when you see polling data. Reliable pollsters and media outlets will report it. Higher quality polls will have a margin of error around or below 4 percent,” he added.

With regards to the 2016 Election, Klofstad mentioned that there may have been an overrepresentation of College Graduates in the sampling, as educated individuals are more likely to answer the polling questions. Furthermore, the polling conducted in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio, were specified to have been less reliable. He went on to say that voters who did not openly promote their inclination towards the Republican candidate, and what he termed as “the shy Trumpers,” swung the votes in his favor. He stated that, “if we can clean up the first two (points) it will go a very long way to give us a more reliable result for the Electoral College.”

While several political analysts have convened with an early celebration for Joe Biden, the results of these polls are slightly unreliable. Moreover, since quite a few media outlets have allegedly been supporting candidates on the basis of certain political inclinations, it may cast some doubt on the minds of the general public that while the statistics may be accurate, the complete picture might not be showcased. Polls are a definite way to gain an outlook on the possibilities of the outcome, though they may not give an absolute verdict.