Faced with a public health crisis paralleled by an economic lockdown, President Donald Trump is entering an election that is fairly different from 2016. But, Trump already knows how to battle when drowning in the polls and in overall doubt.

During the first week of August 2016, Hillary Clinton held around a 7-point polling lead over Trump. For most of the race, Clinton continued to be at an advantage in the polls, as she was up 13 points in one poll less than a month before the election. Headlines predicted that she’d beat Trump in a historic, brutal defeat since the polls indicated that he was straggling behind for months.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. Even though Clinton had a 3.2-point polling average lead over Trump by the time the votes were cast, according to RealClearPolitics, Trump won the election in the Electoral College.

The president has been confronted with a similar setup as in 2016, with Joe Biden leading the national polling average with 6.4 points, again, according to RealClearPolitics.

During the month of July right before the election -- in 2016 and 2020 -- the presumptive Democratic candidate’s graph of polling data was a mirror image of Trump’s. At the end of July 2016, Trump did hold a lead for a while, until polls dramatically dropped in support.

A Different Sort of Lead for Biden? 

Although polls didn’t prove a win for Clinton, researchers and analysts say that Biden’s lead over Trump is different compared to four years ago -- it’s more consistent.

After the Democratic National Convention, Clinton hit her peak in polling support and never reached it again. During her presidential run, Clinton hovered in the 40s, whereas Biden has been consistently placing in the high-40s to low-50s.  

In fact, Biden has already hit Clinton’s peak multiple times.

As the party’s convention is less than two weeks away, it’s unclear how much of an impact it’ll have on Biden’s polling average. It clearly affected Clinton’s run, but the circumstances this year are different considering the divide within the party, the coronavirus pandemic and because the former vice president recently announced that he’ll be attending the convention remotely to avoid any potential risk in contracting the virus.

The 2020 polling averages are also, perhaps, more accurate this round due to how many voters have “made up their minds” at this point in the race, according to Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst, and Anna Wiederkehr, senior visual journalist, at FiveThirtyEight.

“Some of the uncertainty about the trajectory of the Trump-Biden race might be reduced, in part because there are simply fewer voters who haven’t made up their minds and because signs point to fewer third-party voters than in 2016,” Skelley and Wiederkehr wrote.

The two added that in August 2016, Clinton and Trump gauged 82 percent of support in national polls compared to Biden and Trump with 92 percent, indicating that more people have decided on which candidate they’re voting for in the upcoming election.

Biden’s margin, however, in some crucial battleground states is slightly lower than what Clinton had rallied over Trump. In nine states -- mainly located in the Rust Belt -- Biden’s lead trails behind Clinton’s by about 2 to 4 points. Since the presidential victory still remains up-in-the-air, these states could be critical for Biden to get elected. 

In other states -- like Arizona and Texas -- Biden holds a notable lead over Clinton when she was at her peak in the polls. 

Whatever the case, there is no guarantee that a polling lead will manifest an election -- especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Biden is also faced with a unique election as his policy proposals have to target strategic relief and recovery to help Americans crawl out of unemployment and dwindling debt triggered by the virus.

Rachel Bucchino is a reporter at the National Interest. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The Hill.

Image: Reuters.