(FiveThirtyEight)

Joe Rogan, Fox News hosts, and Bernie Bros on Twitter have (at least) one common folly: they’re under the impression Joe Biden is doomed in November. If you measure the strength of a candidate by your own reading of our political landscape online, it’s not hard to fall into the trap of agreeing with them. Most Joe Biden posts online cover conspiracies, his gaffes, and downright bad-faith slander. They think he’s a low energy candidate that doesn’t have the charisma or fire to bring voters to the polls. The reality is far from the narrative; between his strong floor of support, his demographic advantages, and the patterns of recent Democratic turnout, Joe Biden is uniquely situated to win the election on November 3rd, 2020. Biden’s enthusiastic base may not manifest themselves on your Twitter feed, but they’re out there — and they’re voting in waves.

The Biden Floor

On the night of the 2016 election, CNN commentator Van Jones called Donald Trump’s victory, “a whitelash against a changing country.” He was right — and the whitelash carried beyond election day. After taking office, The Trump administration got busy chipping away at Barack Obama’s progress on matters of racial equality. His Department of Education rolled back Obama-era guidance on school discipline, aimed at protecting black students from being punished more severely. African American households received only 5% of the benefits from Trump’s tax cuts, despite making up roughly 13% of U.S. households. Despite his constant touting of low black unemployment, black homeownership has hit an all time low under Donald Trump. Trump said removing confederate monuments was “trying to take away our culture, our history.” It’s quite clear whose “culture” Trump seeks to protect. The bottom line is this: Donald Trump’s administration has taken aim at African Americans to satisfy the racially aggrieved white voters who elected him into office.

(ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES)

Joe Biden has nearly unilateral support of the Democratic Party base: moderate, middle-aged black voters. This is their election. While white voters were dividing (and re-dividing) their support between Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar, black voters kept Joe Biden a national front runner in the polls. On Super Tuesday, African-Americans delivered Joe Biden a sweeping victory; of the five candidates competing, he won 58% of black voters across this vast March 3rd landscape. They have decided Joe Biden is their vehicle to progress and they’ve provided him with a comfortable (and almost immovable) floor of support. Contradictory to Donald Trump’s bizarre and insensitive claim that black voters have “nothing to lose”, they have the most on the line in these uncertain times. In this country, crises hit black communities hardest— particularly under Republican policies.

Ronald Reagan’s handling of the crack and AIDS epidemic disproportionately hurt black Americans for generations.

George W. Bush’s failures in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina dramatically destabilized black communities.

The housing crisis of the Great Recession hit black Americans hardest.

Black voters have a lot on the line and they are strongly behind Joe. They played a key role in pushing Barack Obama to victory in ’08 and ’12 — and by the looks of it — they plan to do the same with Biden in 2020.

The Geographic Advantage

(Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida primary results. Purple counties: Joe Biden)

There’s a geographical coalition that has also been crucial to Joe Biden’s landslide victories: suburban voters in general. These two coalitions (black voters and suburban voters) overlap where the election matters most: suburban areas of battleground states. Biden won massively in three states that could tip the election: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida. It’s easy to dismiss primary victories, since Democrats are competing against Democrats. But Biden’s victory in Michigan was very noteworthy. For perspective:

Bernie Sanders upset Hillary Clinton in Michigan’s 2016 primary with a whopping 598,943 votes against her strong 581,775.

Last month, Bernie Sanders again brought out 576,754 voters. Joe Biden beat him with 838,555 votes .

. Donald Trump won Michigan by 3 votes per precinct. Biden’s edge is enough to win the state in November.

(Arizona favorability poll: Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump)

His post-primary victory favorability surge over Trump in Arizona also indicates a likelihood of a Biden victory. If Joe manages to win three of these four states, assuming the strong Democratic states remain blue, Biden would accumulate 287 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win; securing himself the nomination…and he wouldn’t even need to win his home state of Pennsylvania. Joe Biden has very strong support in very important regions of even more important states.

Party Unity

(Map created by u/aligatorstew on Reddit)

Democrats blew the Republicans out of the water with a historic midterm victory that won back the House. Most importantly, they flipped states that are important to winning in November: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Florida. It proved that unified Democratic enthusiasm has surged in the Trump-era. In the past week alone, Joe Biden has been endorsed by the most influential voices on each end of the Democratic ideological spectrum: Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama. It’s rare to find a candidate that is championed by both Noam Chomsky and Democratic Party insiders. Defeating Donald Trump is the most important issue on the minds of tens of millions of voters. They’ve proven in every election since Trump’s victory that they’re ready to take back their power.

Roy Moore — a Trump-endorsed judge from Alabama — was upset by Democrat Doug Jones in a 2017 special election for the Senate.

In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won a majority in the House and flipped 41 seats.

In 2019, Democrat Andy Beshear won the Governor’s Mansion in Kentucky.

Virginia flipped the State House and Senate in 2019, giving Democrats control of the state’s governorship, Senate, House for first time in 26 years.

Democrats are fully engaged and ready to take down Donald Trump in November. Joe Biden has a strong floor of support and a ceiling that has yet to be seen. His support is uniquely active in the regions most important to winning 270 electoral votes on the night of November 3rd, 2020. If Democrats stay engaged, fight for mail-in ballots, and cast their votes in November — they will unseat Donald Trump and take back their power.