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The United States Studies Centre (USSC) launched The perils of pre-election polling yesterday by CEO Professor Simon Jackman and former Research Assistant and Data Visualisation Analyst Zoe Meers. When running the numbers after correcting 2020 polls with learnings from 2016, a Trump re-election was seen one in three times. As Jackman wrote in The Australian yesterday, former vice president Joe Biden leads President Trump in five key swing states that Trump won in 2016: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With Florida's 29 Electoral College votes, as Jackman said on Sky News, you "just can't get past Florida."

President Trump has returned to indoor rallies, starting with Nevada, and things are gearing up for the first debate in two weeks time. Despite these familiar markers of the campaign, the looming question is: what happens when the votes are tallied? Given both the unprecedented nature of voting and growing signs of a contested election, the 2020 victor may well be crowned by the US Supreme Court. Make sure to join the next USSC webinar Law, the courts, and free and fair elections in the United States to get your primer for what to expect on election night and in the days and weeks that follow.