[smt88]

Yes.

1. Trump is no longer an unknown.

2. Biden is far more popular than Clinton was at her peak.

3. Biden is male (which is sadly very relevant in US elections).

4. We are no longer in the biggest economic expansion in US history. We may be in a historic recession.

5. There is a pandemic that has killed 60x the number of Americans that died on 9/11, and it is no under control in the US at all.

6. Kamala Harris is not like Tim Kaine.

7. Lots of anti-Trump voters are afraid to be complacent this time.

8. Suburban women, true independent voters (those who dislike both candidates), and older Americans are either breaking for Biden or have substantially switched to Democratic support after going for Trump in 2016.

A better question would be: is anything the same this time around?

[AnimalMuppet]

2. I'm not sure that's true. I would say, though, that Biden is far less unpopular than Clinton was.

4. But the biggest (longest, anyway) economic expansion was largely under Obama. That wasn't a reason to vote for Trump in 2016.

The rest of your list I agree with, with the possible exception of 8. I'm not sure that we can tell. I think the climate is so polarized, and the Democrats have the microphone to such a degree, that people who support Trump aren't willing to say in public that they do so. But you could in fact be right. We'll see.

[evgen]

#2 is categorically true. Biden has consistently held a larger lead, maintained a larger absolute share of the poll, and had better favorable/unfavorable ratings. There is no way that you can claim that Clinton was ever more popular than Biden except perhaps for that brief period before she actually declared herself to be a candidate.

For #4 the economic growth was under Obama but it meant that at the time of the election people were (mostly) fat and happy; the cost of taking a chance seemed to be lower and it was easier to tell yourself that 'this guy is a businessman, he could not fuck up this strong economy and might even do better.' Now people can see what a catastrophic mistake it was to make this assumption, but I can almost understand the reasoning. I think the point of claim #4 was basically that the most that any candidate could claim about the economy is that they would have recovered it better or done it faster -- another important claim that could be made about it would be that you would make sure that the 'right people' got more benefits from the rising economy and not those elites; the basic populist economic playbook.