Politics is basically the ultimate game of "what if." We obsess over the sliding doors of history, and maybe no door is heavier than the one Joe Biden didn’t walk through in 2016. Honestly, if you ask Biden himself—like he wrote in his 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad—he thinks he would’ve won. He’s not alone. A lot of Democrats look back at the 77,000 votes that decided the "Blue Wall" states and wonder if a Scranton-born scrapper could have held those lines.
But was it actually a sure thing? Or are we just looking at the past through rose-colored aviators?
The Grief Factor and the "Missing" Campaign
In 2015, Joe Biden wasn't just the Vice President; he was a man absolutely leveled by the death of his son, Beau. It’s hard to overstate how much that tragedy dictated the 2016 map. Beau had been the one pushing him to run, but by the time the primary season was heating up, Biden admitted he just didn’t have the "emotional energy" to do it.
When he officially bowed out in the Rose Garden in October 2015, he left a massive vacuum. At the time, early polling from outlets like Bloomberg Politics showed a hypothetical three-way race between Clinton, Biden, and Bernie Sanders. Clinton was leading at 33%, but Biden was right there at 25%, despite not even being an active candidate.
The logic back then was simple: Biden could have been the "Goldilocks" candidate. He had the Obama administration’s blessing (mostly) but didn't carry the baggage of the Clinton email saga that was already starting to weigh down Hillary’s favorability ratings.
Would Biden Have Won the Primary First?
This is the part everyone skips over. You don't get to face Donald Trump unless you beat the Democratic machine first. Hillary Clinton had been "the nominee" in the eyes of the DNC since 2013. She had the donors, the data, and the delegates locked down.
Biden would have had to fight a two-front war.
- The Left: Bernie Sanders was already capturing the "anti-establishment" energy. Biden, a career senator and VP, was the definition of the establishment.
- The Machine: Challenging Clinton meant breaking with the party's desire for the first female president—a powerful narrative in 2016.
However, Biden had a secret weapon that Clinton lacked: a genuine, deep-seated connection with Black voters in the South. According to Sabato’s Crystal Ball analysis from 2015, Clinton’s "firewall" was her support among non-white voters. If Biden had entered, he likely would have split that vote, potentially opening a path for Sanders or creating a messy, contested convention that might have left the party even more fractured than it already was.
The Blue Wall: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin
If we skip ahead to the general election, the argument for a Biden victory gets a lot stronger. 2016 was decided by razor-thin margins in three specific states:
- Pennsylvania: Trump won by about 44,000 votes.
- Michigan: Trump won by roughly 10,700 votes.
- Wisconsin: Trump won by about 22,700 votes.
That’s it. Less than 80,000 votes across three states.
Biden’s whole political identity is built on being "Middle-Class Joe." He speaks the language of the rust belt. While Clinton was criticized for not visiting Wisconsin a single time during the general election, it’s almost impossible to imagine Biden skipping a trip to a union hall in Kenosha or a diner in Erie.
Data from Pew Research Center's post-election analysis showed that Trump won White voters without a college degree by a staggering 36 points (64% to 28%). In 2020, Biden managed to claw back some of that, receiving 33% of that same demographic. If he had performed just 2-3% better than Clinton with those voters in 2016, the electoral map flips.
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The "Not-Hillary" Advantage
People forget how much the 2016 election was a "negative" vote. Both major candidates had historically high disapproval ratings. According to Gallup, Clinton’s favorability was hovering around 41% on election day.
Biden, conversely, left the Vice Presidency with an approval rating north of 60%. He didn't have 25 years of "Clinton Fatigue" trailing him. He wasn't the target of a decades-long GOP opposition research project in the same way. Basically, he would have been a much harder target for the "Crooked Hillary" nickname to stick to. You can call Joe Biden a lot of things, but "shadowy elite" usually doesn't land.
The Case Against: Why He Might Have Lost
It’s not all sunshine and Scranton.
Biden has always been a bit of a gaffe machine. In a high-pressure 2016 cycle, his tendency to go off-script could have been disastrous against a shark like Trump, who thrived on seizing on verbal slips.
Also, the "incumbency" problem is real. After eight years of a Democratic White House, the country was itching for "change." Allan Lichtman, the historian famous for his "Keys to the White House" prediction model, notes that the party in power almost always struggles to hold the presidency after two terms unless they have a massive economic boom or a charismatic "hero" candidate.
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Biden was essentially "Obama 2.0." For the voters in rural Ohio or Florida who felt left behind by the globalized economy, Biden might have just looked like more of the same. Would they have seen him as a champion, or just another guy who’d been in D.C. for 40 years?
What Really Happened in the Polls?
Hypothetical polling from late 2015 consistently showed Biden performing better than Clinton against Trump. A CNN/WMUR poll from September 2015 had Biden beating Trump by 19 points (56% to 37%), while Clinton was only leading him by 8.
But—and this is a big but—hypothetical polls are always inflated. Candidates are always more popular before they start getting attacked. The moment Biden would have stepped onto that stage, the "Middle-Class Joe" image would have been met with millions of dollars in ads about his 1994 Crime Bill or his role in the Anita Hill hearings.
Actionable Insights: What We Can Learn
Whether you think Biden would have cruised to victory or crashed in the primaries, the 2016 "what if" offers some pretty clear lessons for anyone watching politics today:
- Voter Sentiment Trumps Data: Clinton had the better data operation, but Biden had the "vibe" that resonated with the specific 100,000 voters who actually mattered.
- The Power of the "Blue Wall": Any Democrat who ignores the industrial Midwest does so at their own peril. Biden proved in 2020 that Pennsylvania is the linchpin.
- The Unpredictability of Grief: Personal life dictates political history more than we like to admit. If Beau Biden hadn't gotten sick, the last decade of American history would look completely different.
Honestly, the most likely scenario? Biden wins the "Blue Wall" but maybe loses some of the turnout Clinton got with suburban women or Black voters in the North who were energized by the prospect of the first female president. It would have been a different race, but in an election decided by 0.7% in a few states, any change to the candidate probably changes the result.
If you want to understand the 2016 result, don't just look at who ran. Look at who didn't. Biden’s absence wasn't just a personal choice; it was the structural shift that allowed the Trump era to begin.
To dig deeper into this, you should check out the official 2016 exit poll data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research or read Biden's own account in "Promise Me, Dad" to see how close he actually came to jumping in.
Next Steps for Deepening Your Understanding:
- Compare the 2016 and 2020 exit polls specifically for the "White non-college" demographic in Pennsylvania.
- Research the "Twelve State" strategy used by the Trump campaign to see how they targeted the specific counties Biden would have contested.
- Review the 2015 Democratic primary polling trends to see the exact moment Clinton’s lead began to slip before Biden’s exit.